Agree but I think it’s interesting to discuss the larger implication here. Nix the language and ecosystem has historically been completely unapproachable for people unwilling to beat their head against the wall continuously to figure it out. It is famously unapproachable. Now, the benefits are accessible to the quasi-layman. Good news all around
It seems like the "lightweight" they seem to be concerned with is RAM, not disc. I can't really comment on disc space usage on my own NixOS system, though my "thin client" skin does fit nicely on an old Chromebook, I think that guy has 32GB of storage.
OTOH I have an ex Chromebook with 16G of storage that I meant to run NixOS until I discovered the initial install needed almost half the disk so I figured it was doomed the moment I tried to update while also having some space used in home. It runs Alpine now, very comfortably.
I’ll just say as nix Darwin user the default vanilla install does not garbage collect well and every 2 months or so I have to hack around nuking shit in my system to free up space. Maybe NixOS itself is better managed and it’s an idiosyncrasy of nix-Darwin. Maybe not
I've had a similar experience with NixOS configured by Claude Code, and it's been really nice. I have the same config on 3 machines, all managed in one git repo, including home manager and sops, and one of the machines I skin as a "thin client" removing most of my development tools and just using it to SSH/wezterm in to my main dev box, on a small and light ex-chromebook.
How is this considered “repeatable” when it takes several pages to describe how it’s glued together? By the same logic the pyramids of Giza are repeatable. Technically true, but not likely worth the effort.