NixOS is an incredibly popular Linux distro. The fact that it is rolling release and allows you to roll back to previous versions of packages makes it great for the power user. However, there is a competitor on the block. That is the “Gnu Guix System”. It is a Linux distro that uses the Guix package manager, the Linux-Libre Kernel, and the Shepherd Init system. After using it for a few days, I am going to go over the things that make this distro special, and why you might want to consider using it.
Being a free software GNU distribution is also the point of Guix, and it’s part of what attracted me to it (although its practical abilities are nice as well).
Yes I definitely agree: free software is also a requirement for bootstrappability and reproducibility.