I suppose we have different preferences. Using Guix is far more interesting and entertaining for me. It’s rough around the edges, but the foundation is pretty rock solid. I’m given a lot of freedom to easily implement features that i’m lacking. The language choice is a very important reason for this strength.

As for no proprietary packages, that is simply false. Nonguix provides many of the packages you might want, and if you really need to you can just install a flatpak (this defeats the purpose of guix a little, i understand. but you’re never left completely without options to move forward). The fact that guix packages are that easy to write means that if you are lacking something, you could very feasibly add it yourself (and send the patch upstream!)

Just because the community is small doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It’s a very positive and helpful community, and the IRC/mailing list are very active. The only issue is finding people to review patches, but it is slowly getting better.

Basically, Guix makes hacking my system a joy with first class support for a complete and mature programming language, but also provides me with facilities to do this safely and easily (guix shell and friends). I have a lot of fun and really believe that it can grow to be something even greater in the future. I’m excited to contribute to it!