For me I can say on-demand replicability of my system is what I find most incredible. I have data backups, but if something goes wrong with my system, how can i get it back up and running quickly with minimal time spent reconfiguring setting after setting after config after config? NixOS is great for that.

But as a Linux beginner I didn't really care about that because just getting stuff to work was a huge achievement, lol.

To answer your question...I also remember when shopping around for distros that I was looking at a lot of things that didn't really ultimately matter. For example, Pop!_OS has a version with Nvidia drivers pre-installed...but it turns out installing those drivers is pretty trivial in most modern distros. I also like Pop Shell, but that's also not too hard to get in any distro running GNOME.

So maybe it would help to have some kind of a NixOS "app store" of sorts where the top features/functionality n00bs are looking for are bundled together and catalogued in a browseable way so folks can easily "shop around" for the particular features they're looking for and build their own config. Then they'd stick with NixOS because to replicate their setup on any other distro would require a ton of manual annoying work every time.

I'm not sure that's the right question. As I see it, NixOS refines the Linux experience in a big way. The typical average-Joe type of person doesn't understand the benefits and pitfalls of Linux, so they definitely won't understand NixOS, much less use it regularly.

My pleasure. Hope it works out for you!

I would love it to be a little more powerful to make it better for work (e.g. I tried building Mempool's Node.js front-end on it earlier today and it flat-out failed / ran out of memory) but I mainly got it to have a device on which I could read and take notes side-by-side...and for that it's perfect.

Android has had key/mouse support for a while. Even on your phone...plug in any keyboard/mouse and it should just work.

Coincidentally, I had the same thought recently after getting a little frustrated with my Linux setup...GrapheneOS just works, every time, no matter what. FOSS app landscape on Android has gotten pretty rich. And it's highly secure.

So I also got a Pixel Tablet recently to see how it could work for work...apps for basic functions are there (email, messaging, browser, etc) and with Termux you can do a lot more (ssh, vim, etc). Depends what you do on your computer but that covers 75% of what I use...main things I miss having are browser devtools and desktop-class editors like Inkscape and GIMP.

It can be a nice sidekick when you're doing something relatively simple and don't want to have to worry about battery life. It's somewhat similar to a MacBook running Apple silicon but on a more private OS that is less powerful.