> My own problems aside, I would expect from a tool marketed as something that helps you keep your environment clean to not litter my disk with a ton of hidden files and directories spread all over the filesystem.

On non-nixOS, I think the changes Nix makes are:

1. puts the majority of its stuff under /nix 2. in the user directory, puts some files under ~/.nix-channels, ~/.nix-defexpr and ~/.nix-profile 3. modifies the default shell script /etc/bashrc or so, with some stuff under /etc/nix. 4. adds multiple users nixbuild1 ... nixbuildN.

The uninstall command given in the manual is a one-line:

``` sudo rm -rf /etc/profile/nix.sh /etc/nix /nix ~root/.nix-profile ~root/.nix-defexpr ~root/.nix-channels ~/.nix-profile ~/.nix-defexpr ~/.nix-channels ```