If you mean Nix, the package manager, then no packages are actually installed as root. Every package is installed in the Nix store, but programs that need root privileges can’t be run by any user.
One of the (many) great things about Nix is that users don’t need root privileges to install packages.
Yeah, “unfortunately” since Guix is a GNU project, they don’t package the upstream Linux kernel, just linux-libre, which removes a lot of binary blobs. Great if you want a fully free OS, not so great if you need drivers only available in the mainline kernel.
The practical solution to this is to use the channel nonguix, which packages mainline Linux for Guix. You can follow the instructions for nonguix to create a guix ISO with the regular Linux kernel, then make sure your installed system uses that same kernel.
It’s not hard to do, but if one doesn’t have the inclination I’d just recommended using NixOS. :-)
NixOS and Guix System! I’m currently using Guix System + Nix (via home-manager, mostly) but you can also do it the other way around.
NixOS uses systemd, but Guix System does not. They are both awesome though. Absolutely my favourite distros. Incredibility flexible, and reproducibility and “declarativeness” are core concepts. The only negative is that they both have quite a steep learning curve, compared to other distros.
Used Tumbleweed as my main OS for years and this was always a pain point. Why do you need root privileges to connect to a network on a fresh install?? I can’t be bothered to find a link, but Linus Torvalds himself complained about this and said it was the reason he didn’t want his kids to use SUSE/openSUSE on their computers, since he didn’t want them to have root privileges, lol.