impermanence VS dotfiles

You might want to set up NixOS with impermanence, with something like https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence. Install an easy to use desktop environment like ElementaryOS, and configure NixOS with or without Flatpak, if you want to give the user the ability to install new software or not. Then set up automatic updates, automatic garbage collection and you have a truly stable system.

I would not call these projects unbelievable, but they are neat.

- Opt-in state: https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence and https://grahamc.com/blog/erase-your-darlings/

That way will work - I use the impermanence module which works similarly but allows to hide mounts.

This is indeed a blind spot. Thanks for pointing that out! Silverblue -to my knowledge- doesn't do a lot to address this. Though, 3rd-party tools like Home Manager and the suite of applications developed by the folks over at uBlue might be able to limit this to a minimum. Though I'm not sure if it surpasses NixOS in this regard; for the uninitiated. Though, to my knowledge, this requires special attention and depends on the specifics of the NixOS system in question.

[3]: https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence

I have recently stumbled upon Impermanence - modules to help you handle persistent state on systems with ephemeral root storage, and the concept seems quite nice.

I haven't used it yet but nix-community/impermanence has a home-manager module that might be useful.

Some files in /etc (like saved networks) will still not be managed by NixOS, if you want to have full control over them use Impermanence

{ imports = [ (modulesPath + "/installer/scan/not-detected.nix") "${builtins.fetchGit { url = "https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware.git"; }}/system76" "${builtins.fetchGit { url = "https://github.com/nix-community/impermanence.git"; }}/nixos.nix" ];

I daily-drive it with ZFS on the root partition, and roll back using snapshots. All state is persisted to /nix/state (again /nix is ZFS with atime=off for speed), and important files are all stored in /data. You can find the complete configuration for it here and the partition script here. This is done using the extremely handy impermanence Module

I use BTRFS, and have created a separate subvolume for /home, and take automatic snapshots using btrbk (my config) Also, I did not face any problems with the SSD till now (using TMPFS on /)

This is one of the best answers I've ever seen. Thanks a lot!! Also to OP, if you decide on using home-manager as a NixOS Module, then you can have a look at my config, it does exactly that, and it is simple to understand (I am a beginner as well)