I fail to see why GNOME, or any DE for that matter, is something that should be recommended by a distribution like NixOS.
In other distro’s, to get a non-default desktop, you have to download a whole different distro “spin”, like Kubuntu. Or add the new desktop packages and manually configure them all.
With NixOS you use the same install image, and just change two or three lines in the master configuration.nix file, and re/build. You can change back and forth between DE’s that use different window managers with a reboot, or between DE’s that use the same window manager with a relog [3].
Most the major desktops are supported in NixOS [1][2]. Gnome being the default means little, is easy to change should NixOS community ever form a consensus about changing the default (say in response to Gnome crossing some line), and is easy for end users to change any time.
——
# Gnome
services.xserver.enable = true;
services.xserver.displayManager.gdm.enable = true;
services.xserver.desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
——
# KDE
services.xserver.enable = true;
services.xserver.displayManager.sddm.enable = true;
services.xserver.desktopManager.plasma5.enable = true;
——
[1]:More info: https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/index.html#sec-x11
[2]:Supported desktops: https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=21.11&from=0&size=5...
[3]:https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/otnfq6/i3_or_sway_wh...
https://nixos.org/download.html#nixos-iso
There's no need for a distro like NixOS to do this. It only serves to lend weight to the arrogance displayed by GNOME.
sudo apt-get install cinnamon
on ubuntu, and then select cinnamon at the login screen after booting, and it'll work just fine. same for mate, plasma, etc. Same for debian, and most linux distros I've tried. installing another desktop isn't difficult at all, usually