5 ms·

Do we have a gui installer for Guix these days? Last I checked, they didn't.

eggie 5y ago
A gui installer would be fun, but an installation process that fixed all the weird quirks (like with LANG settings) by default would also go a long way to making it more approachable. Guix is amazing, all the awkwardness aside.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nix23 5y ago
Why does anyone wants a Gui installer? It's a real question, not trolling. For example i would never use the Gui-Debian installer, instead i use the expert-text installer it's faster and not at all "expert'ish".
- marrs 5y ago
  People are intimidated by CLIs. Simple as that
  - nix23 5y ago
    Textinstallers NOT CLI's https://i.stack.imgur.com/8OQdV.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/8OQdV.png Intimated about text-installers but using something like Guix? Sound like a strange mindset.
    - swiley 5y ago
      I think most people would call a dialog driven installer running in a tty a GUI installer. They just don't want to be dumped into bash and told to set up GRUB on their own. Alpine's installer is the best IMO: you get a GUI style wizard but it's contained in a set of shell scripts (setup-*) so if you need it again you can run it yourself.
      - medstrom 5y ago
        OpenBSD is another goodie. Answer a number of prompts and then it installs and configs stuff in one go (no more prompts midway through or afterwards). Plus you can "preload" your answers by referring to a file, good if you admin many machines.
- rataata_jr 5y ago
  Haven't tried Arch or other cli installers yet. Edit: Also, I just want things to work these days. I'm not interested in learning some installer tool's commands that I'm never going to use again.
  - nix23 5y ago
    Not talking about arch...talking about text-installers like debian, openbsd etc. There is no learning involved just TAB, Space and Enter.
    - rataata_jr 5y ago
      Text installers work for me. Thanks.
- e3bc54b2 5y ago
  Discoverability. I am very comfortable on CLI, and will always prefer it over GUI for most tasks, but for OS installations, GUI is vastly superior. From the get go, if installer loads with GUI, you know that you likely won't see black screen on first boot. All the drives can be easily formatted (I always multi-boot) and there is no mental translation of how much space is used in which drive under what layout. These 2 are my primary reasons. Apart from that, if something goes wrong during setup, GUI installer almost always comes with full browser available right there for looking IP errors, eliminating need for second device. With CLI installers, there usually isn't a DE included. (NixOS disk comes with full DE option, but CLI installer, making it a hybrid, not sure about GuixSD)
  - mrslave 5y ago
    Except with NixOS the whole point is system configuration in one file. Assuming you're comfortable getting on a network and partitioning a disk, there's not much need for a GUI. At work, with multiple machines with little difference, an experienced admin will just clone or fork a Git repository, format a full disk, and run the installation command.
mbakke 5y ago
The Guix installer comes with a console-based GUI since version 1.0. You can see it in action here: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ I guess it depends on your definition of "GUI". :-)
- rataata_jr 5y ago
  OK, this much GUI is enough for me to give it a try.
medstrom 5y ago
Guix installer was the first time I experienced the info documentation available "side-by-side" with the CLI (that is, `info` was already open on a separate tty). So obvious in retrospect. Gentoo is another nice installer but much clumsier as they make you actually connect to gentoo.org with `links` to find the installation guide (when you may not have the internet working).

A gui installer would be fun, but an installation process that fixed all the weird quirks (like with LANG settings) by default would also go a long way to making it more approachable. Guix is amazing, all the awkwardness aside.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nix23 5y ago

Why does anyone wants a Gui installer? It's a real question, not trolling. For example i would never use the Gui-Debian installer, instead i use the expert-text installer it's faster and not at all "expert'ish".

marrs 5y ago
People are intimidated by CLIs. Simple as that
- nix23 5y ago
  Textinstallers NOT CLI's https://i.stack.imgur.com/8OQdV.png https://i.stack.imgur.com/8OQdV.png Intimated about text-installers but using something like Guix? Sound like a strange mindset.
  - swiley 5y ago
    I think most people would call a dialog driven installer running in a tty a GUI installer. They just don't want to be dumped into bash and told to set up GRUB on their own. Alpine's installer is the best IMO: you get a GUI style wizard but it's contained in a set of shell scripts (setup-*) so if you need it again you can run it yourself.
    - medstrom 5y ago
      OpenBSD is another goodie. Answer a number of prompts and then it installs and configs stuff in one go (no more prompts midway through or afterwards). Plus you can "preload" your answers by referring to a file, good if you admin many machines.
rataata_jr 5y ago
Haven't tried Arch or other cli installers yet. Edit: Also, I just want things to work these days. I'm not interested in learning some installer tool's commands that I'm never going to use again.
- nix23 5y ago
  Not talking about arch...talking about text-installers like debian, openbsd etc. There is no learning involved just TAB, Space and Enter.
  - rataata_jr 5y ago
    Text installers work for me. Thanks.
e3bc54b2 5y ago
Discoverability. I am very comfortable on CLI, and will always prefer it over GUI for most tasks, but for OS installations, GUI is vastly superior. From the get go, if installer loads with GUI, you know that you likely won't see black screen on first boot. All the drives can be easily formatted (I always multi-boot) and there is no mental translation of how much space is used in which drive under what layout. These 2 are my primary reasons. Apart from that, if something goes wrong during setup, GUI installer almost always comes with full browser available right there for looking IP errors, eliminating need for second device. With CLI installers, there usually isn't a DE included. (NixOS disk comes with full DE option, but CLI installer, making it a hybrid, not sure about GuixSD)
- mrslave 5y ago
  Except with NixOS the whole point is system configuration in one file. Assuming you're comfortable getting on a network and partitioning a disk, there's not much need for a GUI. At work, with multiple machines with little difference, an experienced admin will just clone or fork a Git repository, format a full disk, and run the installation command.

mbakke 5y ago

The Guix installer comes with a console-based GUI since version 1.0. You can see it in action here: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2020/gnu-guix-1.1.0-released/ I guess it depends on your definition of "GUI". :-)

rataata_jr 5y ago
OK, this much GUI is enough for me to give it a try.

medstrom 5y ago

Guix installer was the first time I experienced the info documentation available "side-by-side" with the CLI (that is, `info` was already open on a separate tty). So obvious in retrospect. Gentoo is another nice installer but much clumsier as they make you actually connect to gentoo.org with `links` to find the installation guide (when you may not have the internet working).