9 ms·

Guix Further Reduces Bootstrap Seed to 25%

195 points by rekado 6y ago

nvahalik 6y ago
Who funds Guix development? This this one of those experimental/hobby/academic projects? I never hear anything about Guix outside of HN or F/OSS boards (and even then, very little). How does it continue?
- zucker42 6y ago
  Well at least for this: > We are excited that the Nlnet Foundation has sponsored this work!
- artistsvoid 6y ago
  It's part of GNU [0] (which in itself is a community), but GNU as a whole is additionally funded in part by the FSF [1] ; And then as always: volunteers. I suspect since Guix heavily utilizes Lisp quite a few Emacs lovers might watch Guix closely and even contribute ; students might pick GNU projects as part of a thesis et cetera. And I am unsure how 'active' development is, I have no insight, but it has been in existence for so long and still no one I know has ever used it. On the other hand NixOS[2] (or Nix as a package manager in similar vein) seems to be used heavily by some Power Users. [0] http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html [1] https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/ https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/ [2] https://nixos.org/ https://nixos.org/
  - ImprobableTruth 6y ago
    I think the comparison to nix is quite unfair, since it's more than twice as old (~7 years vs ~16 years).
    - rudolph9 6y ago
      Does anyone know of a recent comparison of NixOS vs Guix? I’ve found older ones but nothing in the past year and with all the recent developments in both communities I’d love to see a side by side comparison.
  - qqii 6y ago
    In GNU fashion they're using savannah mailing lists and email patches so to those who are comfortable with git{hub,lab} it's slightly less familiar. Here is their git repository: https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix Here is the web interface to their issues and patches mailing list: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/ https://issues.guix.gnu.org/ As you can see although the project is less popular, it is no less actively developed and you can easily find system configurations by searching git{hub,lab}.
    - artistsvoid 6y ago
      I fear it being 'GNU' they will shoot themselves in the foot somehow. Bad marketing, unnecessarily geeky and childish nomenclature, GPLv3 and make it all free software, no proprietary drivers, hard to get proprietary third party software to install et cetera... 'GNU Guix is a transactional package manager and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that respects user freedom.'[0] NixOS is developed using the MIT license and does seem to just want things to work. I am bringing this up purely as a question, is that fear justified or am I missing something? Would be glad for a take on this from someone who knows more. [0] https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix
      - rudolph9 6y ago
        Yeah this is my take on it too. While I deeply admire the GNU philosophy and practice I debated adopting NixOS or Guix a few months ago and ultimately adopted NixOS as I got the same vibe as you. That said I really want to learn more about Guix. It seems like a more pure impl of a functional package manager but haven’t worked with it enough to know the difference.
      - paroneayea 6y ago
        The choice of GPL doesn't seem to be hurting the Linux Kernel. I doubt it'll hurt a package manager either. Plenty of Debian infrastructure software is also GPLv3. At any rate, the choice to go "have a pure base" is the right one IMO: it's nice to have a system where I know I have the right to use/modify/distribute changes to the entire thing. It's easier to start with that pure base and add impurities if you need them (eg if your hardware requires blobs to operate it) than the reverse. That said I think it would be helpful if there was a place to direct users who need to figure out how to install such blobs, even though I agree that the official mailing lists and project repository should not be it. (I am running a blobbed kernel on my current machine because I have to, but I previously was able to run with the linux-libre kernel Guix ships with. It's definitely possible to do if you need to, just not well documented.)
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    >I suspect since Guix heavily utilizes Lisp quite a few Emacs lovers might watch Guix closely and even contribute As an Emacs user who contributes packages occasionally - yup, that's about right! It's a really natural combination. Every so often I'll run across something I want that's not yet packaged for Guix, and if you're used to hacking on elisp the Guix package definitions aren't too hard to get the hang of. I think it's the only distro I've used that readily accepts new packages from the community (with review of course) - haven't used it myself but I think NixOS/nixpkgs is similar in that regard.
  - civodul 6y ago
    The latest release notes at https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ give some insights about the project's activity. Currently there's ~90 monthly contributors and ~1,700 commits per month. It's active. :-)
  - paroneayea 6y ago
    Development is very, very active. See for yourself: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/log/ https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/log/ The FSF is GNU's sponsor, and provides some infrastructure, but generally hasn't done too much in terms of funding the project. However other funding has happened in terms of NLNet, Outreachy, GSoC, and some stuff with the Guix HPC project. But far and away the majority of contributions are from unpaid contributors.
- eeh 6y ago
  The EU. The article mentions: "We are excited that the Nlnet Foundation has sponsored this work!" https://nlnet.nl/project/GNUMes/ https://nlnet.nl/project/GNUMes/ mentions "This project was funded through the NGI0 PET Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme". So this is funded by the EU.
- mbakke 6y ago
  The answer is "all of the above". Guix is largely community-driven, but receives donations[0] as well as sponsored work like the NLnet grant mentioned in the article. In addition some research institutions employ Guix developers[1]. Personally I have used Guix to convert a CentOS "appliance" into a full-blown desktop system, on a professional contract[2]. 0: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/gnu-guix-receives-donation-from-the-handshake-project/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/gnu-guix-receives-donation-fr... 1: https://hpc.guix.info/ https://hpc.guix.info/ 2: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/running-a-guix-xfce-desktop-on-centos-7/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/running-a-guix-xfce-desktop-o...
LockAndLol 6y ago
I see that guix is a declarative package manager like nix. Where does it have a leg up over nix? And how's the GUI integration with KDE and gnome? Is there a backend for KDE Discover or the Gnome Software Center? Finally, I see that installation goes over a "curl | bash", which imo is a pretty insecure method of installation. I can understand why such an insecure method exists (so many different ways of installing software on linux), but that's like saying HTTP is a good idea because it's easier than HTTPS.
- qqii 6y ago
  This post is a pretty good example, for I don't know of any nix projects that are attempting to work on the bootstrapping problem. Guix pack[0] solves a parallel issue of distributing your nicely dependancy managed ecosystem whereas nix's alternative with nix-bundle barely works. At the moment neither have gui integration and unfortunately both could use a lot of work with onboarding and beginner (I'm taking non programmers) friendliness. [0]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-pack.html https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-pack....
  - rudolph9 6y ago
    I like the container support! Declarative containers is an area where Dockerfiles fall short in my experience. I’ve been using the NixOS container support which has drastically streamlined and unified the largely similar but many small variations of containers that I use https://nixos.org/nixos/manual/#ch-containers https://nixos.org/nixos/manual/#ch-containers
  - ssivark 6y ago
    > At the moment neither have gui integration and unfortunately both could use a lot of work with onboarding and beginner (I'm taking non programmers) friendliness. I think non-programmer friendliness can wait till there are enough technical users that the superficial daily-experience bugs get ironed out, and also the newbies have a social support system for onboarding. Trying to jump that curve will prove painful in the long term. I would love to see the guidance and tools for technical users to try this out and start switching over the next few years. AFAIK, Gnome/KDE or some other DE can be built/installed like any other package, so one can certainly have pretty much any GUI, just like any other Linux distribution.
blahbhthrow3748 6y ago
This is extremely neat but the name "gash" is... a poor choice. Gory in standard English, worse as a slang term
- enriquto 6y ago
  Why do you pronounce it like that, though? I pronounce it like "geesh" or "guish" or "guiche" (not sure how to write it phonetically). It is just the Catalan word for "chalk".
  - burkaman 6y ago
    Not Guix, Gash: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash
    - benbristow 6y ago
      Gash is a slang term for the female sexual organ. Not a good name for a project.
      - gmanley 6y ago
        If we were to reserve every word that is also used as slang for sexual organs we'd be out a lot of words. Peach, purse, shaft, sheath, tool, pocket, etc, these are all slang as well, yet we still use these for their original meaning. It's all about context. I'd also say 'gash' is quite regional. I've only ever heard it used in the U.K.
        lukego 6y ago
        Australia too. Quite vulgar but not especially common nor especially rare.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
qqii 6y ago
I'm really glad that guix has been working on this area. Apart from using scheme this is one of the core areas that really distinguish them from nix. Just compare the difficulty of trying to use the third party nix-bundle to produce a binary for another system versus guix pack.
rudolph9 6y ago
Does anyone know of a recent comparison of NixOS vs Guix? Both these projects are awesome and I’m a NixOS user but I want to learn more about Guix. I’ve found older ones but nothing in the past year and with all the recent developments in both communities I’d love to see a side by side comparison.
- cbaines 6y ago
  Maybe it would be nice to have a wiki style page for this... anyway, I can only offer a perspective from the Guix side of things, but these are the reasons I'd personally be cautious about using Nix/Nixpkgs. I believe a higher proportion of Nixpkgs don't build all or some of the software/artifacts from source. I picked a random example, JOSM. The nixpkgs package definition is quite short [1], but I don't think it's actually building the software? The Guix package definition is much longer [2] but I think that's because it's actually building the software from source. 1: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applications/misc/josm/default.nix#L44 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applicatio... 2: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/geo.scm?id=8b00728144d0e4bbc740e1595c85f0ecee3f6fb0#n1163 https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages... Personally, I like binary packages, which is why I use Guix, but I also value the security and flexibility of having these packages actually build the software from source. Nixpkgs also contains non-free software. This is sort of related to the previous point, as it's much harder to tell if software is free or not if you're not building it from source, but Guix everything should be free software which takes away a worry when using it. With nixpkgs, I believe there are some bits of non-free software that are marked as such, but not taking a strong stance on attempting to build everything from source makes me generally unsure about the quality assurance in this area.
  - rudolph9 6y ago
    All good points but it’s worth noting that in order to install any non-free NixOS packages there is an explicit flag you need to set which affect their entire OS or set of packages on your machine. That said, downloading a jar instead of compiling the jar from source is definitely a notable difference and potentially is unfree software despite the license stating otherwise and the flag previously mentioned set. While there is nothing inherent about NixOS To prevent non-free software from entering the ecosystem, there is also nothing inherent to Guix either that would prevent any non-free software. Ultimately it comes down to community curation of the packages and while Guix almost definitely is more vigilant about free software both have focus on free-software NixOS has the option to install non-free (which you need to explicitly enable to install non-software) and Guix is more strict where their official packages don’t intentionally support any non-free software and they employ practices that are more likely to catch oversights.
dilandau 6y ago
Is anybody using this? What do you like about it versus a more typical linux or unix? Is hardware support good enough to run on a relatively recent laptop?
- not2b 6y ago
  That isn't the purpose. It isn't for end users to run. It's to be able to have confidence that the object code in a software distribution depends only on the source code, and not on something that a clever attacker has managed to sneak in, using a variant of the Thompson "trusting trust" attack.
  - danieldk 6y ago
    I think dilandau is asking if anyone is using Guix.
- rekado 6y ago
  I'm using Guix System on new Dell servers, old Sun servers, a Dell laptop, a Purism Librem laptop, an old Thinkpad --- it works just fine. I think the fear of missing drivers when using Linux without blobs is extremely overstated. Yes, certain WiFi cards won't work without blobs, and yes, the 3D graphics situation is not great thanks to NVIDIA and AMD. > What do you like about it versus a more typical linux or unix? Oh, so many things... But most important for me is stateless configuration, reproducible builds, no-nonsense application bundles without all that Dockeresk cruft via "guix pack", ad-hoc environments, etc.
  - jabirali 6y ago
    > 3D graphics situation is not great thanks to NVIDIA and AMD. AMD is now one of the good guys when it comes to open source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMDGPU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMDGPU Basically, since 2015, AMD has offered an official driver under an MIT license for Linux and *BSD. Personally, I'm definitely choosing AMD for my next laptop :).
    - 6y ago
xedrac 6y ago
I love the idea of Guix. I also love Scheme and Free software. It seems Guix and I would be a match made in heaven. But then I read things like this: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/deprecating-support-for-the-linux-kernel/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/deprecating-support-for-the-l... (turns out this was an April fools joke)... I'm not sure I love Hurd so much. Admittedly, I have not used it, but would be hesitant to rely on it for any important work. Maybe it will prove me wrong. It just seems like it has been an awful lot of work to get Linux to where it is, and it was a pretty bumpy ride at times. Edit: I guess I'm pretty dense. I hate April fools jokes! But now I'm happy I can start using Guix without fear of being forced into Hurd. That said, I will try out Hurd just for the fun of it.

195 points by rekado 6y ago

Who funds Guix development? This this one of those experimental/hobby/academic projects? I never hear anything about Guix outside of HN or F/OSS boards (and even then, very little). How does it continue?

zucker42 6y ago
Well at least for this: > We are excited that the Nlnet Foundation has sponsored this work!
artistsvoid 6y ago
It's part of GNU [0] (which in itself is a community), but GNU as a whole is additionally funded in part by the FSF [1] ; And then as always: volunteers. I suspect since Guix heavily utilizes Lisp quite a few Emacs lovers might watch Guix closely and even contribute ; students might pick GNU projects as part of a thesis et cetera. And I am unsure how 'active' development is, I have no insight, but it has been in existence for so long and still no one I know has ever used it. On the other hand NixOS[2] (or Nix as a package manager in similar vein) seems to be used heavily by some Power Users. [0] http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html [1] https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/ https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/ [2] https://nixos.org/ https://nixos.org/
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago
  I think the comparison to nix is quite unfair, since it's more than twice as old (~7 years vs ~16 years).
  - rudolph9 6y ago
    Does anyone know of a recent comparison of NixOS vs Guix? I’ve found older ones but nothing in the past year and with all the recent developments in both communities I’d love to see a side by side comparison.
- qqii 6y ago
  In GNU fashion they're using savannah mailing lists and email patches so to those who are comfortable with git{hub,lab} it's slightly less familiar. Here is their git repository: https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix Here is the web interface to their issues and patches mailing list: https://issues.guix.gnu.org/ https://issues.guix.gnu.org/ As you can see although the project is less popular, it is no less actively developed and you can easily find system configurations by searching git{hub,lab}.
  - artistsvoid 6y ago
    I fear it being 'GNU' they will shoot themselves in the foot somehow. Bad marketing, unnecessarily geeky and childish nomenclature, GPLv3 and make it all free software, no proprietary drivers, hard to get proprietary third party software to install et cetera... 'GNU Guix is a transactional package manager and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that respects user freedom.'[0] NixOS is developed using the MIT license and does seem to just want things to work. I am bringing this up purely as a question, is that fear justified or am I missing something? Would be glad for a take on this from someone who knows more. [0] https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/guix
    - rudolph9 6y ago
      Yeah this is my take on it too. While I deeply admire the GNU philosophy and practice I debated adopting NixOS or Guix a few months ago and ultimately adopted NixOS as I got the same vibe as you. That said I really want to learn more about Guix. It seems like a more pure impl of a functional package manager but haven’t worked with it enough to know the difference.
    - paroneayea 6y ago
      The choice of GPL doesn't seem to be hurting the Linux Kernel. I doubt it'll hurt a package manager either. Plenty of Debian infrastructure software is also GPLv3. At any rate, the choice to go "have a pure base" is the right one IMO: it's nice to have a system where I know I have the right to use/modify/distribute changes to the entire thing. It's easier to start with that pure base and add impurities if you need them (eg if your hardware requires blobs to operate it) than the reverse. That said I think it would be helpful if there was a place to direct users who need to figure out how to install such blobs, even though I agree that the official mailing lists and project repository should not be it. (I am running a blobbed kernel on my current machine because I have to, but I previously was able to run with the linux-libre kernel Guix ships with. It's definitely possible to do if you need to, just not well documented.)
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  >I suspect since Guix heavily utilizes Lisp quite a few Emacs lovers might watch Guix closely and even contribute As an Emacs user who contributes packages occasionally - yup, that's about right! It's a really natural combination. Every so often I'll run across something I want that's not yet packaged for Guix, and if you're used to hacking on elisp the Guix package definitions aren't too hard to get the hang of. I think it's the only distro I've used that readily accepts new packages from the community (with review of course) - haven't used it myself but I think NixOS/nixpkgs is similar in that regard.
- civodul 6y ago
  The latest release notes at https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ give some insights about the project's activity. Currently there's ~90 monthly contributors and ~1,700 commits per month. It's active. :-)
- paroneayea 6y ago
  Development is very, very active. See for yourself: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/log/ https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/log/ The FSF is GNU's sponsor, and provides some infrastructure, but generally hasn't done too much in terms of funding the project. However other funding has happened in terms of NLNet, Outreachy, GSoC, and some stuff with the Guix HPC project. But far and away the majority of contributions are from unpaid contributors.
eeh 6y ago
The EU. The article mentions: "We are excited that the Nlnet Foundation has sponsored this work!" https://nlnet.nl/project/GNUMes/ https://nlnet.nl/project/GNUMes/ mentions "This project was funded through the NGI0 PET Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme". So this is funded by the EU.
mbakke 6y ago
The answer is "all of the above". Guix is largely community-driven, but receives donations[0] as well as sponsored work like the NLnet grant mentioned in the article. In addition some research institutions employ Guix developers[1]. Personally I have used Guix to convert a CentOS "appliance" into a full-blown desktop system, on a professional contract[2]. 0: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/gnu-guix-receives-donation-from-the-handshake-project/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/gnu-guix-receives-donation-fr... 1: https://hpc.guix.info/ https://hpc.guix.info/ 2: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/running-a-guix-xfce-desktop-on-centos-7/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/running-a-guix-xfce-desktop-o...

LockAndLol 6y ago

I see that guix is a declarative package manager like nix. Where does it have a leg up over nix? And how's the GUI integration with KDE and gnome? Is there a backend for KDE Discover or the Gnome Software Center? Finally, I see that installation goes over a "curl | bash", which imo is a pretty insecure method of installation. I can understand why such an insecure method exists (so many different ways of installing software on linux), but that's like saying HTTP is a good idea because it's easier than HTTPS.

qqii 6y ago
This post is a pretty good example, for I don't know of any nix projects that are attempting to work on the bootstrapping problem. Guix pack[0] solves a parallel issue of distributing your nicely dependancy managed ecosystem whereas nix's alternative with nix-bundle barely works. At the moment neither have gui integration and unfortunately both could use a lot of work with onboarding and beginner (I'm taking non programmers) friendliness. [0]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-pack.html https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-pack....
- rudolph9 6y ago
  I like the container support! Declarative containers is an area where Dockerfiles fall short in my experience. I’ve been using the NixOS container support which has drastically streamlined and unified the largely similar but many small variations of containers that I use https://nixos.org/nixos/manual/#ch-containers https://nixos.org/nixos/manual/#ch-containers
- ssivark 6y ago
  > At the moment neither have gui integration and unfortunately both could use a lot of work with onboarding and beginner (I'm taking non programmers) friendliness. I think non-programmer friendliness can wait till there are enough technical users that the superficial daily-experience bugs get ironed out, and also the newbies have a social support system for onboarding. Trying to jump that curve will prove painful in the long term. I would love to see the guidance and tools for technical users to try this out and start switching over the next few years. AFAIK, Gnome/KDE or some other DE can be built/installed like any other package, so one can certainly have pretty much any GUI, just like any other Linux distribution.

blahbhthrow3748 6y ago

This is extremely neat but the name "gash" is... a poor choice. Gory in standard English, worse as a slang term

enriquto 6y ago
Why do you pronounce it like that, though? I pronounce it like "geesh" or "guish" or "guiche" (not sure how to write it phonetically). It is just the Catalan word for "chalk".
- burkaman 6y ago
  Not Guix, Gash: https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gash
  - benbristow 6y ago
    Gash is a slang term for the female sexual organ. Not a good name for a project.
    - gmanley 6y ago
      If we were to reserve every word that is also used as slang for sexual organs we'd be out a lot of words. Peach, purse, shaft, sheath, tool, pocket, etc, these are all slang as well, yet we still use these for their original meaning. It's all about context. I'd also say 'gash' is quite regional. I've only ever heard it used in the U.K.
      - lukego 6y ago
        Australia too. Quite vulgar but not especially common nor especially rare.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]

qqii 6y ago

I'm really glad that guix has been working on this area. Apart from using scheme this is one of the core areas that really distinguish them from nix. Just compare the difficulty of trying to use the third party nix-bundle to produce a binary for another system versus guix pack.

rudolph9 6y ago

Does anyone know of a recent comparison of NixOS vs Guix? Both these projects are awesome and I’m a NixOS user but I want to learn more about Guix. I’ve found older ones but nothing in the past year and with all the recent developments in both communities I’d love to see a side by side comparison.

cbaines 6y ago
Maybe it would be nice to have a wiki style page for this... anyway, I can only offer a perspective from the Guix side of things, but these are the reasons I'd personally be cautious about using Nix/Nixpkgs. I believe a higher proportion of Nixpkgs don't build all or some of the software/artifacts from source. I picked a random example, JOSM. The nixpkgs package definition is quite short [1], but I don't think it's actually building the software? The Guix package definition is much longer [2] but I think that's because it's actually building the software from source. 1: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applications/misc/josm/default.nix#L44 https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/applicatio... 2: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/geo.scm?id=8b00728144d0e4bbc740e1595c85f0ecee3f6fb0#n1163 https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages... Personally, I like binary packages, which is why I use Guix, but I also value the security and flexibility of having these packages actually build the software from source. Nixpkgs also contains non-free software. This is sort of related to the previous point, as it's much harder to tell if software is free or not if you're not building it from source, but Guix everything should be free software which takes away a worry when using it. With nixpkgs, I believe there are some bits of non-free software that are marked as such, but not taking a strong stance on attempting to build everything from source makes me generally unsure about the quality assurance in this area.
- rudolph9 6y ago
  All good points but it’s worth noting that in order to install any non-free NixOS packages there is an explicit flag you need to set which affect their entire OS or set of packages on your machine. That said, downloading a jar instead of compiling the jar from source is definitely a notable difference and potentially is unfree software despite the license stating otherwise and the flag previously mentioned set. While there is nothing inherent about NixOS To prevent non-free software from entering the ecosystem, there is also nothing inherent to Guix either that would prevent any non-free software. Ultimately it comes down to community curation of the packages and while Guix almost definitely is more vigilant about free software both have focus on free-software NixOS has the option to install non-free (which you need to explicitly enable to install non-software) and Guix is more strict where their official packages don’t intentionally support any non-free software and they employ practices that are more likely to catch oversights.

dilandau 6y ago

Is anybody using this? What do you like about it versus a more typical linux or unix? Is hardware support good enough to run on a relatively recent laptop?

not2b 6y ago
That isn't the purpose. It isn't for end users to run. It's to be able to have confidence that the object code in a software distribution depends only on the source code, and not on something that a clever attacker has managed to sneak in, using a variant of the Thompson "trusting trust" attack.
- danieldk 6y ago
  I think dilandau is asking if anyone is using Guix.
rekado 6y ago
I'm using Guix System on new Dell servers, old Sun servers, a Dell laptop, a Purism Librem laptop, an old Thinkpad --- it works just fine. I think the fear of missing drivers when using Linux without blobs is extremely overstated. Yes, certain WiFi cards won't work without blobs, and yes, the 3D graphics situation is not great thanks to NVIDIA and AMD. > What do you like about it versus a more typical linux or unix? Oh, so many things... But most important for me is stateless configuration, reproducible builds, no-nonsense application bundles without all that Dockeresk cruft via "guix pack", ad-hoc environments, etc.
- jabirali 6y ago
  > 3D graphics situation is not great thanks to NVIDIA and AMD. AMD is now one of the good guys when it comes to open source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMDGPU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMDGPU Basically, since 2015, AMD has offered an official driver under an MIT license for Linux and *BSD. Personally, I'm definitely choosing AMD for my next laptop :).
  - 6y ago

xedrac 6y ago

I love the idea of Guix. I also love Scheme and Free software. It seems Guix and I would be a match made in heaven. But then I read things like this: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/deprecating-support-for-the-linux-kernel/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/deprecating-support-for-the-l... (turns out this was an April fools joke)... I'm not sure I love Hurd so much. Admittedly, I have not used it, but would be hesitant to rely on it for any important work. Maybe it will prove me wrong. It just seems like it has been an awful lot of work to get Linux to where it is, and it was a pretty bumpy ride at times. Edit: I guess I'm pretty dense. I hate April fools jokes! But now I'm happy I can start using Guix without fear of being forced into Hurd. That said, I will try out Hurd just for the fun of it.