Perhaps what is missing is the book "Nix - The good parts". Not saying Nix is not good overall, but getting a condensed description what is worth knowing, leaving out what can be ignored or is obsolete, would be quite valuable.
- don't use nix-env ever
- enable and use the new nix command (nix3)
- enable and use flakes
- use home-manager
- if on macOS, use nix-darwin
- with flakes, freely use nixpkgs unstable (stable is still useful, but flakes provide their own stability through pinned versions).
For some examples: you can manage your homebrew packages, set keyboard preferences, trackpad settings, updates, finder defaults, etc through the nix config.
https://daiderd.com/nix-darwin/manual/index.html#sec-options
Or if you don’t want to install the package permanently and just want it for a one-off job, `nix-shell -p mysql` starts a shell with mysql on your path, which will disappear as soon as you exit the shell.
"Oh, Ubuntu is too complicated"
"It's easy. 1. Don't use dpkg, ever. 2. Use the apt command. 3. Avoid Snaps. 4. Well, forget about locking dependencies, this isn't Nix. 5. No Home Manager equivalent exists, so I don't know, use Ansible? 6. If on macOS, you're out of luck. 7. Make sure to download the latest release."
"And you do this to install MySQL?"