You can still install Nix (package manager) on Atomic, on uBlue, it even comes pre-installed afaik.

And also, there’s Distrobox, which is totally enough if you prefer package managers over Flatpaks.
I personally like the “reliance” on Flatpaks. I think it reduces the fragmentation and makes it easier for devs, but that’s just my opinion. Do as you prefer.

I don’t like apt too as much. But, interface-wise, you can make it way better with Nala, which is a frontend for it.

NixOS is too complicated and demanding for most users, who aren’t programmers or hobbyists, imo.
I prefer Fedora Atomic. It has the same pros (unbreakable, highly configurable with universal-blue.org, etc.) but feels way more user friendly.
I use it with Distrobox on top, so I can use my package manager/ distro of choice (turned out to be Arch btw) on a extremely reliable system.

For your case, you can replicate Mint by just installing the Cinnamon image from uBlue and applying some minimal tweaks.
Then you get the user friendliness from Mint with the flexibility and unbreakability from NixOS. Do you like the idea? Just in case you get annoyed by NixOS in the future 🙃

I downvoted the post here, because I think it doesn’t belong into Linuxmemes.
But even though I disagree in some way, I upvoted the original post in c/Linux, because I think you spent quite some time writing it. I’ll discuss my thoughts with you in the other thread ✌️

I really like that post!

It seems like OP put a lot of work and creativity into the meme, while intelligently criticizing a problem and not just using “Windows bad hurr hurr” as the base.

I wanna see more of those kind!