You don’t have to use the full eco system of Nix to be happy with it like flakes and home manager. I still stuff everything in one configuration.nix and it has everything I need. Eventually I’ll dive into it but for right now I’m happy.

Sorry VMs won’t work in your situation. Check out Lutris for your games.

DLC Boot has been my all in one repair ISO. Get it from FileCR.

I’ve only owned a System76 laptop and they are alright. Framework would be my next choice for sure.

Backing up NixOS is very straight forward and easy. It’s kinda the same as docker-compose in that respect.

+1 for NixOS

I’m a distro hopping junkie and NixOS has been keeping me on their OS for 8 months now. Highly recommend it.