It has it's own language (nix) and a learning curve.

You can configure your whole system like code using nix and manage it with git. If something goes wrong you can boot into an older generation. So the system pretty much never breaks and you can experiment fearlessly. You can also clone the system with your config on another machine.

It's just scratching the surface. You can also create predictable dev environments with nix. So it eliminates things like a code running on one device but failing on another.

The downsides are high disk space usage and learning curve. But I can't imagine living without nix nowadays.

Nix is also a package manager. So you can try it on arch, debian, and even macos. It doesn't need root and doesn't conflict with pacman or apt etc.

#nixos