Hacker News Reader

Comment by _benj | Hacker News Reader

I hope to find a more consistent use for guix, is just that I mostly forget about it. My default package manager (xbps) has pretty much everything I need and the rest are either so obscure that I need to patch and compile by hand or are proprietary stuff that I just run an AppImage and are done.

I had a use for it sometime ago that I needed to compile Tcl, and it was a breeze to do! But outside of such niche things I haven’t found a use for guix

View on HN

Coming from Nix (guix's more popular, but less freedom-focused cousin).. I think part of what makes Nix "next generation" is that its functionality allows for more powerful use than "install/upgrade/uninstall package".

It's neat to be able to use some program without having to install/uninstall it.

I find it useful to be able to programmatically declare a set of packages (& lock their versions) that I want available when working on a project.

guix allows the user to do those things as well. Ephemeral shells with packages made available and specific environment declarations as a file are both documented and mature.

They seem to have been pointing at Nix since they're more familiar, but acknowledging that Guix is similar in most regards. ("guix's more popular, but less freedom-focused cousin")

Look at `guix shell` and manifest.scm.

`guix shell --container` is also very useful.

Guix is very focused on "free" software and as such is very limiting. IE, if you want to use Discord, Slack, or Steam on guix you're going to have to figure that out yourself.

Nix makes this much easier and you're much more likely to find ready made packages for even esoteric software. Nix has over 3 times as much software as Guix.

Nix also goes for a lot more composability than guix with nix flakes. It makes it nearly trivial to package any software you want.

You may want to give Nix a try if you had trouble with Guix.

The way to use discord/slack/steam/teams/[proprietary nonfree app that you can’t build yoirself] on Guix is to install Flatpak and run it in a sandbox.

The GUIX community has a non-free package repo, you just add it as a GUIX channel and problem solved:

https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix

Also as kdtsh mentioned, Flatpak.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com