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?
I don’t like the idea of configuring pm (or anything else) using a programming language. So I would try nix first if I feel that I need it. However I don’t.
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.
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.
Later I found out it’s based on some LISP variant.
Wait how did you find out it was written in Scheme after you installed it? Sounds like someone didn’t do their research.
firefox
Mozilla is picky with where their trademark is being used, not a “GNU specific” problem, it had affected Debian for years before Mozilla backed off. Guix instead uses GNU Icecat which is a completely libre web browser that doesn’t run proprietary JS by default. Of course you can still install Firefox since Guix community members have already packaged it in their own channels.
nix has terrible documentation
One thing that Guix excels at.
Wait how did you find out it was written in Scheme after you installed it? Sounds like someone didn’t do their research.
Yes, I read all specs before installing anything I ever use. Before using the internet I researched the entire IP stack, studied computer science, and am right now using smokes signals captured by a camera at exactly 1 FPS to encode my bits so that you can read them.
🙄
One thing that Guix excels at.
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Yes, I read all specs before installing anything I ever use.
It’s literally in the front page of the project. https://guix.gnu.org/
Hackable. It provides Guile Scheme APIs, including high-level embedded domain-specific languages (EDSLs) to define packages and whole-system configurations.
No idea how you survive Nix’s scattered documentation.
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lmao.
It’s NixOS but more free and with scheme instead of nix
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.
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.
the parts of Guix in which packages are defined are quite pure, even using monads for some things
Monads have nothing to do with purity. In fact, one of the most infamous usages of them is Haskell’s IO monad which is probably the most impure construct in the entire language.
it is really not too different from the Nix language.
Hm, I can’t help but think that a lisp dialect can never really be similar to any language except another lisp.
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.
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?
