nix vs guix.org

nix vs guix.org

Nix vs Guix

These are notes to the stream: https://youtu.be/S9V-pcTrdL8

Some notes

• We are not aware of a lot of GNU software available to us.
• Seems that Guix more hacker-friendly/explorable.

General comparsion

Description	Nix	Guix	Comment
Established	2003	2013
Poprietary Software	Yes	No
Other OSe	MacOS, GNU/Linux	GNU/Linux, Hurd
Packages	nixpkgs (53000)	guix (15000+)	https://repology.org/
Nix vs Guile	Nix	GNU Guile
Documentation	Docbook	GNU Texinfo
Branching model	Combined	Rolling-release
Service manager	systemd	GNU Shepherd
Build scripts	Bash	G-exps
Version lock	Flakes	Channels
Consistency	Medium	High
cli implementation	c++	guile
Bootstrapping	?	Yes	GNU Mes
Module System	Yes	No
Implicity	Frequent	OKeish

Version lock

Flakes seems to provide more hermetic builds than guix channels. Guix still can access different values on host, maybe I’m not yet aware of some features like pure evaluation mode or something similiar.

Nix vs Guile

Nix isn’t bad, but feels like DSL and it’s necessary to learn/invent new patterns, the tooling is kinda lacking. There are some goodies: you can have few versions of nixpkgs in one profile at the same time, nix doesn’t have namespaces and it won’t fail with name collision.

Guile is full-fledged scheme with good tooling.

Packages

Nix has much more packaged.

Guix has only free software in main repo, definitions looks more consistent and less hacky.

Documentation

Guix has centralaized and well-organized documentation in html/pdf/info format. Moreover info format has links to related topics like guile, different gnu utilities and so on.

For example info:guix#Build Systems refers to info:guile#Optional Arguments.

Branching model

NixOS has a release twice an year. Guix doesn’t have stable branch, all fixes goes straight to master. Is it bad or good is debatable, because it’s possible to freeze versions of specific packages or even whole development environments. That’s mean that we can keep as less system packages as possible to reduce attack surface and possible breakage on pulling updates from master, everything else will be managed per-user or per-project inside profiles.

Guix problems

• You can’t use few channels with different version of guix in one profile

Nix problems

• Inconsistent nix cli
• Tooling kinda lacking for nix language
• Glued together different parts not so well integrated

Resources

• https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/9zwiee/nixos_vs_guixsd/eaddvf6/
• https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16490027

Is it possible to declaratively install the nix package manager in Guix?

Yes.

Is there anything that Guix can manage declaratively that NixOS can't?

Guix has an abstraction for system services, i.e. anything that contributes to the operating system. Unlike NixOS where a system is a free for all global namespace, in Guix all system services form a DAG.

but given the package gap & state of libre firmware & driver support, it would probably make more sense to run Guix inside NixOS rather than the other way around.

You can use vanilla Linux and non-free firmware with Guix System. You just need the linux and linux-firmware packages from the nonguix channel.