I've found the Nix pills series to be the best introduction to understanding how Nix/NixOS works: https://nixos.org/nixos/nix-pills/why-you-should-give-it-a-tr

I've found the Nix pills series to be the best introduction to understanding how Nix/NixOS works: https://nixos.org/nixos/nix-pills/why-you-should-give-it-a-try.html https://nixos.org/nixos/nix-pills/why-you-should-give-it-a-t... At the same time, we definitely aim to make things work for users behind the scenes without knowing Nix. You still get all of the benefits of functional package management.