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GNU Guix 1.0.0 has been released. The big 1.0 is an important milestone for most Free Software. In this case it is the result of seven years of development. GNU Guix is a general toolbox for software deployment, also known as a package manager, but with advancements over RPM and APT, which it can co-exist with. However it can also be used as a complete distro.
In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and garbage collection. When used as a standalone GNU/Linux distribution, Guix offers a declarative, stateless approach to operating system configuration management. Guix is highly customizable and hackable through Guile programming interfaces and extensions to the Scheme language.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Sunday May 05 2019, @02:05PM
The interesting bit for Guix and Nix, in addition to what is listed in the summary, is that the Guix developers are working on bit-for-bit reproducible builds for most of their packages. That's critical for security.
But the other parts are interesting too. Right now my impression is that most companies have a multi-layer system configuration for their server farms. The top layer is a tool like Chef or Puppet, then the package manager like yum (soon to be DNF) with .rpm files or apt with .deb files. And possibly a third layer with Docker or something similar. Chef or Puppet manages customizations to accounts, configuration files, firewall settings, etc... I'm not sure about containers like Docker, but Guix can be your top level tool too. Your system configuration in Guix's system.scm file has all of the information that Chef or Puppet would otherwise manage, so you don't need them at all. I am pretty sure Guix configuration can also configure and manage the Docker containers on a GuixSD installation or something equivalent. One stop shop + reproducible builds = win.