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I really don't see how it is "unacceptably bad". You don't even have to understand anything about Nix and still be able to use the damn thing. Yes the real-version vs attribute-name-that-contains-a-version is a bit wonky but in practice that's seriously not an issue.
But really, for versions you can actually pick whatever version you wish by hitting a specific channel state:
nix-env -f https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/nixos-23.05.tar.gz -iA ruby
https://github.com/LnL7/nix-darwin/tree/master/modules
https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/text_cmds/blob/c0...
https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware
> I've suggested Docker as a potential solution
I recommend Podman instead because it is compatible with Docker containers but does not require root privilege.[1]
> it still requires her to take on the role of administrator and caretaker, which, in her busy world of astrophysical research, can be quite the distraction
And yet
> she embarks on a week-long odyssey to set up her computing environment from scratch
She is already a sysadmin. But multiply the number of machines to maintain by a factor of 1000 to start. ^_^
= = =
[1] _ https://podman.io/
(2) Click "Get Started" (https://nixos.org/learn), then "Install Nix" (https://nixos.org/download#download-nix)
Either way, those instructions don't offer any clear next step. I might get it installed, but what now?
Going back to "Get Started" (https://nixos.org/learn), the next options is "First steps with Nix" (https://nix.dev/tutorials/first-steps/). The options here are:
Ad hoc shell environments