I use home manager for my personal setup. It's just files in a git repo. At my latest job I had to switch from linux to macos. Even with having never been confronted with macos the config barely needed any changes. I was able to get a HIGHLY customized setup working almost identically to my linux setup in less than a day.
If you are someone that says "I just use defaults so I don't waste time getting things set up" good for you. I'm a diva and I have a really custom setup with aliases and scripts I've developed over 10+ years and it would take me weeks to get it all back if I was starting from scratch.
I've tried using ansible and custom bash scripts. Nothing comes close to how effective home manager / nix is at maintaining my diva setup.
You are not wrong though about making your own package being a pain. If nix doesn't have a package (which almost never happens) I just give up and install it with some other package manager manually. I don't have time for that. I used to use nixos but not having an escape hatch was too much.
If you are someone that says "I just use defaults so I don't waste time getting things set up" good for you. I'm a diva and I have a really custom setup with aliases and scripts I've developed over 10+ years and it would take me weeks to get it all back if I was starting from scratch.
I've tried using ansible and custom bash scripts. Nothing comes close to how effective home manager / nix is at maintaining my diva setup.
You are not wrong though about making your own package being a pain. If nix doesn't have a package (which almost never happens) I just give up and install it with some other package manager manually. I don't have time for that. I used to use nixos but not having an escape hatch was too much.