Hacker News Reader

Comment by cisstrd | Hacker News Reader

They took a lot of inspiration from NixOS[1], which many people successfully use and it isn't in beta (not meant to badmouth GuixSD of their efforts, just wanted to put it out there)

[1] https://nixos.org/

View on HN

They implemented the Nix model in Guile, so inspiration is selling it short. Although Guix have arguably passed Nix in terms of features already, with a much better command-line tool, a linter, importers for several external package registries and grafting[0] which is a real pain point in Nix.

I think part of the reason they are now cruising past Nix (despite 1/10th of the users) is that it's written in a proper programming language, and not a home-made language that relies heavily on bash.

That said, I'm really happy with NixOS after two years, and would not consider going back to any "conventional" distro for my own workstation. Coming from a Gentoo background, there is nothing like screwing up your system and simply booting into the previous generation :)

Having the entire system configuration in one place that can be version controlled is a big plus too. You can create a live CD, VM, container etc from the very same code.

Nix and Guix can also be used standalone (think Homebrew or Gentoo Prefix), and can be very handy shell tools. E.g. `guix environment foo`[1] will drop you to an ephemeral shell environment with all build dependencies of package foo available.

0: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Security-...

1: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Invoking-...

One upside (or downside, depending on your PoV) of Nix is that unfree packages exist (though disabled by default) in the standard repo. Want the actual useful graphics drivers for gaming? Steam? Both easy to install.

I love the idea of using a real language, a real LISP, instead of that Nix-contraoption, but currently having access to FSF-approved free software only is a complete deal-killer for me on my laptop. I still need some unfree software, and I don't care about software patents (ref for instance MP3 and H264 decoding).

If Guix gets to the point where every concern except that surpasses NixOS, we might see a close-to-upstream Guix-fork or third party repo (like MELPA and MARMALADE for Emacs) being established to address that.

Or at least so we can hope.

Honestly, I'm quite fond of Nix. Some of the more complex library code is quite gnarly, but I prefer the almost-JSON-ish nature of Nix for most package definitions over sexps.

Package repositories are just Scheme modules. Guix supports loading of additional package repositories via the GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH environment variable.

The fact that Guix won't distribute packages for non-free software does not mean that it restricts you in using Guix to manage such software packages.

I am a happy NixOS user but am glad to see this project progressing and gaining a wider audience. It shows that the ideas behind Nix are solid and offer more than just theoretical advantages over a traditional OS (and its package manager).

I think a lot of people will get a taste of these advantages through e.g. Docker and Snappy and will eventually go all in with GuixSD or NixOS. These types of stateless software ecosystems will continue to become more common until eventually they are the norm.

If you click the about link it does in fact name drop Nix:

>It uses low-level mechanisms from the Nix package manager, but packages are defined as native Guile modules, using extensions to the Scheme language—which makes it nicely hackable.

Though I've never bothered to figure out exactly how much if any code is actually shared between the two.

The only code that is shared is the build daemon which is written in C++. Guix uses a fork of the Nix daemon, occasionally cherry picking patches from Nix. C++ is a pain, so in the future this daemon will be replaced by one written in pure Guile.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com