4 ms·

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 susp

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.)
    - artistsvoid 6y ago
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.

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.)
  - artistsvoid 6y ago

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.