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Comment by LockAndLol | Hacker News Reader

I see that guix is a declarative package manager like nix. Where does it have a leg up over nix?

And how's the GUI integration with KDE and gnome? Is there a backend for KDE Discover or the Gnome Software Center?

Finally, I see that installation goes over a "curl | bash", which imo is a pretty insecure method of installation. I can understand why such an insecure method exists (so many different ways of installing software on linux), but that's like saying HTTP is a good idea because it's easier than HTTPS.

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> Finally, I see that installation goes over a "curl | bash", which imo is a pretty insecure method of installation

So comparing https://nixos.org/download.html and https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Binary-Installation... - nix is curl | sh from a https address; guix is wget && chmod +x && run shell script. Both also have a trivially-available way to do GPG verification before running anything. So I'd call them pretty close.

In absolute terms, honestly I'm not sure it is that big of a deal; default protection is HTTPS, and GPG is easily available. The only obvious issue that I see is that nix might be vulnerable to the truncated-stream issue; I forget whether that can happen over HTTPS or not.

This post is a pretty good example, for I don't know of any nix projects that are attempting to work on the bootstrapping problem. Guix pack[0] solves a parallel issue of distributing your nicely dependancy managed ecosystem whereas nix's alternative with nix-bundle barely works.

At the moment neither have gui integration and unfortunately both could use a lot of work with onboarding and beginner (I'm taking non programmers) friendliness.

[0]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-pack....

I like the container support! Declarative containers is an area where Dockerfiles fall short in my experience.

I’ve been using the NixOS container support which has drastically streamlined and unified the largely similar but many small variations of containers that I use https://nixos.org/nixos/manual/#ch-containers

> At the moment neither have gui integration and unfortunately both could use a lot of work with onboarding and beginner (I'm taking non programmers) friendliness.

I think non-programmer friendliness can wait till there are enough technical users that the superficial daily-experience bugs get ironed out, and also the newbies have a social support system for onboarding. Trying to jump that curve will prove painful in the long term.

I would love to see the guidance and tools for technical users to try this out and start switching over the next few years.

AFAIK, Gnome/KDE or some other DE can be built/installed like any other package, so one can certainly have pretty much any GUI, just like any other Linux distribution.

I am a basic Nix user so I can't speak to much, but my understanding is that one of the major difference is Guix uses Scheme (or a Scheme-like language) for config so it's more familiar. Nix uses their own language, also called Nix.

On the other hand I believe the package repo for Nix is much more comprehensive and kept more up to date.

> On the other hand I believe the package repo for Nix is much more comprehensive and kept more up to date.

What makes you say so?

(disclaimer: I'm a contributor to Guix and just upgraded several hundred R packages.)

When I was deciding between Nix and Guix, perhaps 5 years ago, I definitely got the impression that Nix had more contributors and the more comprehensive package set, which is one reason why I ultimately decided on NixOS. I couldn't say which was more up-to-date, but, well, anything not up-to-date is an excuse for me to contribute :)

That being said, at the time I had wanted to choose Guix over Nix. The channels seemed a bit better thought-out and grafts sounded like a good idea.

Not having a lisp background though, it was just easier for me to get into Nix.

NixOS is an awesome system and Guix owes much to it and its creator, @edolstra.

Although GNU Guix is my personal preference, I believe that NixOS is an excellent choice and for the most part we have a shared vision.

If you are still using a legacy system, you'll want to try NixOS or GNU Guix!

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