Yeah, NixOS is excellent. But, for nix (or close enough) to be the future, an upgrade path should exist for other distros. But, for some reason, I don't really see any such efforts. Like, where are the nix-variants of other distros?

FWIW, Bootcrew has created bootc-variants of many other distros. And, even before, both Endless OS and GNOME OS offered examples of non-Fedora distros with ostree.

I 100% agree with you. I think atomic distros are great for people like my parents, where they just need a browser and maybe libreoffice, and it's valuable to have something that "just works" (now I need to just convince them to give linux it a try...)

If you start getting into coding or customization then it quickly becomes clunky to use and requires knowledge beyond what a beginner would have, especially because most guides will tell you to use the traditional package manager, but that won't work with immutable root.

Containers, installing software to /home, changing advanced settings is in my experience way too much for most people.

I hope though that this might be solvable in the future with flatpak. Maybe by creating some special category for "CLI tools" with less/no sandboxing but still installable and runnable from a normal user account, and shipping the whole dependency tree.

Overall, I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment.

The suggestion to just use ~~toolkits~~ toolbox is not for mortals.

I am also not convinced that it was ever meant as the endgame. Like, toolbox still doesn't offer a mechanic to upgrade a(ll) container(s) without entering one. The last time I used it, it also shat itself whenever the old pet container became EOL and desired a 'system update' to become functional. IIRC, distrobox doesn't fare any better at this. Thus, coming with what looks like planned obsolescence; with the recreation of the pet containers every couple of months as a result. I suppose the solution is picking an image that's supposed to be rolling-release. Which is why I think this workflow suits Aeon better.

Perhaps I should have been more clear. My apologies. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that -in the case of Fedora Atomic- layering remains a necessity (for most users). This thread goes over it in more detail.

flatpak

Technically speaking, the flatpak format isn't even as limited as some make it out to be. For example, software like Bottles have offered CLI/TUI functionality through it. But Flathub, its most popular storefront, does put a limitation on submissions. Which means that it's effectively not even competing with other package managers that (conventionally) try to offer a broader set of software.

Furthermore, even if the flatpak package exists, not all functionality is retained. For example, the situation around native messaging is still a mess. This prevents e.g. your flatpak browser from communicating with your locally installed password manager. While a(n ugly) workaround exists, it’s quite maddening that it hasn’t been resolved in all these years 😅.

distrobox/toolbx

This is actually a mess. See this comment elsewhere under this post for a bit more elaboration.

Which is still very rough around the edges. There's still software that doesn't work properly at all in some setups, and flatseal is still essential to make some other apps work as expected.