A beginner's perspective on migrating a home server from Arch Linux to GNU Guix, comparing with NixOS, what works well, and handling practical issues.
  • onlinepersona@programming.dev
    31·
    9 hours ago

    I tried it once and couldn’t even pull Firefox. If something that common isn’t easily retrievable, it doesn’t bode well for packages less popular than Firefox. Would docker, wine, redis, and other stuff suddenly be missing forcing me to repackage everything?

    The prospect of writing packages for everything that isn’t libre doesn’t seem very appealing. They should have a repo with libre stuff and another with whatever doesn’t for their definition. And it should be dead easy to do. If I have to scour the internet for a guide that ends up being the equivalent of Gulliver’s Travels, well… it won’t attract many people.

    There’s a good reason Guix isn’t in distrowatch’s top anything.

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.orgOP
      3·
      7 hours ago

      The prospect of writing packages for everything that isn’t libre doesn’t seem very appealing. They should have a repo with libre stuff and another with whatever doesn’t for their definition.

      This exists already - the nonguix channel on gitlab. You can also easily distribute your own channel with a git repo of package definitions. Say you want to publish a channel that is specially geared and curated to left-handed people, you can do that, much in the way as you can publish an Ubuntu PPA, and it will integrate seamlessly into Guix.

  • onlinepersona@programming.dev
    11·
    9 hours ago

    I tried it once and couldn’t even pull Firefox. If something that common isn’t easily retrievable, it doesn’t bode well for packages less popular than Firefox. Would docker, wine, redis, and other stuff suddenly be missing forcing me to repackage everything?

    The prospect of writing packages for everything that isn’t libre doesn’t seem very appealing. They should have a repo with libre stuff and another with whatever doesn’t for their definition.

  • esc@piefed.socialEnglish
    171·
    22 hours ago

    Beginner (with 20 years of experience with linux including nixos and 10 with lisp). 🙃 I mean I always call myself a beginner or intermediate at best but definition here is stretched to the limit.

  • A Sharky Anthro@fedia.io
    3·
    20 hours ago

    Wow, doesn’t seem very Beginner Perspective at all…Seems like years of experience, used to interpret GNU Guix, which is new to them. Title is a bit inaccurate in that respect.