[baumbart]

I have used both NixOS and Guix and can say that I definitely prefer Guix. Internally, the package manager is really the same. On the interface side, Nix uses its own functional programming language, while Guix uses Scheme which I am used to and prefer syntax-wise. It's awesome to write configuration files in Scheme! You can write scheme functions that output a valid system configuration for guix. You can then apply guix, reboot, and have a new system. It's also very easy to maintain different configurations.

On the OS side, dmd is also pretty damn cool. The whole system feels kind of polished and reminded me much of current *BSD systems, including a decent texinfo manual on the first boot. With the difference that you get a working framebuffer through linux on startup.

While NixOS is kind of an academical experiment, I think Guix really has the potential to become the only true GNU system. It still lacks stability and has some rough edges of course. Maybe Guix will also help merging the Emacs and GNU operating systems to create a single, tightly integrated Lisp OS ;) There is already an Emacs interface for Guix.

[aristidb]

Calling NixOS an "academical experiment" is slightly disingenuous. The initial author does come from academia, but works in industry now, and you just need to look at the Github [1] to see that NixOS is maintained quite actively.

[1] https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commits/master

[rev]

I concur. Besides NixOS is certainly more polished right now, at least for my definition of "polish" (I think, the right word for Scheme based Guix is "cohesive", maybe even "elegant"). It should be, being several years old, compared to Guix, which has been running on real hardware for mere weeks.