It (obviously) leverages Nix, which in turn means the environment is declarative and fully reproducible (not "reproducible" as in docker). Now, you can use just Nix's devShells, but with devenv you have a middleground between just Nix package manager and a full fledged NixOS module system. Basically, write out one line of code - and you've got your Postgres, another one - full linter set up for whatever language you're using, etc.
If you don't mind me replying in place of the orginal poster:
Sway is just i3 for Wayland, which in turn means you have multiple workspaces (which are also potentially mapped to multiple monitors). You assign workspace a label (number, or text, or emoji), and you may also bind some application to always open on that workspace. Or you just get a habit of putting specific applications to only specific workspaces. Your entire navigation then sits in your muscle memory - finger on the mod key (win or alt or ctrl - whatever), another finger on the digits row for the workspace index - and you're there.
It's a tiling WM, so you don't spend time arranging windows - they already take the full desktop real estate evenly split between them, and you can also adjust size of each window separately. Again, this sits in your muscle memory.
Point is - no mouse is needed to navigate through workspaces and windows.
You may read my blog post about setting sway up (on NixOS) here:
It has filtering capabilities (filter in title, link, text, or username via regex) and softhide (hide all the items on a page without pulling others from the next page).
Fear not, these are configuration options for a project called Home Manager, which manages your user configuration and dotfiles with the help of Nix the package manager:
Thank you for the feedback and kind words, and you're absolutely right. I have also gotten this feedback on improving my written communication skills already in the past.
I unfortunately have very little time to edit the posts, and for the stuff not yet posted, I do not like to post the drafts. And I have tons (tons!!!) of such drafts. A promise to myself I made is that I am going to have a good cadence of posting for this year.
There are definitely more articles to come, till end of January for sure, and if you've found the stuff useful/intersting, you may would want to subscribe on some medium I use (say Twitter, or Mastodon, links on my website).
For the non-initiated, who also have experience with the likes of Ubuntu and Fedora, I made an overview of NixOS in this article, which also provides a guidance on how to bootstrap a functional desktop system:
https://drakerossman.com/blog/nixos-for-apt-yum-users-a-gift...
Also discussing flakes in some other articles of mine.
You may want to read my blog post [1] on that one. It explains exactly how to install Sway with Home Manager.
And no, it is not a design error to have Home Manager separated from nixpkgs, and unlike a child reply suggests, there's no "schism", and the reasons for separation are rather prosaic, as explained in another blog post of mine [2].
Thank you for your comment velcrovan, but I don't agree with this sentiment. I've been using Ubuntu for personal laptop for a decade, and whatever for a given corporate laptop, and was reluctant to dig into NixOS, until it clicked - the point is to have it done once, and you won't have to do it ever again! NixOS is the only one that allows so.
Thank you for pointing that out! I have a twitter with the same handle, if you would like to subscribe to that. If not - wouldn't you mind a follow-up email when I fix the subscription form?
What I see as a barrier for entry to Nix/NixOS is not the UX, but the available documentation, or lack of thereof. One may consider the docs being part of UX though. I am in the process of writing a book about NixOS, you may track the progress here:
https://drakerossman.com/blog/practical-nixos-the-book
The emphasis is on how to make it as practical as possible, plus cover the topics which may apply to Linux in general, and in great detail.