Yeah. Flakes are essentially three things (or four if you count the new CLI):

1. Lock files for inputs (like NPM)
2. A defined output layout (so, every flake has its packages at packages. for example)
3. Pure mode (don't worry about it unless you read from arbitrary locations in the file system or try to download files without a hash)

That's it, essentially nothing else changes. It's just a different entry point to Nix code including NixOS configurations.

Here's a great article (apparently, I have only skimmed it myself) explaining flakes more in detail: https://jade.fyi/blog/flakes-arent-real/

Flakes on the system level aren't too bad. You can pretty much just keep your configuration.nix, but now you call that from a flake.nix. The difference is you remove all your nix-channels and you specify your nixpkgs in your flake.nix. So its really using a flake instead of nix-channels.

The cool part is when you nixos-rebuild the first time, it will save your nixpkgs version in a flake.lock. Then it will stay that way until you choose to upgrade with nix flake update. Nice and stable.

I felt the same, but I'm reading through this book and so far it's been helpful for understanding and setting up system flakes: https://nixos-and-flakes.thiscute.world/

use flakes