While this is certainly a cool concept, local voice assistants like this are currently a novelty. Cool to play around with, though!
You can expect around 5 seconds processing time to start generating the response to a basic question on a very basic model like Llama 3 8B.
For context, using Moondream2 (as recommended) on a RasPi 5, it takes around 50 seconds to process an image taken by the Camera and start generating a description.
The problem with Nix and its forks, imho, is that it takes a lot of work, patience, time and the willingness to learn yet another complex workflow with all of its shortcomings, bits and quirks to transition from something tried, tested and stable to something very volatile with no guaranteed widespread adoption.
The whole leadership drama and the resulting forks, which may or may not want to achieve feature parity or spin off into their own thing, certainly doesn’t make the investment seem more attractive, either.
I, too, like the concept of Nix very, very much. But apart from some experimental VMs, I’m not touching it on anything resembling a production environment until it looks to like it’s here to stay (predictable).
Great synopsis!
The cool thing about GrapheneOS: It provides basically all the comforts and usability as any Android (stock) ROM minus some compatibility issues with a portion of Google Apps and services (Google Pay doesn’t and probably will never work, for example) while providing state-of-the-art security and privacy if you choose to utilize those features. A modern Pixel with up-to-date GrapheneOS, configured the right way, is literally the most secure and private smartphone you can get today.