As someone currently deep into Nix (even contributed to nixpkgs), I’m currently in the process of migrating away and am planning on just running good old Debian stable with docker compose for my home server. I wouldn’t waste your time learning Nix, it isn’t a transferable skill and totally locks you into the ecosystem.

I’m a little surprised that they are planning on testing downstream distros like bazzite. It would make more sense to just stick to the biggest upstream distros like Arch/Debian/Fedora for benchmark purposes in my opinion.

I have used all three! I started with Server then went to CoreOS running Kubernetes and settled on NixOS which I have been very happy with for about a year now. I run about 25-30 services all using built in modules.

Regarding security, if you are using well crafted modules on NixOS, there should be good systemd hardening in place. That being said there is no reason you can’t just use containers on NixOS.

I also find deploying NixOS far superior to butane/ignition used by CoreOS/Fedora. I use nixos-anywhere and can deploy my entire server in a few minutes without manual intervention.