I think we are on the same page. To clarify: if your goal is to be on stable ZFS AND non-EOL Linux kernel, then LTS kernel is usually the only option. There may be windows where there are non-LTS-non-EOL kernels supported, but non-LTS kernels go EOL very quickly, so those windows are fleeting.
This impacts distributions like NixOS in particular, which have a strict policy of removing EOL kernels.
Woah woah woah don't let me dissuade you from NixOS. I am still a happy NixOS+ZFS user, and my fingers are crossed that I'll soon get to upgrade to kernel 6.12 :)
No worries on that front, I expect that fun fact to be just a minor setback but I'm still pretty dead set on making my personal infrastructure declarative, reproducible, and anti-hysteresis.
Honestly I wouldn't even try running ZFS on anything else but a distro that ship it like ubuntu or its variant or a distro with long term support like almalinux 9.
This impacts distributions like NixOS in particular, which have a strict policy of removing EOL kernels.