Arch or NixOS?

I'd recommended Arch because with NixOS you end up having to tinker too much. Besides, if you need to use Linux for development purposes, Arch follows the usual Linux/Unix conventions, while with NixOS you would end up tinkering...And you can always use the Nix app from Arch.
Just use Arch with Gnome or KDE, that will save you a ton of time.
- Huh, I never expected anyone to recommend Arch to me because you have to tinker too much with an alternative distro. I thought simplicity was the reason why people liked NixOS, no?
  
  Comparatively, NixOS is complex, while Arch is simple. NixOS diverges very much from traditional Linux distributions, beginning with using a diferent filesystem hierarchy, which breaks a ton of apps, requiring workarounds like patches, simulating a standard filesystem... In the long run, you will have to deal with many NixOS-specific issues.
  Because you're going to Uni, it's better to focus on having a mostly just works distro with updated repository, and that's Arch. On your free time in the future, maybe try NixOS in a VM just so you have a feel for it. And again, you can use Nix on Arch so you use apps from Nixpkgs.
  This all comes from an originally Arch user turned into an experienced NixOS user.
  
  I have set up my archlinux os in a weekend with btrfs snapshots and everything I need. About once a quarter I tinker with it for 30 minutes to either fix a broken update or do some custom solutions to minute problems. It has been running like this for 5years. And snapshots allow me to rollback any fuckups in 1 minute.
  I tried to setup nixos twice, because I love the concept. Both times I tinkered with it for 1 to 2 weeks, had to take paid leave. At the end, some stuff still didn't work as I wanted it to. Any customization that is not already natively implemented in nix is a huge pain in the ass to add. Things that would be a 5min config edit on arch took hours on nix to make them rEpRoDuCaBLe. I have experienced no additional benefit over btrfs snapshots.
  Tldr: If I could pay somebody 100$ to set up nixos just the way I want it, I'd use it. But since I have to do it in my own free time, I won't.
  
  Nix is a pain. Not everything works. Example Netword supposed to be able to put options in some confines. Sure most work but I have two in my config that nix well not put in. Why they are valid an I’m running them on my current Os but my nix van refuses to build with them. Another nftsble rules. Again supposed to put them in config file. But I have some nix does not like, completely valid rules but nix won’t build with them. I’ll tinker with it but it still needs work.
- I'm not sure I agree with this... I'm using nix on several different generation thinkpads, two older generation MacBooks (one air and one pro), two different older generation imacs, as well as my home built PC, and an OEM built pc.... All with little to no tinkering whatsoever.
  All my tinkering was first setting nix up and figuring out how to use it... Then I saved and copied my config and use the same one on all the machines (albeit with subtle changes on first install).
  I've used arch a handful of times over the years, and it is without question, significantly more "needy" over time, imo.
  
  Guess you never had to package general or hard to package software like those that require fixed output derivation or undersupported ecosystems, trying to use common development environment for Python under NixOS, running binaries under NixOS, the list goes on.
- This is my experience as well. I went back to Arch after trying NixOS for a few weeks. I just ended up spending way too much time tinkering with the system instead of using it. Also, I feel like a major advantage to nixos is only viable if you have multiple machines. I only have a main desktop.

- Guix
  +1, since for me it's much easier to grok the language and the schema at a single glance.
  Plus for those worrying about linux-libre kernel not having the right drivers for your hardware, non-guix has you covered and you can easily switch to linux-mainline. I'm really enjoying Guix a lot right now.
- I'm a bit surprised to see that you disagreed with the "NixOS is hard to configure" bit, but then also listed some of the reasons why it can be hard to configure as cons.
  By "configure", they probably didn't mean just setting up say, user accounts, which is definitely easy to set up in Nix.
  The problems start to arise when you want to use something that isn't in Nixpkgs, or even something that is out of date in Nixpkgs, or using a package from Nixpkgs that then has plugins but said plugin(s) that you want aren't in Nixpkgs.
  From my experience with NixOS, I had two software packages break on me that are in Nixpkgs - one of them being critical for work, and I had no clue where to even begin trying to fix the Nixpkg derivation because of how disorganized Nix's docs can be.
  Speaking of docs inconsistencies you still have the problem of most users saying you should go with Flakes these days, but it's still technically an experimental feature and so the docs still assume you're not using Flakes...
  I was also working on a very simple Rust script, and couldn't get it to properly build due to some problem with the OpenSSL library that one of the dependent crates of my project used.
  That was my experience with NixOS after a couple of months. The concept of Nix[OS] is fantastic, but it comes with a heavy cost depending on what you're wanting to do. The community is also great, but even I saw someone who heavily contributes to Nixpkgs mention that a big issue is only a handful of people know how Nixpkgs is properly organized, and that they run behind on PRs / code reviews of Nixpkgs because of it.
  I'd still like to try NixOS on say, a server where I could expect it to work better because everything is declarative such as docker containers - but it's going to be a while before I try it on my PC again.
- Nix would need some proper GUI for that. It's very "shove into cold water", which isn't exactly the best experience.

The downside of NixOS is bad documentation. Which makes it take quite a while to get your config setup the way you want. Its so worth it though. I used arch for 5+ years and have been on NixOS for about 6 weeks now. I'm definitely never going back. My conifg is done, I barely have to change anything now. Its all saved in a git repo so I never have to make it again. I've already switched all of my machines over. And even a few of my friends. Which has been super easy to do cause I just give them my config then remove everything they don't need. I've only been using it for a little while but it feels so reliable and Unbreakable even though I'm running unstable packages. Because if anything breaks you just go back to the last generation that worked. Which made me willing to just try anything when I was setting it up.
Also you could run Nix package manager on arch for this, but the nix package repo is amazing. It has everything i've needed or even thought about installing. And in my opinion its way better than using AUR packages. Most of the time you just DL them and don't have to build them. Its just so much faster and more reliable then using Paru or Yay. Plus there is a NUR( nix user repo) but tbh I've never even looked at it.
The other con I know of is issues running binaries and app images. But there are was work arounds for them. I use a few app-images by just running 'appimage-run '. And so far its worked perfectly. As for a binaries you can use steam-run or I think using distrobox would work. But I haven't had to do anything like that yet.
I found this YouTube channel quite useful when I was setting mine up. Vimjoyer
- I found it fairly difficult to set up nixos on one of my machines, because it simply didn't ship with a certain, relatively common kernel module/user space app. I also couldn't find a usable workaround (only compiling my own kernel on every update, which is not exactly my kind of fun).
  So, you might want to try that out first.
  
  Out of curiosity, which one?
  
  https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Linux_kernel
  You can specify custom parts of the config that enables that module and/or extra module packages.
  If you specify a custom part of the config then ye sure you'll be compiling the kernel on each kernel update but you don't need to manually configure it
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  Vimjoyer
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

I used to like the idea of nixos because it felt "tidy" to configure everything centrally. However that tidyness is achieved by adding an extra layer which just replicates the configuration options of every program. If there is a bug in that layer or something is just not implemented, either you have to learn the whole inernals of nixos and nixpkgs, for which there is no real documentation, or you have to resort to doing things imperatively again, which is hard because of the opacity of the generated system and also defeats the whole purpose. So basically, you are completely dependent on nixos developers for things you could have easily done yourself on arch.
- I have to disagree with this, with home-manager you can pretty much put just put your normal config files inside your NixOS config and map them into wherever they're meant to go, except now they're managed by nix
  The built in config options are really nice but you don't have to use them in the slightest as long as the package itsself is in nixpkgs

- It's incredibly complicated in the same way that ubuntu is incredibly complicated to a lifelong windows user.
  It just requires a bit of a paradigm shift which includes a learning curve but IMO once you're past that point it's intuitive and even easier than other distros.

"Stability" is probably the most mis-used word in the Linux world.
It means that how your system looks and behaves doesn't change, which is really important for servers, especially in business, where you want to plan any change in advance before you commit to it.
Arch is not stable in this sense. It constantly changes, and those changes can come up on short notice with any upgrade.
But when people read that Arch isn't stable, they think the system can break at any time.
I'd say this hasn't been the case for at least 10 years now. If you RTFN (read the fucking news) and use the AUR sensibly, Arch has become a really boring system, regarding breakage.
- Arch breaks all the time. It has to because upstream is usually always changing so breakage is inevitable.
  Though a person's mileage on this may vary (less update frequency, less no of programs etc.), the constant thing about rolling release is that breakages within software releases are to be expected.
  
  Arch breaks all the time.
  Is that your recent personal experience?
  
  Ofc, Arch users should learn how to resolve a package conflict, or how to downgrade packages, or generally how to debug the system. Sometimes you also have to migrate config files.
  On the other hand, as an arch user, I can tell that it mostly just works. If you customize heavily an ubuntu, it will break more likely. And while you can fix an arch, you probably have to reinstall an ubuntu.
  Moreover, Arch has a testing repository which is not the default.
  
  My experience with Arch is that it has been very solid and stable. It is just “makes sense” for the most part and so issues are very resolvable.
  If you use the AUR, you can get times when packages need to be excluded ( held back ) in order for the overall system to update. I do not see that as an Arch problem and it is easy to handle.
  One thing that is an Arch problem is that, if you do not update often enough, you can end-up with outdated keys that prevent you from installing before packages. The solution is just to update the keyring before updating everything else but this is confusing for a new user and kind of dumb in my opinion. I feel like the system should do this for me.
  Ironically, I find Arch is most stable if you update very frequently ( which makes the updates smaller and more incremental ). I do a quick update almost every day without any fear of breaking my system. Any “problems” I have had with Arch updates are trying to update a system that has not been updated forever. Even then, it is just a bit more work.
  Another thing that can happen if you leave it too long is that packages will have been replaced by newer ones. Keeping up to date means there are only going to be a small number of those. An update after a year can run into a surprising number of them.
  I dug out an old laptop that had Arch on it from 3 years before. Updating it was annoying but in the end it was totally up to date and stable.

Let me put it like this: it's about learning curve. Arch is relatively easy to begin with, but NixOS gets much easier the more nix you learn.
What do I mean about that? Imagine having to patch something, which can be the thing. On arch you'd have to replace a package, which could lead to issues and conflicts, whereas NixOS gives you the option to keep two or even more versions of the same library, because it does not rely on your traditional UNIX path.
But with this super power comes a catch. You have to learn a programming language and learn how the nix store operates, which is a pretty high learning curve. Also, NixOS suffers from a governance issue and going by the documentation is like shooting in the dark.
That being said, the best manual for NixOS is GitHub, searching for anything and filtering by the nix language. You'll see a ton of varying systems, be they workstations or servers.
And no matter what all the warnings say, no, flakes aren't EXPERIMENTAL or UNSTABLE, but rather CONTENTIOUS internally. Again: I love NixOS, but they gotta fix their governance issues.

As a recent NixOS convert coming from Bazzite (Kinoite/Silverblue with user friendly daily driver and gaming tweaks), and before that mostly Arch-based distros, I'd say it boils down to the tradeoff between having way more control over reproducibility and having to deep dive into the often poorly documented domain specific rabbit hole that is Nix. If you're comfortable with going out of your way to learn, looking for examples, reading source code to find out what options you can use or how stuff works, it can absolutely be worth it but it's a steep price to pay for sure.
I personally adore what Nix sets out to solve and find it extremely rewarding to learn. Plus, as a developer, I enjoy puzzling out how to get stuff done and don't mind diving into the source if I need to, so it works for me. I'd absolutely prefer solid documentation, of course, but it's not a deal breaker.
When it comes to software, the Nix repo has a staggering amount of prebuilt binaries ready to download (which you can search here) and it's often not too hard to hack together your own reproducible package if you want after you get comfortable enough with it. At least for my use cases, I haven't really missed much from my days using Arch and the AUR. If anything, I appreciate how much more consistent it tends to be in comparison.
If you, like myself, go for a flake (yet another rabbit hole within a rabbit hole) based setup and point to the unstable repo, you basically get a fully reproducible, easy to update and rollback rolling release not too dissimilar to using Arch with auto btrfs snapshots enabled. That's how I used to do Arch and it feels pretty familiar.
Anyway, that's what I got. If you have any more specific concerns or questions I'd be happy to elaborate!
Edit: I forgot to add but I find a nice way to get comfortable without fully commiting is using Nix as a package manager on any old distro. You could install it on Endeavour (I recommend this method) and play around with Home Manager, use it as a dotfiles manager on steroids, have it declaratively install and manage the CLI apps you can't live without and whatnot, see how you like it. That's how I started, I have a common HM config I've so far used with Debian at work, Ubuntu running under WSL when I'm on Windows and now NixOS itself.

I’ve been using Arch for almost 8 years, and I enjoy basically everything about it. Since Nix has been so popular lately, I thought I’d take a look at it too. I like what it does, but the documentation is really poor, and the learning curve is insanely steep. When flakes and nix-command become stable, I’ll be giving it another shot
- I too am something of an Arch user
  Btw

Once I found out about Paru, I decided I would no longer need another OS outside of everything Arch provides. Also, Valve decided to switch SteamOS to Arch, so I'm sticking with it once they release it.

I use NixOS for University and would highly recommend it if you want a highly configurable system that’s declarative, however, NixOS doesn’t have great documentation for certain features and usually does things differently, so you’ll have to learn the Nix way of doing things. On the plus side, I’ve never been unable to fix my OS when it broke, you simply rollback, or if there isn’t a suitable rollback, you can plug in a live usb and set the system to use a specific commit (can’t remember the exact command for this and that’s presuming you store your config with git). Also according to these statistics nixpkgs has more packages than the AUR.
- I think you just mean "declarative". Highly configurable is literally any distro. I'd say NixOS is actually LESS configurable by design, but that is sort of the point: a repeatable image based on a template no matter what.
  
  By highly configurable, I meant that you can configure it exactly to your needs, in the same way that you can with Arch.

You can setup your Arch with grub menu btrfs snapshots just like NixOS for convenient rollbacks. NixOS has too steep a learning curve, coming from someone who recently tried it and ended up being somewhat disappointed by it. NixOS sounds good on paper but in reality it is a long way from a mature product for desktop or general use.
As you mentioned Arch has AUR which packages just about anything and everything you could ever want in the future. And the Arch Wiki will never be "not relevant" so long as you are using Linux anywhere, the Arch Wiki is a handy reference.
- NixOS sounds good on paper but in reality it is a long way from a mature product for desktop or general use.
  It's 20 years old already, will it ever be ready at this point?

NixOS's documentation is dog. It's not absolute dog, but it's dog. The learning curve is brutal.
But... the (mostly) declarative management is its strongest feature. It's very solid and you can easily unfuck you system if you haven't done stuff like mess with partitions or delete files manually.
If NixOS had better documentation and GUI to manage the system, it would be a no-brainer, but unfortunately, it is about 5-10 years away from that. The community is very top heavy, but it's easy to just do your own stuff.

Going to sound like a boring pleb but... if your OS takes less than 1h to install and setup (which is my experience with Debian/Ubuntu on a SSD with a fiber connection, or even on a RPi with a modern microSD on an ADSL connection over WiFi) then it doesn't matter much what you use. You grab a mug of coffee, click here or there from time to time and if your /home partition is saved you are good to go faster than most people even respond to an email.
- I should add if you want to tinker "shallowly" containers are amazing. If you need to tinker deep, using a VM proper or even another physical machine (with a KVM or another keyboard and monitor) while your main machine remains untouched, it should NOT affect your uptime.
- I think the funniest part of this is I was recently preparing some laptops for work with Windows 10 and it literally took 6 hours thanks to slow updates, one laptop corrupting the keyboard and touchpad driver so completely it required a full reinstall (on a fresh install mind you) and other impressively terrible snags. Granted it would've been more like 1-2 hours if I started with an install image that wasn't about 2 years old, but it was still impressive how much of a time sink it was

First of all: Do you need reproductibility? I.e. having the exact same system on multiple machines? If not NixOS might be a lot more complex than what you need.
Secondly: Instability does not mean what you think it means. People read instability and think the system will break, when instability actually means your system will be updated. In the context of a server, an update can be destructive, for day-to-day users it's very rarely so.
Finally: why Arch or Nix, why not Ubuntu, Mint, Pop or any of the other dozens of distros that are usually recommended for new users?

I think you are understating the value of the Arch Wiki and AUR.
I am also a university student. I was required by one of my courses to program an Arduino using ArduinoIDE. My program, however, was not detecting my Arduino. By simply scrolling the Arch wiki, I found the issue, downloaded the fix via AUR and was able to get it working hassle-free. An equivalent of this process does not exist on NixOS.
I do not know what programs your uni requires, but if you do plan on using them on Linux, Debian or Arch, or their many derivatives should be the go-to simply for documentation and quick-fixes alone.

Have you considered staying with EndeavourOS, and using Btrfs with Timeshift?

You didn't mention a single argument for why you would need a reproducible system. It sounds more like the buzz around immutable systems makes you think you are losing out on something, which is not the truth.

I encountered limitations on NixOS, as instance Ly display manager, or using an app compiled by myself. Maybe there are solution but it is not always simple. Archlinux is way more flexible. Updates can theorically breaks the system , but since one year I never broke Arch despite updates on 200+ packages.
Notice I favors minimalist graphic environments (WM that don't need updates ) and minimalists apps as much as possible, such as MPV and nsxiv. I don't fear of some keyboard shortcuts. This philosophy probably helps Arch updates. Sometimes I had problem on apps (Inkscape and Dolphin-emu), I use appimages for them. Nothing is perfect, but Arch put lighter roadblocks than NixOS.

I recommend first trying the Nix package manager on Arch to see how you like it. You can use it to install some things in your home directory without interfering with the Arch package manager.

If you want to make your OS to a hobby, choose NixOS.
If you want a system that just works, use Kinoite or Debian.
If you want cutting edge software but fear Arch/Endeavour is prone to breakage, consider doing file system snapshots e.g. with snapper which you can boot into.
- If you want cutting edge software but fear Arch/Endeavour is prone to breakage, consider doing file system snapshots e.g. with snapper which you can boot into.
  openSUSE Tumbleweed fits that bill perfectly.

some comments.
both are absolutely fine for a university laptop, though very different.
NixOS is more stable. It is almost impossible to brick it, you would have to delete every working old generation.
nixpkgs is like arch repos plus AUR together. nixpkgs is actually one of the biggest repos if not the biggest repo at the moment. so no problems there.
i mean, this is like highly subjective and my own opinion: go with NixOS, it's just a cooler OS imo and your system and your abilities will only get better with time. and it's fully reproducible by design, so almost every bit of work you put into it will be worth it, in some sense. i also believe that NixOS will become much much more relevant in the future. bigger community, better documentation, more resources!
...unless you don't want to put a lot of time in it in the beginning. it will most likely be really frustrating and it will distract you from other dtuff you want to do on your computer. like just getting browser email editor etc. you will have a setup no problem pretty quickly. it won't be more than just puttung the programs you need in your systempackages. but then you realize you need vpn, or a dropbox client, or some audio setup, and other stuff, and before you know it you are spending hours and hours or weeks trying to find out how this works... this is, i would say, the major "downside" of NixOS conpared to arch
if you can afford trying it out and then switching to something else and starting over again, try out NixOS!

Arch based distros are easy AF. I've been on Linux for 2 years, I've tried 10+ distros, and Arch has been the easiest for me, and stable as it gets, while allowing me to get the latest drivers needed for gaming.
I've been using Crystal Linux, but got tired of it's CLI only package helper, and since then I've moved to Manjaro KDE.
Whatever you chose, make sure you get automatic BTRFS snapshots, so you can roll back at boot whenever you wreck it.
I've read here on Lemmy that NixOS is a great concept but the execution leaves a lot to be desired, stating that it's overly complicated and documentation is lacking.
If you only care about stability then you should go with Debian. If instead you want something that limits you so that you can't easily wreck it, you could use an immutable distro like Vanilla OS, Fedora Silverblue, BlendOS or Ubuntu Core Desktop.

Disclaimer: I only tried NixOS for less than a month when I was a complete Linux noob, I have since then been daily driving Arch Linux for about 2 years now.
 
For me, at least on the surface level, NixOS just felt like Arch Linux, with more similarities than differences.
What was nice about NixOS was the single config file for everything, ~~although iirc I had to reboot every time for it to be applied while with Arch you can just install something and run it immediately.~~
Edit: I either remembered it wrong or I was doing it wrong because you don't have to reboot the whole system according to the reply from hallettj.
 
What I didn't like however was all the packages that got installed (through the list in the config file) had really strange directories which I couldn't find easily.
like on Arch the packages and the executables are basically all at /usr/lib/ and /usr/bin/ and iirc it was pretty much the same on NixOS, except on Arch I'll have usr/lib/firefox but on nix it would be usr/lib/u123uadqasd782341kasjhiu3sh932s9sdasdsapzxcqw-firefox
 
Another thing is that it works great for everything you install through the Nix config file, but it's not necessarily going to clean up any files created by programs that got installed through it when you remove the packages from the config file.
Like say you have installed steam and then you install some game through steam, well that game wasn't added through the config file so there's no guarantee that if you decide to remove steam that you will also remove whatever the programs steam installed or if they created some new files somewhere.
 
Of course the same thing already happens on other OSes as well, so you could say that it's an upside that Nix is better at cleaning up after itself whenever you remove something, but also because it's supposed to all be controlled through a single config it just feels that much worse when you have to hunt down some file somewhere.
 
Again these are mostly my anecdotes from 2 years ago when I was a complete noob. Maybe I wouldn't have any issues if I tried it today. And chances are I was just trying to do something you shouldn't even be doing.
Plus at the start I used KDE Plasma 5 on Nix and Arch, maybe it will go better if I use i3wm on NixOS like I've been doing for a year and half or so on Arch now.
 
At least I'm pretty sure that having daily driven Arch for 2 years now I would have much better chances with NixOS now than when I tried it with 0 experience on Linux.
So since you've already got the experience from using EndeavorOS you might not have any big problems using NixOS, or at least learn how it works pretty fast.
- I want to make a small correction - this is not true:
  iirc I had to reboot every time for it to be applied while with Arch you can just install something and run it immediately.
  nixos-rebuild behaves like most package managers: it makes new packages available immediately, and restarts relevant systemd services. Like other distros you have to reboot to run a new kernel.
  And cleaning up Steam games is as issue with most distros too. But I kinda see your point.
  Btw Nix (both NixOS and the Nix package manager running in other distros) has this feature where you can run packages without "installing" them if you just want to run them once:
  
  $ nix shell nixpkgs#package-name
  That puts you in a shell with one or more packages temporarily installed. The packages are downloaded to /nix/store/ as usual, but will get garbage-collected sometime after you close the shell.
  
  Thank you for the correction. It was 2 years ago + I was really inexperienced so I could be misremembering things and/or just have been doing things incorrectly

All Linux distros can be unstable & really it all comes down to how you use your system....

If you already using EndeavourOS, you are already using Arch. So it is a very odd question. You could remove the maybe 12 EndeavourOS packages and comment out the EndeavourOS repositories if you want to go truly vanilla Arch. Out of the 80,000 packages Arch makes available to you, about two-dozen are EndeavourOS specific. Once installed, they are effectively the same OS.
So, you are just asking if it worth it for an Arch user to move to NixOS.
From what I can tell, the killer feature of NixOS is rolling out a config to multiple machines. Is that worth a switch to you?
The other big attraction of both Arch and Nix is the huge package library but if you do not use the AUR today, that does not matter to you either.
- The killer feature is declarative system management. Reproducible systems is just one of the resulting properties. You want to just try out KDE for a week coming from gnome? Good luck getting rid of all the bloat when switching back on arch. You want to run a program once but not necessarily have it installed on your system? You can do that with nixos. You messed something up and your system now doesn't boot? You can go back to a previous iteration with nixos, no need to find your liveUSB to start messing with chrooting and stuff. Ever find yourself asking where the configuration file for is so you can edit it? The answer is /etc/configuration.nix Ever had to merge older configs with newer ones because the software updated? (If no, you haven't been using arch for long) why would you need to do that? You declaratively specified how you want your system to behave and nixos will figure out how to translate that to the new config.
  And that's just the "killer" features I use on a day to day basis

Neither, rock solid Debian + flatpak for the latest software.
- I've already considered Debian, but... I dunno, this isn't what I'd call the most logical reason, but I just kinda don't like it as my desktop OS. I'd use Debian over basically anything else for a server, but as a desktop OS I don't like the vibe.
  Keep in mind, I started using Linux this summer and in a few years I'll probably look back at this wondering why I was such an idiot, but I gotta fall and get a bloody nose first to notice ;3
  
  I’ve already considered Debian, but… I dunno, this isn’t what I’d call the most logical reason, but I just kinda don’t like it as my desktop OS. I’d use Debian over basically anything else for a server, but as a desktop OS I don’t like the vibe.
  I was on the same boat as you are, flatpak essentially made it all perfect.

- School is a time to learn and both Arch and NixOS provide plenty of opportunities for that.
- I have to agree, if you're late or have assignments that don't work correctly because of your special Arch/Nix install, you're going to be in for a very rough time. College is when you need to focus on learning exactly what is prescribed by the professors and instructors. Anything else you learn is secondary, and your free time is best spent on extracurriculars and trying to make friends because thats the stuff that's really hard to do after college. Y'know what's not hard to do after college? Scavenge a junk computer for next to nothing and install NixOS and Arch on it
- I don't know about everyone else, but I had a lot more spare time to tinker with linux when I was a student than after, having a full time job. But I guess if you only have the one computer and need it to work, then tinker in a VM or something. Don't wait with tinkering and learning about linux if it is interresting to you and something you want to spend time on. You might not have the time for it in a few years.

Neither of both.
Both are more on the tinkerer-side, and for university you need something reliable and easy to use in my eyes.
And that might be Fedora Silverblue/ Atomic (or universal-blue.org to be more precise for QOL-tweaks).
It is definitely more simple, stable (release cycle) and also more reliable, since there's only one base (Fedora packages + your DE), and therefore less configuration variability.
I'd also lose access to the AUR
No, you wouldn't. Neither on Nix, nor on Fedora Atomic. Especially on Silverblue you layer and containerise a lot, and you can always use the pre-installed and self updating Distrobox to install Arch and use the AUR. That's also what I do, and it works fine, even though I almost never feel the urge to use it.
- Actually, both Arch and NixOS are pretty reliable, and won't just break out of nowhere, leaving your computer unusable.
  
  Yeah, of course. You're right.
  Nix is kind-of-immutable, and you can always roll back to your old build if necessary.
  But Arch on the other hand is notorious to "just break" if you don't exactly know what you're doing. Of course it will work perfectly reliable (apart from the few paper cuts you get when using bleeding edge stuff) if you are experienced, and optimally, if you set it up with BTRFS and Snapper/ Timeshift.
  But honestly, unpopular opinion, I absolutely see no reason to use Arch today. The only exception is the DIY-aspect, which I totally understand and respect. But, for every other use case, there are better options out there, may it be Tumbleweed or Nix for a rolling release, Arch in Distrobox on Silverblue, whatever. It sounds like way too much effort for what I would get. But each to their own.
  
  Sure, but when you need to add something new, it will be a lot of effort.