I'm aware of how fedora atomic distros work, and that some things are configurable. My point is that a Bazzite user doesn't need to touch the cli or any config file, to just start using their desktop. I think those of us that have been using Linux for years, forget how rare it is for Windows and Mac users to touch the cli or config files. That's the experience that the Universal Blue ecosystem seeks to provide.

A bunch of containerfiles, scripts, ujust files, ... not hard to understand but kinda messy.

I prefer containerfiles tbh, because I use them for my server too.

And you kinda need a server. On NixOS you do this on your machine.

Technically you could set up the ublue infra on your own machine. Building and serving container images inside a container on your own host. Though it's more overhead than NixOS I'm sure.

do note that there are presets online and people help you set things up.

I'm aware but from what I've heard it's similar to docker compose configs. You can't just paste them in and expect everything to work. You'd have to copy one person's config for their entire desktop, and never deviate. At that point you may as well just use rpm-ostree, which is designed for this sort of workflow.