[pdimitar]

Yes, the updates treated like a DB transaction are the main draw of Nix and I agree they're nice. However, Fedora and recently Manjaro started offering the so-called "immutable" versions that do nearly the same: you can install and delete and do whatever you like but you also have to explicitly opt in to commit those changes to your bootable image. If you don't do it they're just discarded after you reboot.

That's quite awesome and saves me from 99% of the problem you described... without having to learn the Nix's weird language or be willing to read cryptic error messages and get roasted on Reddit for not knowing them by heart.