The big cost about Nix/Guix that puts people off is that it eliminates a human-readable filesystem. The traditional layout is gone or empty, replaced by a tonne of folders under `/nix/` called stuff like `240-572-9837wfgjh234098672-_bash` and you have to just... *trust* that your path and so on will work and stuff will just get found somehow.
You have to let go of navigating your own filesystem.
That's just too much for a lot of people. The filesystem layout is one of Unix's defining characteristics.
Whereas Gobo's goal is the opposite: yes, let us discard the traditional filesystem layout, but let's do it by making it more human readable instead.
You can work out where things are without knowing. There's better isolation. It's like semantic versioning, applied to the filesystem: a semantic filesystem layout, where folder names encapsulate versioning info and are more meaningful than the old 1970s reduce-typing-effort-at-all-costs approach.
Nix says ignore paths, ignore directories, you don't need them, we'll manage that for you.
Gobo says forget traditional paths, here are some better ones that you will find easier and more useful.
For me, that's an attractive proposition.
In real life, it seems that both were too much for most people.
My suggestion would be: why not merge them? Try to bring the advantages of Gobo -- readable, meaningful directory paths -- to a version of Nix.
Instead of a flat directory tree with hashes, a consistent algorithm that categorises apps and puts them in a tree:
/gonix/apps/gui/productivity/images/krita/5.1/
/gonix/apps/console/shell/bash/5.2/
/gonix/apps/programming/compilers/fpc/3.1/
/gonix/libraries/c/glibc/2.39
/gonix/apps/console/editors/vim/9.1
I am totally making these up, you understand, they're merely illustrative examples.