Nix is the vim of package management but without good documentation. So it's incredibly powerful and useful once you get into it, but imagine trying to learn vim without any docs or guidance. Vim has a steep learning curve with good documentation, YouTube tutorials, blog posts, and forum guides.

Nix doesn't really have a wealth of that.

That's nix package management and nixos in a nutshell.

My guess would be that it's because Flatpaks are easy. You have a handy GUI tool often pre installed that includes search and one-click install.

If you want something lower level, Arch users have the AUR, and others may actually do that horrifying curl https://... | sh pattern.

Nix pancakes on the other hand.... I have no idea how to use them and generally assume it's the thing NixOS uses. Since I don't use NixOS, I've never given them a second thought.

How does it solve the problem of dependencies without becoming bloated?

Steam Deck is using Flatpaks so.....

Was curious myself don't like flatpaks & appimages much, but from a quick googling, they don't seem to integrate with the desktop so you need to launch them from terminal? That is a deal breaker for me at least.