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What are your opinions of Guix? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 10 months ago by CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Reposting because it looks like federation failed.

I was just reading about it, it sounds like a pretty cool OS and package manager. Has anyone actually used it?

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[–] tekila@lemmy.world 36 points 10 months ago

The idea behind it really appeals to me. However, Guix is so niche that I felt like it was not worth the effort to actually daily drive it. I went the NixOS way instead and have been daily driving it now for almost 2years. I'm really satisfied with the paradigm immutable and reproducible os. I also manage my servers this way and it makes it really easy to rollback stuff.

The learning curve is the same as for any language but you have to relearn how to manage an os this way as it can be really different than a trad os. It forces you to really understand for example how packages traditionally expect to link to various libs available on your system.

[–] Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml 30 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

So I think Guix (and Nix) is the most technologically advanced package manager in existence, and I hope someday all package managers work like Guix.

One other very interesting feature about Guix ~~(which I don't think Nix is doing yet)~~ (which Nix also does) is that they have implemented a fully verifiable bootstrap, meaning every step of building the kernel, including the steps taken to build the C compiler toolchain, are produced by code that is simple enough for a group of humans to check for correctness and safety. Also, every step of the build process exists in the package repository, with no reliance on externally built binaries for anything, not even the C compiler toolchain. They accomplish this with a multi-phase bootstrap process, where a smaller, simpler C compiler is used to build GCC.

Do I use Guix? Well, no. Simply put, it is not quite to the point where it just works on a lot of the computer hardware that I own. With a bit more work, with a few more developers, and a bit more money invested, Guix could pretty soon become as reliable and useful as Debian or Fedora. But it is not quite there yet. And frankly, I have other more important things to do than worry about debugging problems with the operating system I am using.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

meaning every step of building the kernel, including the steps taken to build the C compiler toolchain, are produced by code that is simple enough to check for correctness and safety.

Full-source bootstrap isn't about just the kernel, it affects every piece of software. With GUIX and Nix, every single package can be fully traced back to the bootstrap seed.

Though it should be noted that you do require a running Linux kernel on an x86 machine in order to bootstrap.

it is not quite to the point where it /just works/ on a lot of the computer hardware that I own.

Unless we get some serious money, effort and/or regulation w.r.t. OSS firmware, that will likely never be the case.
That has nothing to do with its technology though, that's a political issue. GUIX is a GNU project and acts like proprietary software does not exist/is not a basic necessity in 2023.

[–] jaeme@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

GUIX is a GNU project and acts like proprietary software does not exist/is not a basic necessity in 2023.

Gross oversimplification, Guix absolutely knows that proprietary software exists, but also Guix is a project that values transparent build process (unlike Nix, which allows binaries and nonfree packages).

If you don't have the requisite bare metal to run Guix by itself, you can run it as a foreign package manager (on top of your existing distribution), in a virtual machine, or alongside package channels outside of guix that package nonfree software.

The linux-libre kernel is only an issue for Guix System (the analogue to NixOS for Nix) and for users who need that specific hardware to be used. Guix is a breath of fresh air in package managers who attempt to sweep nonfree software under the rug and try to make the issue invisible.

[–] Atemu@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you don’t have the requisite bare metal to run Guix by itself

That's a bit disingenuous wording as modern hardware that can run without proprietary firmware is an absolute rarity at this point.

The vast majority of people on earth do not have access to such hardware.

The linux-libre kernel is only an issue for Guix System (the analogue to NixOS for Nix)

Point taken. I was talking about the OS aspect of both though, given that @Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml compared it to Debian and Fedora.

The project should have really kept the GuixSD name. Much clearer separation and also sounds a lot better.

package managers who attempt to sweep nonfree software under the rug and try to make the issue invisible.

Which ones?

In Nix, you get a giant red error when you try to eval unfree software and need to explicitly opt-in.

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[–] OmnipotentEntity@beehaw.org 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Nix is also working on reproducible builds. In fact, the minimal installation CD for NixOS last release was reproducible. https://discourse.nixos.org/t/nixos-reproducible-builds-minimal-installation-iso-successfully-independently-rebuilt/34756/

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Another interesting thing about Guix is that it compiles everything itself (with an option to outsource the heavy lifting in case you're on a Raspberry Pi or something). Layers of abstraction not talking to each other properly is a conceptual pet peeve of mine, so I like the idea of everything being visible to the compiler like that.

[–] Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

As far as I understand it, Guix will download pre-built binaries for most packages from a cache by default, and the Guix OS distribution makes sure the x86_64 binaries for the latest package descriptions are always cached, so you should usually not have to locally build packages.

But of course you can easily tweak the default configuration of packages you install and trigger a local re-build of those packages, since changing the configuration of any package causes a cache miss.

[–] ultra@feddit.ro 13 points 10 months ago

It's NixOS but more free and with scheme instead of nix

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago

Everyone thinks it's great, but they actually run NixOS in the meanwhile

[–] cyclohexane@lemmy.ml 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Guix is almost like nix but with scheme, right? Any other differences?

I do like scheme. Nix is quite impressive. But my unpopular opinion is I am not convinced it's philosophy is necessary. Nix feels like a workaround to legacy baggage in POSIX to allow for all its features of full reproducibility of packages and the overall system. Although Gentoo is not exactly reproducible, I feel like the level of control is sufficient to give me the benefits I want.

Nix works for maybe 95% of cases, but the 5% where its workarounds do not work sre annoying to deal with. Gentoo on the other hand doesn't break so much from the traditional unix way of doing things, but still grants the user a great load of freedom and choice.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Based on what I've heard so far: GNU Shepard instead of systemd, a package manager that compiles things from source and allows user-defined compiler options, a totally different way of arranging system files, and Guile-Scheme is used for everything; it sounds like there's no other kind of configuration anywhere.

It also uses Linux-libre by default, although you can go back to plain Linux, and they're working on Hurd.

[–] natecox@programming.dev 1 points 10 months ago

The biggest difference between Nix and Guix is that Guix doesn’t support non-foss software, meaning you can’t use it as a package manager on other operating systems. I originally wanted to use Guix but use a Mac for work, so that became a deal breaker.

Nix is pretty awesome as a package manager, I’ve been happy with it after the truly unnecessary learning curve brutality. I do not imagine I would ever use the full OS though.

[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I haven't gnused it, I probably won't unless I stop using nixos. I haven't looked into it much, how different from nixos is guix?

[–] jaeme@lemmy.ml 12 points 10 months ago

Guix System is the NixOS equivalent. It is a GNU FSDG compliant, rolling release, non-systemd GNU/Linux operating system.

Guix System also has a much smaller community compared to NixOS (also more than a decade younger), but it is a community of passionate hackers who work to improve the distribution one way or the other. The big difference of course being that it is all written in Guile Scheme rather than a Domain Specific Language. So you'll learn about things like g-expressions (Guix's take on LISP's s-expressions), Guix services (system and home), and Guile Scheme itself.

If you want to work with Guix, you basically have to become a contributor to the project, but it's really a rewarding experience if you choose to do so.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Moderately. Same rough idea, with a few other things in the blend. For example, I found it via GNU Shepard, which it uses, while Nix sounds like it just uses systemd. The Guix package manager will also compile things from source with custom options if it needs.

[–] Spore@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

Fyi, it's now available on nixos.

[–] frankfurt_schoolgirl@hexbear.net 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think that it's a great project, and I hope it succeeds. My sense is that there is more momentum around Nix, so for a lot of uses it just makes more sense.

Guix and Nix both have the same issue imo, which is using a loosely typed language with an odd syntax. I feel like something both strongly typed and with a more common syntax would be easier to edit and faster to evaluate.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

So, I actually learned about Guix via GNU Shepherd. It sounds like NixOS just uses systemd, which I don't love. Not in a dramatic way, and I'm currently running systemd, but it does break the Unix philosophy.

A Haskell-based package manager would be pretty dope (seeing as that's the gold standard for that sort of language). I wonder if someone's working on it.

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[–] Octorine@midwest.social 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I tried and failed to install it on my laptop last year. Couldn't figure out the problem and went back to pop. I'm messing around with it in a vm, though, and liking it a lot. I may try again when I have some more time to troubleshoot.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

it may be because you were using the default libre kernel, which is missing lots of microcode for your drivers. You need to add a substitute binary server that points to non-guix, which you can then use to supplant the libre kernel with the mainline one.

[–] Octorine@midwest.social 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I thought that, but I had identical results using the stock install media and the modified nonguix one from systemcrafters.

The weird thing was that the initial install went fine, even after the first reboot. The problem was the next boot after my first system reconfigure.

Not only could I not boot my system after that, but I couldn't boot the install media either. The only thing that would work was the installer for the most recent pop os.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That sounds like a BIOS issue. I sometimes get these on my laptop where I installed an EFI partition but my laptop was in some legacy mode, and I need to fiddle with my boot options and disable various features until the system "sees" the boot partition in the same way the OS "saw" it

[–] Octorine@midwest.social 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I was thinking something to do with nonvolitile memory.

The real problem was that the guided install - guix pull - system reconfigure - reboot process took about three to four hours each time, so I gave up after a few iterations.

I did try playing around with bios settings a little, but I'm sure I missed some possibilities.

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[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I tried it out one single time and it failed to install or update or something. Had to then find all the places it had inserted itself into in my system. Later I found out it's based on some LISP variant. Even later I found out you can't install firefox with it because of gnu or something?
That all combined dissuaded me from touching it again.

nix has terrible documentation, but it's kinda worked for me, so I'm sticking with it.

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[–] urfavlaura@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's like Nix but has some extra features and uses Scheme instead of a custom language.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

That's barely an opinion, haha! That's pretty much just what it is.

[–] Sims@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago

I absolutely love it, and I'm never going back to an ordinary distribution again. I do fine regarding software. I use standard channels, non-free channel, flatpaks and a few appimages. I can't think of anything i'm missing atmo..

[–] Spore@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Nobody has mentioned that Guix is readily available on NixOS right now? Add a line to your config and it's ready to go. Compatible with everything else.

[–] LainOfTheWired@lemy.lol 2 points 10 months ago

It looks like a cool distro if you want/need a highly configurable package manager that makes your system easily reproducible.

But if you're just looking to learn more about Linux and learn more about how your system is set up then your average distro you might just want to go with Arch, Void, or Gentoo.

[–] axelf@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Using Scheme instead of a purely functional language like Nix as the Nix/Guix expression language is a bold choice I am not sure I agree with.

[–] Ramin_HAL9001@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Using Scheme instead of a purely functional language like Nix as the Nix/Guix expression language is a bold choice I am not sure I agree with.

Scheme is the most functional of all non-purely-functional languages that I know of. What's more, the parts of Guix in which packages are defined are quite pure, even using monads for some things, so it is really not too different from the Nix language.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So I guess they just wanted to use an established language?

[–] jaeme@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Guile Scheme is the official extensions language for the GNU Project. Guile and Guix's history often intersect as Guix is seen as the shining poster child of Guile and contributes to a lot of Guile's development.

When you say "Scheme" you should also refer to what type of Scheme you're referring to as there are multiple with different feature sets/goals.

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[–] iopq@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

It's actually easier this way because you keep everything in one place.

I edited some file on Ubuntu to merge my audio channels into one because one of my speakers broke. Do you think I know what change I made to what file now? When I update, do you think I can merge my changes with the new file and make everything work? Of course not, I am several years into forgetting what I did

But configuration.nix is one file, I usually get a deprecation notice for some stuff and just change a line here and there from time to time. All of my changes are in there and they are in git. When I switched to flakes I also added flake.nix in there, but it's still just two files in one folder I play around with. Not only that, but the maintainers already gave me the options I need for my services. I don't have to follow some guide online to set something up, I just enable it and it works immediately.

For example, enabling iwd is:

networking.wireless.iwd.enable = true;

I just did that and it worked. I commented it out and it went back to whatever the default package is. Is this as easy to toggle back and forth in other distros?

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[–] kixik@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

These two posts are really enlightening:

How I Built My New Linux Gaming Desktop In 2021 With Amd Cpugpu And Gnu Guix

I Love Arch But Gnu Guix Is My New Distro

From the last, there is a non guix project including packages for guix, which are not officially supported given hey are not free software. I recommend taking a look at the last post at least, since it comes from someone who used Arch, and made the move to Guix, not just opinions from people like me, who haven't ever used Guix.

That said, Guix is in my TODO list. The thing is that I want to learn a bit more than minimal Guile, so I can write packages myself (there are always missing packages, even on Arch/Artix + AUR, I always have the need to whether tweak something at some point, or create a package still not in there), and also deal with my own services to run with shepherd. So I don't want to blindly try things out...

It shares with Nix the reproducible build of everything, but the language it uses is Guile, which has some history. Nix has its own language. To me that's a plus on Guix. But the most important part, is that the official repos are all for free software, and then on the non guix project one can look for non free software pieces, which to me this is also a plus. I guest most might differ.

But again, if you want to try it, even if it's just because of curiosity, why not doing it so? I hope those prior posts from someone who migrated there might be helpful.

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