Talk:GNU Guix

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Relationship to Linux

This is ambiguous on Wikipedia, as some consider it an operating system rather than operating system kernel

"Linux" interpreted as a operating system kernel

Guix doesn't have a package for Linux, it does however have packages for Linux-libre, which is based upon Linux.

"Linux" interpreted as an operating system

Interpreted as an operating system, this is one of the operating systems on which Guix can run. It also works on others, e.g. Debian GNU/Hurd.

The Guix System Distribution is a operating system which uses Guix and Linux-libre among other things.

Wikipedia is not GNU, where normal boundaries are conventionally blurred

... specializes in providing exclusively free software ...

It's extremely unclear how a package manager could specialize along this dimension. If there some basis for this claim, it should be adduced immediately so as not to leave the matter vapid.

Alternatively, one could say something like "is preferentially applied to exclusively free software" and in so doing not confuse technology with politics. — MaxEnt 15:35, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I don't quite follow where your comparison between Wikipedia and GNU is relevant, or which boundaries you're referring to?

As for the statement in question. One of the things I take from this is that Guix provides exclusively free software, or putting it another way, package definitions for non-free software are not accepted in to Guix. This isn't to say that you can't package non-free software with Guix, just that those packages won't be accepted in to the Guix Git repository.

In terms of the ways in which Guix is specialised towards managing and distributing free software, as Guix uses a hybrid source/binary distribution model, where you can build packages from source, but also download pre-built binaries. In contrast to other package managers, like the Debian package management ecosystem for example, the model Guix uses provides some advantages when managing software you can build from source, but it can be harder to package pre-built binaries directly, a way in much non-free software is distributed.

Anyway, I think it could definitely be clearer and more factual, especially in the opening paragraph. Maybe the whole "specialises" concern can be left out, and the features of the package manager, and the properties that set it apart from others can be covered more in the article.

I'm not sure "is preferentially applied to exclusively free software" makes it clear enough that the default packages available through Guix are all free software. Maybe the easiest change to make is just to remove "specializes", and state that Guix "provides exclusively free software"?

ChrisBaines (talk) 17:56, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Recent review of Guix System

Hi, I found a recent review here by rendaw that might be useful to improve the article.--So9q (talk) 07:16, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

What Guix actually is

In the latest release statement[1] the maintainers and community redefined what Guix is based on what it is now capable of: "Guix is a complete toolbox for software deployment in general, which makes it different from most of the tools you may be familiar with. This may sound a little abstract so let’s look at concrete use cases:

• As a user, Guix allows you to install applications and to keep them up-to-date: search for software with guix search, install it with guix install, and maintain it up-to-date by regularly running guix pull and guix upgrade. Guix follows a so-called “rolling release” model, so you can run guix pull at any time to get the latest and greatest bits of free software.
  • This certainly sounds familiar, but a distinguishing property here is dependability: Guix is transactional, meaning that you can at any time roll back to a previous “generation” of your package set with guix package --roll-back, inspect differences with guix package -l, and so on.
  • Another useful property is reproducibility: Guix allows you to deploy the exact same software environment on different machines or at different points in time thanks to guix describe and guix pull.

• As a developer, we hope you’ll enjoy guix environment, which allows you to spawn one-off software environments. Suppose you’re a GIMP developer: running guix environment gimp spawns a shell with everything you need to hack on GIMP—much quicker than manually installing its many dependencies.
  • Developers often struggle to push their work to users so they get quick feedback. The guix pack provides an easy way to create container images for use by Docker & co., or even standalone relocatable tarballs that anyone can run, regardless of the GNU/Linux distribution they use.
  • Oh, and you may also like package transformation options, which allow you define package variants from the command line.

• As a system administrator—and actually, we’re all system administrators of sorts on our laptops!—, Guix’s declarative and unified approach to configuration management should be handy. It surely is a departure from what most people are used to, but it is so reassuring: one configuration file is enough to specify all the aspects of the system config—services, file systems, locale, accounts—all in the same language.
  • That makes it surprisingly easy to deploy otherwise complex services such as applications that depend on Web services. For instance, setting up CGit or Zabbix is a one-liner, even though behind the scenes that involves setting up nginx, fcgiwrap, etc. We’d love to see to what extent this helps people self-host services—sort of similar to what FreedomBox and YunoHost have been focusing on.
  • With guix system you can instantiate a configuration on your machine, or in a virtual machine (VM) where you can test it, or in a container. You can also provision ISO images, VM images, or container images with a complete OS, from the same config, all with guix system."

Based on this I propose we rewrite the introduction to state that Guix is a transactional package manager and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that respects user freedom. Guix can be used on top of any system running the kernel Linux, or it can be used as a standalone operating system distribution. Guix works as a software deployment tool with support for isolated environments, support for instantiating operating systems (to bare-metal, VM or disk-image) in which it enables transactional package as well as system upgrades with roll-back functionality.

What do you think?--So9q (talk) 10:02, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Guix System

In the manual of 1.0.0 the following is stated:

Guix comes with a distribution of the GNU system consisting entirely of free software. The distribution can be installed on its own (see System Installation), but it is also possible to install Guix as a package manager on top of an installed GNU/Linux system (see Installation). When we need to distinguish between the two, we refer to the standalone distribution as Guix System. 

GuixSD and Guix System Distribution is now deprecated names. I propose we change the article to reflect this change.--So9q (talk) 13:15, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

I propose we don't. Articles are not written from their subject's POV. That's why we rightly call GuixSD a Linux distribution, no matter how butthurt they get. 185.23.220.233 (talk) 06:59, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

The names are "Guix" and "Guix System". I don't think other parties get to decide what the names are. Butts don't factor in it. Rekado (talk) 09:26, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Dedicated page for GNU Guix System

Hi all. Following Wikipedia approach for GNU/Linux distributions and given the relevance of the OS, I would like to propose to move the paragraph GNU Guix § Guix System (operating system) to a dedicated page (possibly to be named GNU Guix System). --Grufo (talk) 23:28, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I am in favor of this. Altanner1991 (talk) 04:01, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

I have moved the paragraph. Feel free to contribute. --Grufo (talk) 13:57, 3 August 2020 (UTC)