Ranting about Nix being hard is like going to Russia and complaining that the local language doesn't sound English. Like many other things worth your time, it's something you learn through deliberate practice and focus.
> That sounds like a massive barrier to entry and more effort than solving the problems I currently have.
It's a lot of effort, and in the end you're left with a different, more interesting set of problems.
I don't regret spending that effort, but it needs to be easier if we want more users. I don't think there's any answer besides lots more effort from the nixos dev side, however.
There are many things that require tremendous practice and study that aren't worth your time as well.
You have to justify it somehow. And I just don't see the value prop in Nix yet. I would compare it as such: Nix is to Docker what Google+ was to Facebook. Maybe it's superior. But the benefits are so marginal that the costs of switching will prohibit most from giving it a shot. Most people want reproducible builds and easy configuration. If they are getting that from Docker, why switch?
At the distro level, average people are going to benefit by having reproducible builds done upstream. Debian does this, IIRC. As does F-Droid and a few others. If you trust Debian, then you implicitly trust the packages Debian installs.
NixOS doesn't even solve the real aspect of Linux that I find terrifying: security. Linux is a blob of overlapping and bewildering security mechanisms and tools. You have groups, permissions, SELinux, capabilities. The whole thing leaks like a sieve.
That sounds like a massive barrier to entry and more effort than solving the problems I currently have.