Nix / NixOS

much more effort than copying a normal distro

I just throw an LLM at it - I learned to read nix (the language), but even that isn't required.

I now maintain a single, mostly shared, configuration between three machines. If I ever replace my main PC again, I can be up and running almost exactly back to where I was within 24 hours (that includes OS installation, some debugging, etc). And there's going to be a bunch of downloading data from my NAS.

That would've used to take a week to get roughly back to where I was, but without some vague fix for some issue or another.

Summary: It's great for programmers, and people who have maintain multiple machines, and want a shared configuration.

Either you pay the setup effort upfront (Nix) or you do it afterwards (any other stateful OS).