Which makes "next to zero time wasted configuring things" false, very much so. You will have to write your own derivation(s) using Nix[1].
In any case, from the article, what does not apply to Guix, too? I am leaning towards Guix because of its language (Scheme, i.e. Lisp-y), but I wonder about the differences between the two, today (besides userbase and hype).
Agreed on Guix. Used it for a few years, absolutely loved it, excited to go back (had to move off for unimportant and unrelated reasons).
Would love to hear from someone who has used both though.
I've never seen an excellent, detailed comparison actually, as conversation on the subject tends to devolve into a "discussion" on ethics. Meaning, people who dislike GNU or GPL or Lisps or something get testy and argue uncharitably (imho, please prove me wrong, not flaming here, etc).
This is ironic, to say the least, as one of the main points of the proponents of the "anti-GNU" side tends to be how Guix is too opinionated and pushy and hard-line etc. So we've a classic upside-down situation, which is a real shame, as Guix seems to be in reality a practical project with lovely people involved that's doing very interesting work.
The Guix blog has really good and detailed discussions of things Guix has done differently than Nix! Posts on the choice of different abstractions for modeling services in Guix is probably a good starting point.
The UI differences are also striking right away. Guix has a more unified CLI, and the main Guix repo seems to more quickly absorb functionality that's split into various community projects in Nix.
Guix not supporting non-free packages out of the box is the only real issue I have and that’s directly tied to the gnu origins. If guix were as pragmatic as NixOS and nixpkgs then I don’t think I’d have anything to say, lisp is way nicer.
Guix already has as many packages as Nixpkgs did back when I started using it, and like Nixpkgs, the package set is growing exponentially. What you say is true but it also seems to me like for many, Guix already provides a very useful starting point.
I think it’s “only” that yeah. Both have fundamentally the same capabilities. Nixpgs may provide more out of the box library functionality than guix, I’m not sure, but as far as I know there’s nothing possible in one that isn’t possible in the other. Would be glad to be corrected by anyone with more experience, though. I’ve run NixOS for years now, but have only dabbled with guix.
I guess relentlessly dylibbed software like AppImage is the elephant in the room. Nix struggles to handle those types of programs, but they tend to work fine in Flatpak or with a special tool (eg. appimage-run or steam-run).
There’s an entirely mechanical workflow for calling patchelf when packaging a binary that was compiled dynamically against library paths outside of the Nix store.
In any case, from the article, what does not apply to Guix, too? I am leaning towards Guix because of its language (Scheme, i.e. Lisp-y), but I wonder about the differences between the two, today (besides userbase and hype).
[1] https://nix.dev/tutorials/nix-language.html