I'm curious if it's easy to use for this purpose or if the older packages are a pain.

I'm currently running MX + nix unstable. Debian's not enterprise, but it's close enough.

There are some things that are pretty hard to handle. For example large DEs like KDE, or Nvidia proprietary drivers. I wouldn't even try to handle them through nix.

Besides that, you'll also have to deal with the issues the other PM might have. For example flatpak and outdated system libraries (flatpak doesn't provide them). Nix doesn't have that issue because it provides everything, but it uses more disk space, and you have to deal with nix docs.

In the end it really depends on your needs, and only trying it out will tell you for sure. If you're a gamer with the newest hardware, you're probably not going to have fun. If you need it for work, it'll be great if you can deal with an external PM. If you need it as a media device, slap on a few flatpaks and it's perfect.

For me, this approach is far better than using a rolling distro, and I might try out RHEL at some point just out of curiosity. Unlike Arch, Debian will always boot, but I still have the newest docker instead of the one that was deprecated 3 months ago and won't be updated for at least a year. Also, home-maanger makes it a breeze to make a list of packages and have them installed wherever and whenever.

Also, Centos is gone, stream is upstream so it's a testing ground for RHEL instead of a RHEL repack. I wouldn't go with the bootleg RHELs, that's just asking for trouble if they haven't switched to upstream as well.