I tried using Debian 12 instead of Arch. I ended up installing my apps with the Nix package manager. Debian provides Firefox ESR and an old version of NeoVim. I didn't want to add more repositories to apt, as I have had some bad experiences in the past with conflicts in backports packages.

There are big differences between Snaps and Flatpaks.

• both the flatpak server and the client are open source
• flatpak does not publish 3rd party apps, promoting them as verified (https://news.itsfoss.com/valve-steam-snap-ubuntu/)

I am trying to understand.

Docker, which uses OCI containers that are supported by Docker, Podman, Containerd, systemd-nspawn, etc, is lock-in.

But Nix Shells, which require Nix, are not lock-in.

Also, how are you going to run Nix shells in VLANs? They run on the host's network namespace.