I can relate, I was all in on Nix for a while (and it’s still the best Linux IMO) but I’m a bit afraid of the complexity of the whole stack in an extended global economic downturn.

That said: the main fear here probably comes from the enormous size of nixpkgs and the overall cost of the infrastructure. Most individual package definitions should be relatively easy to maintain. So perhaps it isn’t such a big deal, if Nix infra built packages more slowly and reduced the scope of the repo then it could probably cope with having fewer maintainer hours available and less funding.

Still, something about it feels like a Tower of Babel situation. It goes just far enough beyond most people’s understanding to feel like it has fractal complexity. (Although it really isn’t that bad once you’ve spent enough time with it.)

These days I am more interested in simple, self-contained systems like OpenBSD than impressive feats of engineering. I still prefer Nix for most “work stuff”.