/facepalm moment for not thinking of that at the time
But it's lacking organisation and modularity. For example let's say you need programming packages on one device, gaming ones on another, and general ones on both. It's pretty easy to set it up with hm, and you can disable specific modules when you don't need them (for example you rarely need to use a certain language and supporting packages).
It's pretty fast, especially if you don't get into flakes right away. You basically just install nix with a one liner -> install home-manager through nix -> start adding packages to list.
Here's a comment I made when I was starting out with basic instructions. Do note I'm now using this command for updates instead (updates hm, package definitions, and the packages themselves)
For me the config management aspect of home-manager is mostly useless. It takes a lot more work to set it up, looks far uglier, and you need to maintain it because parameters change over time. Saving dotfiles in a repo, and symlinking them on install is simply easier.
The only two scenarios where it's actually useful is when you have slightly different configs for different devices, and when the program doesn't support dotfiles. A pretty cool example I've seen for the second one is managing Firefox customisations (settings, plugins, additional CSS), but I'm only disabling horizontal tabs so it's not worth it for me.
Sure, but then you need to maintain it. I don't know about you, but I never had the discipline to update it with every package install and uninstall. It's especially annoying when you have multiple devices.
Declarative package management doesn't have that issue since you're managing the packages by editing the list.
Besides that, the home-manager approach works on any distro (and os?), you get bleeding edge packages, you get a built in rollback system, and you can handle configs as well (but I mainly just symlink them anyways).
For me that's the main benefit of using home-manager on nixos and other distros. You basically just make a list of packages, and install/update them through home-manager.
I mean unless they're using solar powered steam engines, it still doesn't make sense. Also, they need perfectly efficient internals (conductors etc.) to be exothermal.
youtube.com/w/dQw4w9WgXcQ