[$] A look at Nix and Guix

Nix and
Guix are a pair of unusual package managers
based on the idea of declarative configurations. Their associated Linux
distributions — NixOS and the Guix System — take the idea further by allowing users
to define a single centralized configuration describing the state of the entire
system. Both have
been previously
mentioned on LWN, but not covered extensively. They offer different takes on
the central idea of treating packages like immutable values.