For me it's not the time spent at the checkout that matters, it's the time spent waiting at the checkout. Also over here cashiers don't bag your items for you, so you have to do that anyway
Also also, they have these really handy hand scanners over here so I can already bag my items while I'm walking through the store, and then the only thing I have to do at self-checkout is hand in the scanner and pay for the groceries. That is genuinely a lot faster than normal cash register shenanigans.
Yeah if you play ssf you sidestep these problems entirely and then the only problem you might have is simply just inventory management (which also only comes up in the lategame)
You can easily get through PoE1's main campaign without paying a dime
Someone also posted a video of them essentially getting through the "midgame" of path of exile in 24 hours without paying as well https://youtu.be/JeIDCxQhZM4
However, during that midgame he shows that he really starts having trouble with the lack of stash tabs for trading. It's doable, but that's kind of where you start hitting your limits
All in all, if you play for the main campaign it's essentially just a free game, and if you play without trading the game is still designed to be somewhat doable. Really the only thing you miss out on is trading
As a nix user, guix looks legit nice but it took me until 2 days ago to actually find community projects made for guix(https://whereis.みんな/) . Sometimes I just wish they used the same store and daemon as nix so that nix packages can work as guix dependencies and vice versa.
(Also major thing stopping me from using guix is I don't get service types at all, let alone how you'd define your own service :( )
Um ackshually that's a metro, not a train 🤓