Why even use home-manager?
Hello everyone, I am new to NixOS. I was so entranced by declarative package managenent I just set it up on my machine without even trying it out first. Over the past week, I've been learning the nix language, the package manager, the OS, etc. I find myself overwhelmed and confused but also pleased. I come from Arch. However... I have one burning question in my mind.
Why even use home-manager or flakes to install programs & manage configuration files? Isnt that what configuration.nix is for...?
I started right away with home-manager, and I like it, but I have trouble with the "purpose". So I like it without any reason, which troubles me... So far ive used it to install user specific packages (configuration.nix stays for system wide stuff) & import like my fastfetch configuration which I write in nix.
But what makes home manager better than just declaring every package in configuration.nix and just manually editing configuration files for each program of mine in their .config/ directory like any other operating system...? I find myself confused on why home manager is used when there is a configuration.nix. I would like to hear from people who use(d) home manager & why they use it.