I also ran NixOS on my framework for a while. As much as I loved the idea of Nix, it's also incredibly hard - I work with Linux day in and day out for work, and finding my way around Nix, configuring new packages / basic features, etc. just took too long for me. The biggest upside I found was the incredible resilience, it was nearly impossible to break my installation.

I gave up after a short while using Nix and switched to Windows. It's not perfectly tuned like a minimal Linux install might be, but all of the hardware features work as expected and it has a pretty good battery life.

If someone can find a way to do something like Nix, but simple, I'll be interested. Even if it's just a on-rails version of Nix.

Currently it works on a "per-project" basis, but we're planning to add support to use it as your primary package manager for global installs as well.