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Hello, author here, happy to answer questions and discuss! This is the first in more Guix articles coming from me, as I started when building my newest desktop

by podiki 5y ago

Hello, author here, happy to answer questions and discuss! This is the first in more Guix articles coming from me, as I started when building my newest desktop [0]. Next will be more details on exactly how my system is set up, but you can find (somewhat out of date as we work on big updates in Guix) my dot files here [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28628344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28628344 [1] https://github.com/podiki/dot.me/tree/master/guix/.config https://github.com/podiki/dot.me/tree/master/guix/.config

Dracophoenix 5y ago
What's your experience with Guix and Nix on laptops? Which among them are sufficiently supported to be daily drivers? Have you tried running Proton on Guix? For someone who is interested in the Guix/Nix ethos but wants to keep Arch, is there anything aside from sentimental reasons that I would be missing by just running the Nix/Guix package managers on top of Arch .
- rowanG077 5y ago
  I'm using NixOS on my last two laptops without issue. One was a Surface Pro which required a custom kernel and right now I have an XPS 13. Proton runs fine as well.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    I'm assuming the kernel you're referring to is the one from the linux-surface project? If so, which model and configuration of Surface Pro were you using? Were you ever able to get LTE, touchscreen, and pen to work? How is the battery life? Is your XPS 13 the latest revision (i.e. 9310)? If it is, how does Nix handle sleep since Intel had removed S3 support?
    - rowanG077 5y ago
      > I'm assuming the kernel you're referring to is the one from the linux-surface project? If so, which model and configuration of Surface Pro were you using? Yes I used the linux-surface project. I used a Surface Pro 2017 with an Intel Core i7-7660U CPU. It doesn't have LTE. But touchscreen and pen worked without issues after some fiddling with configs. Battery life was a little worse then on Windows but not dramatically so. > Is your XPS 13 the latest revision (i.e. 9310)? If it is, how does Nix handle sleep since Intel had removed S3 support? Yes it's the 9310 model. I use suspend (systemctl suspend) and it works fine. I'm not sure how I can check whether S3 is actually supported. Battery life is about the same story as the Surface. A little bit worse compared to windows.
    - jacobmischka 5y ago
      If you're curious about XPS support in general, I use Arch and force S3 on my 9380 [1] and it works fine, also slightly worse battery when sleeping than ideal (loses about 5-10% in 24 hours, or so), but fine. [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dell_XPS_13_(9370)#Sleep https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dell_XPS_13_(9370)#Sleep
- podiki 5y ago
  I haven't used Guix on my laptop much other than as a package manager or to work on patches when I'm not at my desktop. So I can't say much, but Guix does tend to be heavier on storage IO needs. You can always use substitutes to avoid much building, unless you are doing things you need to build locally, like custom patches or other changes. Proton I've only ran through Flatpak Steam. As I mentioned, Nonguix's Steam is limited to older Proton, but I think we'll get that fixed pretty soon once some bigger updates on Guix settle down (today was actually a "sprint" day to fix up changes coming to the main Guix branch soon). But yes, worked great in Flatpak. The main thing you'll miss from Guix in just using it as a package manager is the system configuration stuff. That will still be your host OS. You can play around with installing different things with Guix, package transformations, and even now trying out the (still in progress) Guix Home [0] to configure your dot files. Guix as a package manager will still give you a good feel of the advanced features it has for managing packages, without touching your host OS. [0] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Home-Configuration.html https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Home-Configur...
- opan 5y ago
  Guix System works great on a ThinkPad T440p besides the default WLAN card. I removed mine for now. If you flash coreboot (to get around the hardware whitelist), you should be able to put in one compatible with linux-libre. There's also the USB dongle solution if you're into that.

by podiki 5y ago

Dracophoenix 5y ago

What's your experience with Guix and Nix on laptops? Which among them are sufficiently supported to be daily drivers? Have you tried running Proton on Guix? For someone who is interested in the Guix/Nix ethos but wants to keep Arch, is there anything aside from sentimental reasons that I would be missing by just running the Nix/Guix package managers on top of Arch .

rowanG077 5y ago
I'm using NixOS on my last two laptops without issue. One was a Surface Pro which required a custom kernel and right now I have an XPS 13. Proton runs fine as well.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  I'm assuming the kernel you're referring to is the one from the linux-surface project? If so, which model and configuration of Surface Pro were you using? Were you ever able to get LTE, touchscreen, and pen to work? How is the battery life? Is your XPS 13 the latest revision (i.e. 9310)? If it is, how does Nix handle sleep since Intel had removed S3 support?
  - rowanG077 5y ago
    > I'm assuming the kernel you're referring to is the one from the linux-surface project? If so, which model and configuration of Surface Pro were you using? Yes I used the linux-surface project. I used a Surface Pro 2017 with an Intel Core i7-7660U CPU. It doesn't have LTE. But touchscreen and pen worked without issues after some fiddling with configs. Battery life was a little worse then on Windows but not dramatically so. > Is your XPS 13 the latest revision (i.e. 9310)? If it is, how does Nix handle sleep since Intel had removed S3 support? Yes it's the 9310 model. I use suspend (systemctl suspend) and it works fine. I'm not sure how I can check whether S3 is actually supported. Battery life is about the same story as the Surface. A little bit worse compared to windows.
  - jacobmischka 5y ago
    If you're curious about XPS support in general, I use Arch and force S3 on my 9380 [1] and it works fine, also slightly worse battery when sleeping than ideal (loses about 5-10% in 24 hours, or so), but fine. [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dell_XPS_13_(9370)#Sleep https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dell_XPS_13_(9370)#Sleep
podiki 5y ago
I haven't used Guix on my laptop much other than as a package manager or to work on patches when I'm not at my desktop. So I can't say much, but Guix does tend to be heavier on storage IO needs. You can always use substitutes to avoid much building, unless you are doing things you need to build locally, like custom patches or other changes. Proton I've only ran through Flatpak Steam. As I mentioned, Nonguix's Steam is limited to older Proton, but I think we'll get that fixed pretty soon once some bigger updates on Guix settle down (today was actually a "sprint" day to fix up changes coming to the main Guix branch soon). But yes, worked great in Flatpak. The main thing you'll miss from Guix in just using it as a package manager is the system configuration stuff. That will still be your host OS. You can play around with installing different things with Guix, package transformations, and even now trying out the (still in progress) Guix Home [0] to configure your dot files. Guix as a package manager will still give you a good feel of the advanced features it has for managing packages, without touching your host OS. [0] https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Home-Configuration.html https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Home-Configur...
opan 5y ago
Guix System works great on a ThinkPad T440p besides the default WLAN card. I removed mine for now. If you flash coreboot (to get around the hardware whitelist), you should be able to put in one compatible with linux-libre. There's also the USB dongle solution if you're into that.