For anyone curious, this wiki page describes how to package and run some precompiled binaries on NixOS, particularly the section "The Dynamic Loader": https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Packaging/Binaries
NixOS tries to insist that programs reference only other paths within the nix store (e.g. /nix/store/9rabxvqbv0vgjmydiv59wkz768b5fmbc-glibc-2.30/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 which is a specific version built by a specific compiler, rather than /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2). This is the source of the per-program isolation that enables all the nifty features of NixOS.
NixOS _does_ make exceptions to that though, for example providing both /bin/sh and /usr/bin/env at those paths.
The key point here is that we want to package things in a distro-independent way. In our distro-independent package there is no store and hence on nixOS it won't run.
Note that the way we do things is not unique - Firefox has been packaged this way by the Mozilla Foundation for years. We consider ourselves closer to a "traditional ISV" than merely the provider of source code to the open source community (though obviously, we play the latter roll too).
We don't have the resources to spend on a nixOS-specific package, nor the desire. Fortunately, of course, nixOS users can create suitable packages for nixOS, and I think they are.
It just says something that out of the myriad flavors of Linux, nixOS is the only one that has broken this rather old concept for packaging software from ISVs.
For anyone curious, this wiki page describes how to package and run some precompiled binaries on NixOS, particularly the section "The Dynamic Loader": https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Packaging/Binaries
NixOS tries to insist that programs reference only other paths within the nix store (e.g. /nix/store/9rabxvqbv0vgjmydiv59wkz768b5fmbc-glibc-2.30/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 which is a specific version built by a specific compiler, rather than /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2). This is the source of the per-program isolation that enables all the nifty features of NixOS.
NixOS _does_ make exceptions to that though, for example providing both /bin/sh and /usr/bin/env at those paths.