Turns out that a fresh Arch Linux install is significantly easier than letting a 2-year-old system install 3.6GiB of packages and hoping.
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The most common selling point I hear for Nix is having a list of all the packages you need.
On a traditional Linux distro, I just install things and forget about them. A curated, commented list would certainly be handy when I have a new system.
I've been really enjoying paru as a pacman substitute on Arch Linux: https://github.com/Morganamilo/paru
It allows you to update both normal and AUR packages in one go, which is super convenient. It also shows you PKGBUILD files, so there's still a human audit step for AUR.
Installed Linux on a new laptop yesterday, and needed to find a USB stick in a dusty drawer.
The stick previously had Arch Linux Installer 2021 on it! I can't think of any other uses for the device these days.