Aggressively seconding this. If you can just do a step in a bash command, do that, don’t use the stupid yaml wrapper they provide that actually just turns around and runs the same bash command but with extra abstraction to learn, break, fix, and maintain for stupid, meaningless upgrades. It will save you time because you’ll be using better-tested, more widely-used tools and approaches.

“update doc to reflect reality still more”

It’s convenient. Can’t hurt to get used to it, for sure, in that it’s useful to not have to go through dependency hell installing things sometimes. It’s based on kernel features I don’t see Linus pulling out, so I think you’ll only see it more.

As someone who runs nix-only at home, I mostly use its underlying tech in the form of snaps/flatpaks, though. I use docker itself at work constantly, but at home, snaps/flatpaks tend to do the “minimize thinking about dependencies and building” bit but in a workflow more convenient for desktop applications.