[splitbrain]

I think OP sums it up pretty well. If there isn't an existing module or one that does exactly what you want, your only way forward is to program your way out of it. That's just not something I want from my daily driver of a distribution. It doesn't help that this programming happens in a weird (to me) functional language.

[chpatrick]

I think that's fair. The stuff that works for other distros won't work for Nix. However I think eventually everything will be nix-ified. Right now for services there's also an easy escape hatch with docker and oci-containers. It's also what I use if I can't be bothered to nixify some server I want to run.

[nerdix]

I think it's weird to most people. I've used NixOS on my personal machines for 2 years and Nix lang is easily the worst thing about it. I'm definitely not a huge functional guy but I'm familiar with Lisp/Scheme and F#. Nix feels completely foreign in a way that those languages didn't.

There have definitely been situations where I've just decided to not try out an application because it wasn't in nixpkgs (it's pretty rare for a package to not exist but one prominent example is Zen browser).

[q3k]

> That's just not something I want from my daily driver of a distribution.

And that's fine! People are different, there's no way one OS is the best choice for everyone. :)