Hey fellow Linux enthusiasts! I'm curious to know if any of you use a less popular, obscure or exotic Linux distribution. What motivated you to choose that distribution over the more mainstream ones? I'd love to hear about your experiences and any unique features or benefits that drew you to your chosen distribution.
May I ask what does .nix files do? I have joined unixporn community,and when I look into the dotfiles of some nix os user,their config are all written in nix rather than .conf or some other prevalent files. Should I learn nix if I want to use nix os? Or can I config my apps such as waybar in a way just like other systems (such as arch)?
Nix files are Nix [function] expressions to declare and set your system; there are many options you can set for example. You just need to learn a few chapters of https://nixcloud.io/tour/ and https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/language/, also modularization using imports.
For user/de configuration, you can either do the usual way or use home-manager.
You should have some understanding of the nix language to use it, but I wouldn't worry too too much.
I would also start by installing nix and home-manager on top of whatever distro you already use. For some config, you need to specify things in nix, but for things in home-manager, for example, you can usually either use nix or point to a toml or conf or whatever file.