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There is a fundamental difference between system and applications. All common Linux distro unify them into one package management mechanism. Your comment suggests that NixOS is flexible enough to make a split.

Android and iOS clearly separate system and applications and it mostly works fine.

Ubuntu tries to split off applications via snap [0], but so far adoption seems marginal.

[0] https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/snappy

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If I understand NixOS correctly, there is no explicit distinction between system and applications, and everything is handled by the same package management mechanism. The value proposition is in having clean separation between all packages, such that each application can be presented with its own mix of system packages without any conflicts between them.

> each application can be presented with its own mix of system packages without any conflicts between them

Furthermore, everything is done, or in the way to be done, in a functional way: system configuration, deployment, etc.

There are even efforts to manage dotfiles currently getting implemented.

IMHO, the Nix way is a great leap ahead.

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