[yjftsjthsd-h]

> a Linux distribution (similar to Nix)

I'm pretty sure all of these are like nix, right? I've used nix on top of other distros, the development environment thing is like nix-shell, nix is happy to build container images, and of course there's nixos.

[slgeorge]

Yes, I wasn't throwing shade on Nix, I was drawing a specific comparison about Linux distributions.

My opinion is that Guix/Nix move the state of the art for Linux distributions forward. So Guix<->Nix are both similar Linux distributions, and different from previous approaches (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat etc).

Transactional package management and declarative system configuration solve a whole host of problems. Guix (and Nix?) directly integrates configuration management into the OS, rather than as some adjunct piece of tooling (Ansible, Terraform etc). We define the packages, the system, the configuration using the same DSL. Transactions and a declarative approach improve maintainability, reproduciblity and might limit the amount of time I spend messing with different tooling ;-)

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Ah, yes, in that case we're in full agreement:) There are pain points yet, but I already find it slightly painful to use a non-declarative system...

[colordrops]

Guix was originally derived from Nix. Guix has different goals.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

Sure? I'm pointing out that the listed features are more or less identical AFAICT. I grant that being a GNU project affects some of its goals and how it goes about things.