On Debian, Fedora, etc, installing a package means letting it put files wherever it likes; which effectively gives the package author root on your system. Not a good base for sandboxing!

Also, they make it difficult to try out 3rd-party software, or to test newer versions of just some packages.

In 2003 I created 0install to address these problems, and Nix has very similar goals. - NixOS

Nix is a build system, which is the outcome of an Academic Work => The Purely Functional Software Deployment Model (2006)
NixOS - a linux distribution base upon Nix

• NixOS is a good server OS, except when it isn’t

Nix is sometime proposed as an alternative to docker, because its reproducible system overcome using docker to package snapshot of libs that used to work together.

• Nix explained from the ground up - explain why & what is Nix
  • a DSL + Platform & a store to get reproducible within same platform
  • force specific file-system hierarchy
  • stage one / stage two generation for having clean binaries. - does it survive Evil compiler ?
• Fast, Declarative, Reproduble and Composable Developer Environments Using Nix (devenv) / HN
• Our Roadmap for Nix

see also

• Zero to Nix, an unofficial, opinionated, gentle introduction to Nix
• Crafting container images without Dockerfiles - I’ve been using Nix for this.