Whats a good way to start with nixos? Are there default configs to start from?
Everytime I go to the site to try I postpone for some reason, but mainly apprehension of deviating too mudh from debian base which has been my most used distros.
And how recommended is it to have nix package manager in popos or any debian based?
You could run a VM and plan to setup one service on it as an exercise. NixOS wiki is pretty ok in general, but it is a useful skill to read the code of the modules you use. Flakes are poorly documented and also controversial. So I wouldn't hop on that yet.