I know though that when I was still futzing with it and was perusing help posts online that I definitely was not alone in having stability problems but I also was still in the learning phase and likely created some of those stability problems by doing something NixOS in particular didn’t like.

Firstly, NixOS is structured very differently from other distros, shared libraries aren't in the usual places, things don't work out of the box as an experienced user expects them to.

The caveat is that I have a ton of muscle memory built up over 30 years of working with both Unix and Linux and a new person first entering the field wouldn't have those so maybe it would actually be easier for someone without those preconceptions to pick it up. I personally found the documentation obtuse and the few forums I found where newbies asked questions were, if that's even possible, somehow more condescending than the typical toxic Linux help space.

There are other issues though outside the muscle memory aspects. ZFS would fail, sometimes in catastrophic, but reparable ways and the ability to repair those issues comes from a lot of experience. I only used NixOS for about a year and I had ZFS pool problems more in that one year than my previous 29 years with ext4, xfs, or even btrfs combined.

My biggest issue though is that NixOS breaks so damn often, even with the ZFS issues set aside. The error messages are in no way helpful when debugging a problem so it feels like you're left on your own to solve anything that comes up.

I wanted to like NixOS but it reminded me of my Slackware days where I was constantly fiddling, constantly tweaking. I'm old, I want stability and reliability, not exciting new problems.