Disclaimer: I have no affiliation to the project or to the people working on it.
Some links in case anyone’s interested to check it out for themselves:
In case anyone's wondering where my interest is coming from...
Long story short: after trying out NixOS within a VM and being positively surprised by how smooth-sailing it has been (so far), I got pretty much carried away by my (over)confidence to explore even deeper waters. After crawling out of the umpteenth rabbit hole, I concede to have been most intrigued by rde.
Basically, if my understanding is correct, rde is an attempt to bridge the gap between Guix System and NixOS. For example: Guix Home, which is basically Guix’ home-manager, originated from rde.
Furthermore, I find it particularly noteworthy how it’s stateless by default. Which, IIUC, is absolutely not trivially done on Guix System. Simply, because Guix System doesn’t have something akin to the impermanence module found on NixOS.
I’m sure there’s a lot more I could delve into, but I’ll keep it at that for the sake of brevity.
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.