[pxc]

You can always find the latest Neovim in Nixpkgs Unstable, modulo a week or two. Neovim 0.9 is on its way in right now: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/225152

Just make sure your user's Nix profile is included in your XDG paths like so, and the .desktop files Nix installs will get picked up by your DE: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Nix_Cookbook#Desktop_environment_doe...

If you really want to stay on top of the bleeding edge, you can use this overlay to run prebuilt copies of Neovim nightly on any distro: https://github.com/nix-community/neovim-nightly-overlay

To ensure that the Nix installation itself is easily removable and sets everything up correctly for you, use the Determinate Nix Installer for a fast and easy installation: https://github.com/DeterminateSystems/nix-installer

In case you don't want to wait for the final package to land in Nixpkgs, command for installing 0.9 from that PR branch after using the above Nix installer is

  nix profile install github:GaetanLePage/nixpkgs/neovim#neovim

which will build from source against that PR branch.

Nix can be a great complement to a stable, conventional base system like Debian for use cases like this. I hope you give it a try!