Obligatory link to its cousin: https://guix.gnu.org/ A package manager or a full distro. I use the package manager on top of Debian, it's great, it allows me to get recent package versions the most straightforward way (like the latest Emacs), in exchange of disk space (easily some GB before a `guix gc` cleanup).
Guix is definitely a cleaner implementation (coherent cli tooling, way better manual, not a custom, oddball language, ...).
But:
* if Nix is already very niche, Guix is the niche of a niche. The ecosystem is tiny in comparison.
* The Nix interpreter isn't exactly fast, but Guix (with it's scheme) was significantly worse for me, even in relatively small tests
* The hard stance on open source requirements is understandable, given the projects origin, but it will severely hinder adoption. No, I don't want to package every commercial app I need myself. nixpkgs has almost everything.
I've been running it on an older laptop to try it out. `guix pull` takes so much resources, it often takes a few hours to complete, even with binary substitutes.
Documentation is a bit lacking, even though it has an excellent manual. How I am supposed to specify extra command line parameters to the kernel I boot in GRUB, for instance? Or specify multiboot targets? Get a "desktop" install without GDM? In the end, I went back to alpine on that machine.
Secondly, to use it as a standalone package manager, I wish it didn't require root access, or allowed me to put it in an arbitrary directory. Guix could work as a nice substitute for conda or docker, especially when it comes to reproducibility. I also couldn't find a guix docker image.
> I've been running it on an older laptop to try it out. `guix pull` takes so much resources, it often takes a few hours to complete, even with binary substitutes.
Looking forward to the first, and I'll look into the second. One of my goals would be so easily offload to a more powerful computer, even if it doesn't run guix.
Edit: content-addressed guix stores delivery over a content-addressed network sounds interesting, it would be even better with rolling hashes (I think ostree/casync uses those).
I dream of a yunohost-like operating system based on Guix :)
