impermanence VS nix-embedded

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" ];

Yeah I agree here, I used to find Nix somewhat unintuitive but I have now managed a few non-trivial projects. One being to package Xilinx ISE as a flake [0], and another to build a non-volatile Linux image using busybox and runit [1]. For the latter I still haven't quite gotten where I want but that's because I realised I needed dbus for avahi and dbus is just so ridiculously complex.

[0] - https://github.com/benpye/nix-fpga-tools/

[1] - https://github.com/benpye/nix-embedded