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Comment by JonChesterfield | Hacker News Reader

As this post might attract Guix users, what's the current state for using hardware?

When I tried it a few years ago I ran into a stance on firmware which amounted to it refusing to run unless you used some other Linux branch which was strongly discouraged on somewhat unclear grounds. I think the idea was that closed-source-firmware shalt not be used, and if you absolutely must, there's something over there that you aren't allowed to talk about.

Is that approach still the dominant one today? I'd like a scheme userspace but I'm not dealing with having to use unofficial linux forks to have a wifi card work.

I see https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix offers:

  Guix channel for packages that can't be included upstream.
  Please do NOT promote or refer to this repository on any
  official Guix communication channels.

but it's hard to determine from the outside whether this is a pragmatic obstacle or not.

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I'm running Guix on my personal desktop, my personal server, and my work laptop. I'm using the nonguix channel on all three of them, it has been perfectly fine for me.

My servers NICs actually are not even supported by the Linux-libre kernel. I got around that by building a custom installer iso with the mainline Linux kernel. That probably sounds awful, but I have never built a bootable iso for any other distro before, and it was a breeze for me.

https://www.pantherx.org/ might be what you want.

It adds non-free softwares, GUI package installer, and GUI config to gnu guix.

pantherx also allows you to pay for support for however many people you want.

Thanks for sharing... but why? I don't think I expressed wanting something other than GNU Guix.

I think what you're describing is still the case, but the way you described it isn't quite accuratie. The default kernel used is linux-libre. If you need more hardware support and binary blobs, you use regular linux, the same one basically all the other distros use. You're not using an unofficial fork of anything (or some might argue the default is more of an unofficial fork). You do have to go out of your way somewhat to get the standard linux instead of linux-libre, and I don't believe you can just load your required firmware into linux-libre instead. It's one of the FSF-approved distros so there are indeed strict guidelines (FSDG) on proprietary software, often to the point that it puts people off, and the official IRC and probably the mailing list as well don't talk about the non-free bits, yes. However if you join the #nonguix IRC channel or use the guix channel (like a repo or PPA) of the same name you'll find many of the same faces from the core community there. It's just a bit hush-hush due to the guidelines. Remember Guix System is a step more extreme than Debian, so even something like Debian's official non-free repo is not allowed.

Personally I have run Guix System on a ThinkPad X220T and ThinkPad T440p which are old enough to not really need any blobs aside from the ones for WiFi, and you can remove or replace the card in them. I believe any machine newer than this is going to need blobs for the integrated graphics or other things. I have been debating whether I'd run Guix System on my next (newer) machine and as I've never gotten too deep into the weeds understanding Guix stuff despite using it for years, I may opt for a different distro, but I would say if you really want to try it, it's probably not too bad to get up and running with a regular non-libre Linux on Guix System.

That is useful information, thank you.

If running upstream Linux with guix userspace is a somewhat well established path that solves the firmware problem. I'm a little unclear on what the various distribution patches to the kernel usually achieve but I'm hopeful that moving from Debian's kernel package to upstream would work fine in practice.

I should give it a try. Thanks

Look into PantherX linux. https://www.pantherx.org/

It is based on gnu guix. It comes with non-free softwares by default.

It also has GUI package installer and some form of GUI config.

If you want support, you can pay for that, too.

I think pantherx can be easier than ubuntu or fedora due to GUI-centric approach and reproducibility.

I'm not sure what you mean by "pragmatic obstacle" but it ensures Guix will be super duper niche forever, which I don't think the developers mind. For regular users it "doesn't matter" in the sense that it's trivial to bypass, but it limits adoption which definitely affects quality.

> definitely affects quality.

not always in a negative way.

I am on a team that provides commercial support for our Linux based user endpoints. We do not deploy endpoints with WiFi cards that require closed-source firmware.

  https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/wireless-n-m2-ngff-card-v2-tpe-m2ncrd2

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