Comment by kkfx

Yes and no. ZFS is for managing your data with simplicity and efficiency that isn't possible with other "storage systems" on GNU/Linux. Setting up a desktop with mdraid+LUKS+LVM+the chosen filesystem is a way longer job than creating a pool with the configuration you want and the volumes you want. Managing backups without snapshots that can be sent over a LAN is a major hassle.

Can it be done? Yes. Formally. But it's unlikely that anyone does it at home because between the long setup and maintaining it, there's simply too much work to do. Backing up the OS itself isn't very useful with declarative distros, but sometimes a rebuild fails because for example there's a broken package/derivation at that moment, so having a recent OS ready, a simple volume to send over LAN or pull from USB storage is definitely convenient. It's already happened to me a few times that I had to give up a rebuild for an update because something was broken upstream, few days and that's fixed but without an OS backup, if I'd had to do a restore at that moment, I would have been stuck.