There’s definitely a steep initial learning curve as you observed and dialing in your configuration is time consuming in my experience but once you’ve got things the way you like, it’s pretty smooth sailing from there.
Edit: removed compared to arch references. Not relevant to the comment.
I mean the barrier of entry is kind of high if you’re used to more traditional package managers.
Source: I tried using nix on my Debian machine
There’s definitely a steep initial learning curve as you observed and dialing in your configuration is time consuming in my experience but once you’ve got things the way you like, it’s pretty smooth sailing from there.
Edit: removed compared to arch references. Not relevant to the comment.