Almost every NixOS tutorial I encounter, be that blog or video, says to use Flakes and Home Manager. While that definitely speaks to the value of these tools, I find myself, instinctually, wanting to avoid them. I’ve attempted to get them working multiple time, and encountered more issues than they solved, for me. I interpret this to mean my knowledge and/or use case of NixOS is not ready for me to use these tools effectively. On top of that, something about a set of files that could all be put into a single unified config appeals to me (which flakes/hm can probably do too, but hopefully to get my vibe).

My reasoning aside, this has made me curious if there is some way for me to “backport” all these configs I encounter into my set of more default style configs. The primary goal I have that lead me to this is rootless Podman and declaring my containers in the config. If anyone has any guidance or resources you could point me to it would be much appreciated.