When comparing GNU Guix vs ArchLabs 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 ArchLabs Linux is ranked 66th. The most important reason people chose GNU Guix is:
A method which works across languages and provides a reproducible programming environment.
Specs
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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 All the benefits of Arch Linux
Since this is an Arch-based distribution, it has all the same benefits.
Pro Powerful AL-installer
The ArchLabs installer is very simple and gives users so many choices such as kernels, bootloaders, which extra programs to install, whether you want LVM, etc.
Pro Lightning Fast
Pro Retains the minimalism of Arch
ArchLabs provides an easy-to-use installer without including unnecessary packages by default, unlike Manjaro.
Pro Inspired by BunsenLabs, Powered by Arch
Pro Highly technical and helpful forums
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 The installer has been broken for most of this year
Con Systemd
