[lambdaba]

This is just from my experience, I'm not part of any kind of Nix cult or anything, not that I'm aware of.

I don't know what you're talking about re: third party wrappers, this is just an option for a slightly easier and perhaps more robust install. And homebrew isn't free of issues at all.

[troupo]

So a "better than anything" still needs "a better more robust install" and you still use homebrew for "packages that are packaged better like ... the extremely popular and often installed ffmpeg"

;)

> And homebrew isn't free of issues at all.

No one advertises brew as "the best", "better than everything else" etc.

BTW, looked at Determinate Nix. It's a custom distribution and a custom daemon, and its own fork of documentation

[lambdaba]

I don't use Determinate Nix but I've heard it recommended. As I've said I've had 1 or 2 issues with my Nix install on Mac over several years.

Re: ffmpeg, it's just something do to with default codecs or something I don't remember, I'm not even sure I really needed it but I saw it on my packages list and since I use nix-darwin it doesn't matter that much where the package comes from. I have hundreds of packages from nixpkgs, many shared with Linux, and quite a few Mac specific ones.

Again, I'm not part of a Nix cult, I just genuinely have had an overall great experience with Nix and I find the criticism overblown. I guess since a subset of users are very enthusiastic and vocal about it it attracts this.