[Tainnor]

Sure, but then you're throwing away the purported benefits (setup is always reproducible) for your entire home folder.

It seems like there are two contradictory goals here, each with their own benefits. Impermanence gives you reproducibility, but permanence gives you performance.

Maybe the right tradeoff is to just persist the entire home folder and nothing else (or few other things... I'm not sure I'd want to always download some programs that are quite huge), but the tradeoff is essentially still there.

[n42]

you're talking about three different things: NixOS, Home Manager, and Impermanence. or put another way: reproducible root filesystem, reproducible home folder, automatically reproducing things on boot.

if you want a reproducible root filesystem, use NixOS. if you want to reproduce your root filesystem on boot, use NixOS with impermanence.

if you want a reproducible home folder, use home manager. if you want to reproduce your home folder on boot, use home manager with impermanence.

I only use impermanence on servers. I don't think there's any point using it on a desktop, or with Home Manager, other than street cred. it just complicates things. I don't really even recommend Home Manager for first time NixOS users for the same reason.

edit: and I want to address this comment:

> I'm not sure I'd want to always download some programs that are quite huge

this isn't how it works; the binaries, as well as the entire initial state of the filesystem, are cached in the Nix cache, a read-only filesystem. you're not downloading everything on every boot.