It doesn't have to be one or the other. I've been very happily using Guix as a package manager inside my Debian, thereby having a Debian with up-to-date versio

It doesn't have to be one or the other. I've been very happily using Guix as a package manager inside my Debian, thereby having a Debian with up-to-date versions of packages and access to all the other benefits of using a next-generation package manager (specifying release candidates, docker-like portable builds, plus emacs integration). Just have to be slightly careful not to install packages via Guix that might cause conflicts, especially with Gnome. But if you do you can always just hop into a tty and `guix package --roll-back` to get back to a working build. Maybe one day I'll migrate to Guix as a distro in itself rather than just a package manager within a foreign distro (Debian), but for now the setup works well, and it's also a nice way to get experience with Guix before diving into the deep end.