When comparing GNU Guix vs Anarchy Linux, the Slant community recommends GNU Guix for most people. In the question“What are the best Linux distributions for desktops?” GNU Guix is ranked 58th while Anarchy Linux is ranked 65th. The most important reason people chose GNU Guix is:
A method which works across languages and provides a reproducible programming environment.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Can setup a shell which has exactly the defined libraries available
A method which works across languages and provides a reproducible programming environment.
Pro Can always roll back to a safe state
Guix creates new profile generations for each operation. If anything goes wrong, a simple --roll-back gets you immediately back to the previous, working, generation. Because it is a purely functional package management system, generations don't affect each other, so you're back to the exact same state as before : still working.
Pro Can create independent packages
Guix pack creates packages which do not need Guix to be run.
Pro No side effects when building packages
Guix is a purely functional package management system. This means that the act of building a package does not have side effects, such as destructively updating or deleting files that may be used by other packages.
Pro Can build containers right-away, from docker to tarballs
See guix pack --help and here.
Pro Easy to add your own packages
The clean and declarative syntax makes it easy to define new packages by using an existing one as an example.
Pro Doesn't require root privileges
Normal users can install packages on a Guix-enabled system, or even run their own Guix instance if the system isn't Guix-enabled.
Pro LVM on LUKS encryption of whole disk possible
It works! Whereas neither the calamares installer used by arcolinux or manjaro nor the archlabs installer produces a working result.
Pro The end result is a well configured standard Archlinux system
Pro Saves a lot of time to set up an Archlinux system
Once you had your experience to set up an Archlinux system manually from scratch this distro saves a lot of setup time.
Pro Full access to Arch repositories as well as Aur
Pro Many preconfigured Desktop environments supported
Pro Fully developed in Bash
Being programmed entirely in Bash, it is relatively easy to find and solve errors or propose improvements.
Pro Everything you need in a small and fast Arch distro
Pro Low setup time
Even a person without prior knowledge will figure out how to set it up quite quickly.
Pro Looks good by default
Pro Supports 32-bit architecture
Use ArchLinux32 instead of the traditional Arch Linux to support 32-bit architectures.
Pro Friendly community
The community and developers are willing to solve any kind of inconvenience.
Pro Good for gaming
Smooth and cool. Easy to get going.
Cons
Con Updates take a long time
It's gotten better over time but both updating Guix itself and updating the installed packages can take a long time.
Con Cannot handle filetypes that have different semantics across different versions
While the functional approach that Guix takes is great for sandboxing binary artifacts of packages, it seriously lacks any power in handling configuration files or user data. It's difficult to upgrade and downgrade files where semantics and syntax can change between versions.
Con Nothing new
It's just Arch with a graphical installer.
Con Anarchy Repo is completely unsigned
Ridiculous security risk.
Con TUI can be confusing for the uninitiated
The TUI is as good as can be expected, but if you're not comfortable with the command line, this isn't where you want to be.
Con Just an Installer
Anarchy isn't its own distro, it's just an installer for Arch. That's great if it's what you're after, but don't expect bells and whistles.
Con Redundant
It's just Arch with a graphical installer and ArchLabs already has this.
Con The installer has many bugs
Especially during the manually partitioning and the additional software installing procedure. If you do the automatic partitioning and you don't install additional softwares it's ok.
