I've been running guix on my systems for about two years now. I can comment.
Generally I love guix. As a tool its very ergonomic to use, the documentation is excellent, and the mailing lists are active and informative. As for specifics:
* The CLI is way better than nix's and each command is fully documented and flags are intuitive. `guix install foo` is a lot more intuitive than `nix-env -iA foo`. Nix is in the middle of overhauling its CLI but until that task is complete I personally believe there's no contest.
* Guix has a lot more first party functionality when it comes to importing packages for some languages. If someone's project is in python, ruby, haskell, or ocaml it only takes `guix import fooRepo package` to create a package that isn't yet in guix's package repository. Also this functionality is easily discoverable thanks to guix's excellent documentation. I wish this extended to nodejs projects but that's likely never going to happen.
* There are a number of built-in ways to share guix packages with people who aren't using guix with the command `guix pack`. This has come in handy for me in a number of situations like creating singularity containers for coworkers or trying out stuff they're working on in an isolated environment.
* Speaking of containers, `guix environment` lets me run software in ad-hoc containers.
Now, all of this is great but the desktop experience still leaves much to be desired. The desktop experience has all of the problems running NixOS has except the added trouble of Guix's immaturity. Gnome is only 3.34 while most distros have already migrated to 3.38. Guix has been a pain to run on my laptop, so much so that I've resigned to only use it as a package manager and DevOps tool.
Generally I love guix. As a tool its very ergonomic to use, the documentation is excellent, and the mailing lists are active and informative. As for specifics:
* The CLI is way better than nix's and each command is fully documented and flags are intuitive. `guix install foo` is a lot more intuitive than `nix-env -iA foo`. Nix is in the middle of overhauling its CLI but until that task is complete I personally believe there's no contest.
* Guix has a lot more first party functionality when it comes to importing packages for some languages. If someone's project is in python, ruby, haskell, or ocaml it only takes `guix import fooRepo package` to create a package that isn't yet in guix's package repository. Also this functionality is easily discoverable thanks to guix's excellent documentation. I wish this extended to nodejs projects but that's likely never going to happen.
* There are a number of built-in ways to share guix packages with people who aren't using guix with the command `guix pack`. This has come in handy for me in a number of situations like creating singularity containers for coworkers or trying out stuff they're working on in an isolated environment.
* Speaking of containers, `guix environment` lets me run software in ad-hoc containers.
Now, all of this is great but the desktop experience still leaves much to be desired. The desktop experience has all of the problems running NixOS has except the added trouble of Guix's immaturity. Gnome is only 3.34 while most distros have already migrated to 3.38. Guix has been a pain to run on my laptop, so much so that I've resigned to only use it as a package manager and DevOps tool.