Pedestrian you could just say that you were filtered by it like me and be done with it
Or I could say exactly what happened, which is what I did.
SUSE has the almighty YaST, which is probably the biggest Linux configuration tool and installed in the world, it's one of the reasons it was so popular in the 2000s, it lets you declare exactly what you want to change in the system from installation to regular usage, and if necessary allows you to export said configuration to other computers, creating the same system. Ever since SUSE made Btrfs the default it's also been possible to rollback changes, these are the biggest praises I hear from people when talking about Nix, yet they're nothing new and only more complicated than the alternatives.
Gentoo also does semi-declarative package configuration, or it's more apt to say it does both declarative and imperative package management.
The Portage package manager is configured with /etc/portage/make.conf, where many variables are found, but more importantly USE is responsible for what packages the system must have installed, what packages it mustn't, and what USE flags should packages have or not have.
For example, taken from Gentoo's wiki USE=-kde -qt5 ldap will prevent any kde and qt5 packages from being installed either implicitly and explicitly, and will install ldap on the next update. This variable commands the way the packages present on the system, and defines the most important packages to be installed.
My point is, why should I use an operating system that overcomplicates things for no reason when there have existed well-tested, well-documented, simpler alternatives for decades? The Nix language is, in my view, just another obstacle you must jump over to reap the rewards of... what? Anything it offers I can get for less in other systems, and anything else is distinctly more exhaustive than normal distributions. Take for instance, why isn't package management imperative, or at least why isn't it both imperative and declarative? Why do you curse me with extra keystrokes just to install the packages I want? Is something like nix-install so sinful? It's done in Gentoo with python, why not NixOS with its fancy language made entirely for its purpose, and that still somehow feels inept with how much abstraction it adds?
I was not filtered, after fixing the problems I mentioned on my other post, I began contemplating. The above paragraphs are the rough lines of what I drew in my mind on that day. You may call this being "filtered", I'd rather call it for what it is: I was sold a lie.
