Nix package manager is useful even if you do not buy into the fully declarative NixOS ecosystem. I use nix package manager to install latest version of development tool packages even in Ubuntu installations.
A typical example would be.
Useful aliases for fish shell
abbr -a -g n nix-env
abbr -a -g ns nix-search
abbr -a -g ni nix-env -i
abbr -a -g nu nix-updt
abbr -a -g ngc nix-collect-garbage