Something I still don't understand after all these years, is why all the conversation around #NixOS treats it as a "use it as-is" distro (which it really just isn't very good at!), and not more people are talking about what it could uniquely offer as a technical foundation for an actual end-user OS.
@joepie91 I firmly believe that "it's a Linux distro" statement is the prime culprit for making it seen as just another barely different Linux distro by the Linux majority. Just like Windows users consider Linux a "Windows for geeks": obvious downsides with no upsides. If it was instead marketed as "the only configurable OS that just so happens to use Linux", the world would've been a much better place.
@monk I've been thinking along similar lines, yeah, but I don't have much more than a hunch to go off there.
(I may or may not have a related project in-flight where I intend to try this)
@joepie91 sometimes i describe NixOS as "it's a bunch of helpful tools and a configuration language for you to build your own personalized linux distro" for exactly this reason