Guix and GuixSD

I first installed guix (using this guide) onto an old desktop I had to get a feel for it. Then, when a system update on my laptop (manjaro) went sideways I installed guix onto that and never looked back.

It does have some caveats. Some packages don't exist in the official repo, but thankfully you can have as many channels as you want and get packages from other repos (nonguix being the biggest). Ironically for applications for with a guix package doesn't exist, I use nix.

Some DEs aren't available (KDE forex).

Despite the above issues I really like guix. I like the transactable nature of system and package upgrades (same/similiar functionality as nix). J

Just like nix your system config is declaritive (in scheme a file/files) and you can rollback configs. I'm more likely to try things/update my config because I can just rollback if something goes wrong.

Yep, I've dabbled in Guix before but was put off by the smaller/more outdated repository (according to repology, it has improved a lot lately but it's still nowhere near nixpkgs) and the official non-support/second-class support for non-FOSS software (which, as much as I try to avoid it, is still a necessity in my day-to-day). The ecossystem being smaller is also an issue, but I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and contribute some of the glue myself if necessary. Something else is FSF's reliance on mailing lists and IRC; I get sticking with FOSS, obviously, but aren't there more modern/ergonomic FOSS alternatives that suit their needs? The move from Savannah to Codeberg for the repositories was a welcome one and I hope they would follow with the rest of their platform, but oh well.

Regardless, the time has come to make the jump. I can no longer afford to keep supporting a distribution being blatantly hijacked by far-right defense sector actors (for a far-right regime and their far-right allies). I hope Guix will treat me as well as I intend to treat it. :)

And I seriously pray that it is more resilient to hostile takeovers by fascists, since, to my knowledge, there are no other Linux distributions in the "declarative, reproducible, immutable" family/paradigm. It's just NixOS and Guix. So Guix it is. I got too comfortable with the guarantees this model gives me to ever go back to more standard distros, I'm afraid.

Nixos is beating out guix for two reasons, flakes, and its eco system. Once you sort through all the documentation and figure out the system, it makes work easy. Lots of stuff already done and there for you. Guix on the other hand is still missing a lot of options and QOL. Not being able to use it for gaming is a no go for me.

i have tried using guix but the speed of the initial guix pull just killed me, so i ran back to nixos(which i have been using for like 1.5 maybe even 2 years at this point) and then to gentoo(which i am currently on)