[ris]

> Curious, does one need to use nixOS for an optimal experience?

My experience: no. I've been very happily using Nix on debian for years. Debian gives me my boring desktop apps (I have very very boring tastes), almost all my tinkering and development starts with drawing all the prerequisites from Nix.

The only times you get weirdness from using non-NixOS linux are things like running opengl apps, which simply require a wrapper script like `nixGL` to function properly.

And darwin Nix is just about the only thing that makes macos a bearable platform for me.