One of those essential tools, that's not ever included with GNU/Linux by default, but I always install almost immediately along with ripgrep, bat, fzf, htop.
It supports all the common grep options and you can split view in the -Q mode and it is smart enough to open your $editor at the line number it's talking about.
Try it, this is the workflow I've been waiting for.
Also lf. https://github.com/gokcehan/lf You've been wanting this for years as well.
No really. Just scroll: https://github.com/gokcehan/lf/wiki/Integrations ... https://github.com/chmouel/zsh-select-with-lf these things will change your life. I promise.
By the way, this reminds me of the Norton Commander days ...
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/chmouel/zsh-select-with-lf... | llm -x "Convert this zsh script to bash" > maybe-bash.sh
seems to work for me.
Check out yazi, its the nicest TUI file manager I have used: https://yazi-rs.github.io/
I would recommend trying home-manager, or just plain nix profiles before going all-in on NixOS, it's very easy to add Nix on top of any Linux (and MacOS to an extent).
This way you still have your tried and true base system and you can manage things somewhat like you're used to (and use venv and whatever bullshit package manager everyone invents), a lot of common tools will work poorly on NixOS (venv, npm...)and while they have Nix alternatives that are "better" it's DIFFERENT.
I run NixOS on desktop and laptop but I wouldn't recommend starting with it, you can benefit from all packages on any distro by just installing Nix.
Also home-manager adoption can be incremental.
ADHD end note: home-manager is perfect for CLI tools installation and config. You must unconfigure "secure path" in sudo though otherwise your CLI tools don't work with sudo