I get the idea that this is pronounced "eff-in-nix" which might (probably not, idk though I'm not a lawyer) save them from a lawsuit should the folks at velociraptor aerospace dynamics (what a name) should decide they have a problem sharing the name.

Guix.

Try Guix. It's great.

yeah, i actually don't use nix but i've been thinking a lot about moving to it. you essentially declare the stuff you need and the way apps are installed makes it so that it avoids dependency hell. this is a very niche thing though, since it's essentially nixos without systemd (which makes it super unstable and essentially needs a lot of user fiddling) but a very interesting idea.

i kind of understand it, tho, if you're kind of reinventing something you want to use infrastructure that's already built as much as you can to focus development on the thing you're actually working on. we should be really grateful it even exists in the first place since it's not an easy task to build all of what the nix project is today. but well, of course one can always think of an even more efficient, better, perfect, more stable OS.