Hacker News Reader

Comment by ssivark | Hacker News Reader

Thanks; great to hear about the 17k packages and the "nonguix" channel!

Guix is pretty cool, and I'll probably switch to it one day.

But as of now, it lacks some basic stuff like KDE suit. The nonguix channel AFAIK doesn't have binary builds so you'll be building quite a few packages yourself. Using nonguix also means you can't expect support in official support channels. Just something to know before you start.

There is a nonguix substitution server - https://mirror.brielmaier.net

Thank you for this! Missing KDE is a dealbreaker for primary system, but I can start using nonguix for older systems now.

Edit: I'm not sure if I'm reading this right, but the job says 0 builds (eg. https://mirror.brielmaier.net/eval/97958?status=succeeded&pa...). I'm not familiar with how guix works, but where can I see list of actual built derivations for a particular job?

Using nonguix also means you can't expect support in official support channels. Just something to know before you start.

If this is true, it is a deal breaker for me. I try to buy open source hardware when I can, but even systems like the Pinebook Pro will have their functionality significantly limited by the absence of the linux-firmware package. It is a simple fact that most common WiFi chipset require non-free firmware.

That's not true. You get support for the part of the guix system that is free software from guix, and support for what comes from nonguix, from nonguix. So if you have issues with the proprietary driver, you talk about it on #nonguix, but if you have troubles with guix, you talk about it on official channels like #guix.

Thanks for the clarification. That sounds like a much more reasonable policy.

  nonguix channel AFAIK doesn't have binary builds so you'll be building quite a few packages yourself

To be more accurate guix will be building the package for you. The only difference for the user is the time it takes to install the package.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com