BTRFS and ZFS filesystems offer lightweight snapshots. So you can save the state of the filesystem and restore it. It is often integrated with the package manager and a snapshot is involved before you make change.
NixOS works differently. You have a configuration file, and each time you make change to it NixOS rebuilds itself to its specification from scratch (you might assume it would be a lengthy process, but because of caching only things that are rebuilt are things that you are changing).
This means that things like for example squeezing from KDE to Gnome or X11 to Wayland aren’t scary to try and you can easily revert things back, your home directory won’t be touched.
Also those things aren’t exclusive you can use BTRFS and ZFS on NixOS to and enjoy their benefits.
BTRFS and ZFS filesystems offer lightweight snapshots. So you can save the state of the filesystem and restore it. It is often integrated with the package manager and a snapshot is involved before you make change.
NixOS works differently. You have a configuration file, and each time you make change to it NixOS rebuilds itself to its specification from scratch (you might assume it would be a lengthy process, but because of caching only things that are rebuilt are things that you are changing).
This means that things like for example squeezing from KDE to Gnome or X11 to Wayland aren’t scary to try and you can easily revert things back, your home directory won’t be touched.
Also those things aren’t exclusive you can use BTRFS and ZFS on NixOS to and enjoy their benefits.
You can also exclude any directory you like from snapshots, including home, that’s not a problem.