I have no idea if this is of any help or interest.

I've been a happy Devuaner - well, mostly happy - for a number of years now, and have not really been following recent Linux distributions much, seeing how most of them are systemd-based.

Recently, though, I've noticed the Guix, which is both a NixOS-like package manager and a (Linux, right?) distribution which uses said package manager. Briefly reading about it, I noticed another interesting piece of software it uses: GNU shepherd, an init alternative that's been in development for several years, and, well, is not systemd.

I absolutely don't want to start a discussion about which is a better distro or anything like that. But I would like to learn more about what using Guix is like - from desktop users' and server admins' perspective - and whether the two distributions benefit from each other in any way, living the non-systemd life.

Brief personal impressions are fine as answers, links are fine, long comparative tracts are fine, etc.