You mean pretty much the very first thing that the Nix Manual suggest in the Quick Start: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/quick-start.html https://nixos.or

You mean pretty much the very first thing that the Nix Manual suggest in the Quick Start: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/quick-start.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/quick-start.html and then later again in the Basic Package Management section: https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/package-management/basic-package-mgmt.html https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/package-management/basic... I fully agree that it is using Nix in the wrong way. But if it's something that Nix's own manual suggest, you can't blame people for doing the same.