Yes and no. It depends on what your aim is. I LOVE Nix and it runs like a beast on my ZBook. But I’m after reproducible environments I can just blast around on all over the place without a heavy imagining solution. Works great for that.
Does it take some time to setup as a daily driver? Yes. But no more than Arch. But the thing with Nix is if you already have a robust config, it takes less time than Arch to go from zero to stomping out code.
Ubuntu is a great generic distro. But I find Nix gives me oomph. As with everything in this ecosphere…use what works for YOU! 😁