You'd avoid the friction of having to deal with software that doesn't 'just work' on NixOS, but still be able to make use of things like devenv.
Though, an understated benefit from using NixOS is that the specific fixes taken are now available "as code".
The whole point of NixOS is that the entire system is managed by Nix. The entirety of everything is declarative in your configuration file(s) and the entire system can consistently be rebuilt from the configuration. The root system is immutable after being built and as such it is trivial to snapshot.
This isn't just a trivial implementation detail, it changes the entire way that you use the computer. Boot parameters, drivers, installed programs, everything is done via configuration, as opposed to installing Nix on Ubuntu where most stuff is still managed haphazardly and mutably.
You might not think that's good or worth it, but I dispute the notion that installing Nix on a non-NixOS distro gives you the "best of both worlds". They're very different things.
If OP wanted the benefits of the Nix package manager (e.g. per-project development environments, using Nix to build container images, etc.), and didn't want the friction of "how do I run this software on NixOS", I think it's straightforward that using Nix on a non-NixOS distro is a practical choice.
This was perhaps only an issue with launching from nix shell.. but it caused enough friction for me that I ended up switching. It's much easier to use, e.g., steam-run/appimage-run/nix-alien/plain-ole-npx for all special cases on NixOS than the vice-versa issues on non-NixOS imho.
I personally think these issues sound one-off to me, and sticking with NixOS should be fine. But other OS + home manager is completely valid and a great way to use Nix more casually.
I'm not sure what type of software you're talking about, but Linux native software usually works with 'steam-run', which is really the "pretend to be Ubuntu" command.
The original post mentions several examples where he ran into friction. (Monitoring/tracking software, pinentry-kwallet, playwright, tableplus).
A popular escape hatch for NixOS (or other immutable distros) for commandline tools is distrobox. https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox
Another good tip mentioned on the NixOS wiki FAQ is nix-ldd with the dependencies from steam-run.
Still. The benefit of having a declared system configuration does come with the cost of having to put in that effort up front; and a steeper learning curve for knowing how to get around those difficulties compared to more typical distros.
There's also nix-ld [2], which allows you to directly run unpatched binaries.
[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/by-name/bi...
[2] https://search.nixos.org/options?channel=unstable&show=progr...
I think the only negative aspect of the approach is the sheer quantity [1] of package installation options available.
[1] https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/
Flatpaks at least have a sandbox that can be easily configured to protect the user, does not require elevated privileges and get some limited vetting on flathub. Not to mention additional security feature like portals.
I don’t see how it’s significantly different than the status quo on Windows/Mac.
With distributions packages, there's a bigger barrier to entry which is at least better in avoiding sneaky malware from easily creeping in.
I think someone running Linux wants low barrier to entry as a reason to use the system. They want a system built by communities and not by corporations with walled garden toll booth business models.
But this point is extremely weak either way when you compare to the Windows barrier to entry which is effectively zero. Or you can compare flatpak to Mac users installing software with Homebrew.
I think if you look at flathub there are very good explanations on each piece of software regarding whether the author is verified, what the license and code availability status of the package is, and which permissions are being used when installed. It seems to use relatively strong language to describe permissions features as potentially unsafe.
https://danieldk.eu/Nix-CUDA-on-non-NixOS-systems#make-runop...