If you mean Nix, the package manager, then no packages are actually installed as root. Every package is installed in the Nix store, but programs that need root privileges can’t be run by any user.

One of the (many) great things about Nix is that users don’t need root privileges to install packages.

Yeah, “unfortunately” since Guix is a GNU project, they don’t package the upstream Linux kernel, just linux-libre, which removes a lot of binary blobs. Great if you want a fully free OS, not so great if you need drivers only available in the mainline kernel.

The practical solution to this is to use the channel nonguix, which packages mainline Linux for Guix. You can follow the instructions for nonguix to create a guix ISO with the regular Linux kernel, then make sure your installed system uses that same kernel.

It’s not hard to do, but if one doesn’t have the inclination I’d just recommended using NixOS. :-)

No no, Nix has two ways of handling configurations, where Flakes are the new style, but still experimental. Guix just have one way of handling configurations.

Yeah, it’s been an ongoing debate whether the old Nix style or the newer Flakes are a better approach. I don’t really know that much about it, but thus far I definitely like using Flakes more

NixOS and Guix System! I’m currently using Guix System + Nix (via home-manager, mostly) but you can also do it the other way around.

NixOS uses systemd, but Guix System does not. They are both awesome though. Absolutely my favourite distros. Incredibility flexible, and reproducibility and “declarativeness” are core concepts. The only negative is that they both have quite a steep learning curve, compared to other distros.

I’ve been using Emacs for at least 15 years, and man, am I excited to someday learn it.

I’d absolutely recommend Kubernetes (k3s/rke2) or podman quadlets. Quadlets are a lot easier to get started with, but are still very flexible.

I’d recommend against using portainer. I tried it quite recently and I did not like it at all. A lot of features are paywalled, and was overall just a frustrating experience. I’ve heard it was a lot better some years ago.

I think NixOS is a superb choice if you have the time and energy to invest in it. I’m currently using Guix System (a GNU fork of Nix) and I’m very very happy with it. Previously I’ve been on openSUSE Tumbleweed because I thought the most important thing for me was btrfs with an easy snapshot system. But then, one day, when I was writing ansible playbooks to configure my OS I realized that what I care most about is declarative configurations. Now I’ve completely stopped using ansible for my laptop/desktop, and just rely upon native Guix configuration. I love it.

I do still run MicroOS on all of my servers because it “just works” and I think transactional systems are great for servers. Recently, however, I’ve been thinking about trying out NixOS/Guix System as my server OS of choice, but we’ll see how that goes.

If you’re willing to put in the time, I think you’ll love NixOS.

Edit: Nix/Guix are also transactional.