On Friday 2018-03-02, I installed a couple of distros side by side in VMs.
I used the latest available installation image for each. Well, AFAIK. Everything in this document is AFAIK.
ISO: nixos-minimal--18.03pre129076.831ef4756e3-x86_64-linux.iso DOC: https://nixos.org/nixos/manual/index.html#sec-installation
ISO: guixsd-install-0.14.0.x86_64-linux.iso DOC: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Preparing-for-Installation.html#Preparing-for-Installation
Both suggest that I simply boot from the ISO and check if I have an IP address by issuing ip a. Great, my kind of installs!
nixos had an IP (from my VM host's internal DHCP server). guixsd did not.
I should mention that I'm pro-guixsd. I'm a card carrying FSF member. I also like the idea of the configuration being in scheme (guile?) rather than some odd format.
The guixsd installation environment seems to be running gpm (or whatever handles a console mouse pointer) out of the box. That's nice. nixos doesn't have this.
I don't really know how to grab an IP from DHCP without using interfaces(5). ... dhclient enp0s3. Fine, much easier than I thought it would be.
Moving on, partitioning was the same on both. And that's the last I'll mention of anything that's the same on both.
The guixsd installer comes with zile, an emacs-like. I am pleased.
guixsd ships with three configuration templates:
bare-bones.scm
desktop.scm
lightweight-desktop.scm
I'm going with bare-bones.scm.
I don't like this alice account which is not commented out by default in guixsd. For that matter, I didn't like the missing parameters for user accounts in nixos.
In guix, I can't figure out how to use a filesystem label instead of device path for my swap device. In nixos, kinda the same but it auto-populated the "by-uid" path into hardware-configuration.nix, so I didn't try to use the label.
Wow, password storage and the whole concept of user management is superior in nixos. See the bit about mutable users. https://nixos.org/nixos/manual/index.html#sec-user-management
Cheers! --sebboh