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Comment by gcoda | Hacker News Reader

For my practical reasons I can not use pure GNU distributions, I am not aware of easy community way to re use packages for other distro or something hacky like that. Not everyone have brainpower and time to build custom packages for rare distro, it is a shame, I really like Guix. NixOS got some recepies for using not 100% libre software.

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This is also what keeps me away from Guix. I get that there are third-party repos with non-free software, but using a fringe package of a fringe packager is too far for me.

There’s no good choice here: Nix package definitions and tools are inscrutable and user-hostile; and the alternative Guix is burden with GNU/free software zealotry and GPL.

A somewhat comparable third option is Habitat, from Chef. It also has a pure build system, a package source, and pure, discrete environments. But it’s also got a bunch of service orchestration parts...

Hopefully the Nix redesign will make the tools more palatable for mortals.

What kind of non-free tools are you missing from Guix?

The only notable omission is linux, as Guix is based on linux-libre instead. But changing this is a matter of 1 LOC.

> But changing this is a matter of 1 LOC.

And how difficult is it for a new user to find that line?

Including non-free software in Guix would defeat the goal of a 100% bit-for-bit reproducible distribution. Non-free software is incompatible with Guix both ethically and technically.

I was told guix has some support for importing normal Nix packages, but I don't know how well it works in practice.

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

There are repos around packaging tons of non-free (mainly scientific) software for Guix.

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