Excellent insight, thank you (once again)!

While not much, this is the kind of endorsement I wanted out of this. Even though I was being deliberately horrid at communicating that 😜.

Alright, that was quite illuminating. I suppose I was definitely not grasping the full extent of the extensibility found on Guix. And, perhaps more importantly, how it’s a defining feature of Guix. Thank you; I appreciate it.

Perhaps I’m being too romantic, but just like how rde users were the first to catch a glimpse of guix home, so too it feels that today’s rde users are catching a glimpse of features that will eventually land on Guix proper.

Alright, that has been a bit more elucidating. Thank you!

I’m literally a newb to Guix, so please forgive me for my ignorance.

But while using (parts of) rde by regarding it as a channel is found within its documentation, I don’t think it’s the full picture. Like, rde is also a distro, at least by the admission of its creator. The same can not be said about nonguix. So, to be frank, I don’t think it’s just another Guix channel.

Having said that, I am still very new to all of this. So, if I’m incorrect and/or my understanding is lacking, then please feel free to correct/educate me on this.

This isnt a distro

I don’t think you know exactly what constitutes an entire distribution.

Then what is? And which authorities endorses that view? Or…, is it perhaps possible to arrive at that definition by (logical) necessity? If no such authorities exist and if it doesn’t follow by necessity, then how is your definition anything but arbitrary?

I just thought that the phrase “the distro you are using doesn’t matter” is used to combat the analysis paralysis that many new users experience.

And -to be frank- while Ubuntu and NixOS don’t even remotely resemble each other, I can’t be the only one that feels that most traditional distros do feel kinda same~y.

Is there something locked down like Bazzite but with long term LTS release cycle?

The only high confidence projects I know of are:

• Bluefin LTS
• Endless OS, also see its documentation

There’s also stuff like HeliumOS, stillOS and probably other images based (in)directly on RHEL Image Mode.

I suppose because it simply is 😅.

To be honest, I’d say they’re being pretty generous in this case. The category for “Advanced Users” also includes the likes of Debian, RHEL(-clones) and SLE, none of which throw you right into a TUI; unlike Arch* 😅.

Furthermore, while archinstall has done a tremendous job at streamlining the process, the lazy noob that wants to rawdog it, will probably give up on their attempt. Contrast that to the installers of every other non-“Experts” distro, which by virtue of its non-archaic UI would have fulfilled its purpose.

And the troubles go well beyond initialization:

• Rolling release cadence with minimal testing amounts to plenty of breakage. To put into perspective, even if it’s not that bad in practice; Arch will break more often than (almost) any other distro on that list.
• As the previous point is known to cause plenty of agony, users are implored to stick to these instructions found on the excellent ArchWiki to combat that. While I’m sure Arch users are thankful for the instructions, it’s crazy that it is even required. Note that it’s expected that your Arch system is current and up-to-date. So you have to go through that routine at least once a week.
• The amount of packages in its own repositories is relatively slim, all of the other big-shot distros have larger repos. As such, the community relies a lot on other repositories; use of the AUR (in particular) is very prominent. But, as recent news has shown, you shouldn’t blindly trust that. Instead, you ought to look into the PKGBUILDs to ensure it doesn’t do anything shady. While this can make installing software more painful than it has any right to be, updates often involve changes in the PKGBUILD(s). In which case, you’re expected to go over it once again 😅…

There’s more to it than that, but I hope the case has been made pretty clear. With Arch, it’s (almost) as if you’re babysitting the system to ensure it doesn’t shit itself. By contrast; distros like Debian, Fedora and/or openSUSE mostly just work.

In case you wonder why people put up with all that shit, Arch does occupy a (relatively) unique spot if you want the following combined:

• Latest and greatest.
• Very big (user) repository.
• Lean. It comes with almost no defaults. With Arch, there’s no such thing as debloating or anything.

Hence, if you’re looking to build your very own system from (close to) scratch to a highly customized setup that does exactly what you want…, then Arch it is.