I assume you mean AVIF? Because AV1 is not an image (file) format but a video compression format (that needs to be wrapped in container file formats to be storable).
I was under the impression that the compiler already optimizes out a lot of clones where the clone is primarily used to satisfy the borrow checker.
Is that not the case?
The post text doesn't seem to get displayed on some clients (Voyager) so I'll attach it here as well:
asciinema (aka asciinema CLI or asciinema recorder) is a command-line tool for recording and live streaming terminal sessions.
This is a complete rewrite of asciinema in Rust, upgrading the recording file format, introducing terminal live streaming, and bringing numerous improvements across the board.
How well NixOS fits your purpose really depends on what you want to do with the OS. If you're just going run a bunch of docker containers, you could manage them via Nix but its a little cumbersome.
Where NixOS really shines for small servers are the so called NixOS Options.
They allow you to install tons of services on bare metal but manage all the configuration for you. E.g. open the correct firewalls ports, run a dedicated DB or cache, etc. and all those simply require you to enable them with an ... = true;.
Smaller projects might not have a NixOS Option available and some options are more and/or easier configurable than others, but if you're running just a few common services you could feasibly manage your whole server with just one native config file and no docker shenanigans.
I'd recommend checking what's available under the link above. If you wanna go the container route instead, you have the option of just using docker non-declaratively as on every other distro (but then you lose some of the benefits NixOS gives you), or you can declaratively have NixOS manage all the docker containers. There are a few ways to do and manage this so some further research will be required.
You dont need to manually handle the WG config files. This isn't really an issue when it's just you and your two devices, but once you start supporting more people, like non-technical family members, this gets really annoying really quickly.
Tailscale (and headscale) just require you to log in, which even those family members can manage and then does the rest for you. They also support SSO in which case you wouldn't even have to create new accounts.
I have never used them but there are some tools that advertise being able to run GitHub Actions locally, like WRKFLW.