Installing Guix as a Complete GNU/Linux System - System Crafters

[email protected]

Trying out Guix for the first time! Waiting for packages to download.

I'm a long time Arch user. Any tips?!

I've heard there aren't as many packages for Guix as other distros, but I was thinking Flatpak and distrobox will help bridge the gap for me.

[email protected]

Expect a steep learning curve even if you know Linux inside out. Don't assume things work the way they did on Arch (or most other distros). If your hardware doesn't work well, or you otherwise need some proprietary stuff, check out https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix. Good luck!

[email protected]

I use nix for any packages I can't get from guix repos. So that's an option too.

[email protected]

I've not used Guix but I don't think any distro has anything close to number of desirable available packages as arch--- so be prepared for that. My ventures into debian, suse and fedora were made quite annoying by having to work around the many missing packages. Including user-facing applications, dependencies and background programs. I never quite got down with distrobox, maybe that's the cure.

this chart on wikipedia gives the impression that Debian has more packages but that's not the way it feels when you are looking for something. Maybe they have a lot of dot matrix printer libraries from 1992 or something which bring the number up.

Arch includes a lot of not-at-all-free packages (which it is impossible to distinguish in pacman or other tool as far as I can find), orphaned, new packages that haven't yet made it into other repos, and packages where no attempt has been made to submit them to other repos.

On arch I have virtually never had to go outside the repos for packages. It's very hard to give up once you are used to it. (Even though it's better to use properly libre/free stuff and other benefits of a more curated approach like security, stability and quality.)

[email protected]

FYI Hetzner VPS have a 1 click install for guix if you just want to try it out.

[email protected]

The thing about Guix (and Nix) is that there doesnt need to be a package in the repos. You can either make your system automatically compile from source (which is how many AUR packages work) or use something like distrobox, bottles, flatpak to run extra software

[email protected]

Could you share how you do that? It didn't work last time I tried it (using Nix on top of Guix).

[email protected]

I’ve not used Guix but I don’t think any distro has anything close to number of desirable available packages as arch— so be prepared for that

nixpkgs would like a word

[email protected]

I quit on day two with two takeaways:

– Hardware must be well supported in fully-libre-land - I was trying to install on a Mac Mini and had to go nonguix pretty much right away. That kind of spoiled the whole effort.

– Profound meditation and enlightenment on the essence of Scheme is a must. I had one of those 'no, this is where you don't want a closing brace' moments and my zen was blown out of the water.

I would have soldiered on, but personally I like Arch first and foremost because I can (and do) have a local repo by rsyncing a rotation of mirrors couple of times a week. Just in case the Internet dies one day, you know. I realised Guix was not really suitable for the apocalypse use case, so after that brace episode I decided to stick with what my spine already knows.

After all that is said – I really hope you fare better

[email protected]

Neat. Although, I wanted to go through the installation ~~pain~~ experience. Eventually, I'm hoping to run Guix on a server. I'm starting with my laptop first.

[email protected]

use something like distrobox, bottles, flatpak to run extra software

YES! That's my plan! I think I just figured out how to configure flakpak a little better.

These are only part of the steps needed: https://flatpak.org/setup/GNU Guix

You also need to source ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile.d/flatpak.sh in order to get the desktop icons to show up in the GNOME app launcher. (Using guix home for that!)

Need to work on getting distrobox setup next. I was able to guix install distrobox, but it requires some extra configuration apparently.

[email protected]

Yep. Totally using nonguix. I'm trying out Guix for the reproducibility and system management, not (just) for the FOSS software.

From my initial research, I thought that Guix was only going to allow 100% FOSS software. But I've learned that's not the case. It's actually pretty easy to add additional channels in order to install non-FOSS software. The third-party channels integrate nicely!

I added nonguix and also a channel for Tailscale!

(list (channel
        (name 'nonguix)
        (url "https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix")
        (branch "master")
        (introduction
          (make-channel-introduction
            "897c1a470da759236cc11798f4e0a5f7d4d59fbc"
            (openpgp-fingerprint
              "2A39 3FFF 68F4 EF7A 3D29  12AF 6F51 20A0 22FB B2D5"))))
      (channel
        (name 'tailscale)
        (url "https://github.com/umanwizard/guix-tailscale")
        (branch "main")
        (introduction
          (make-channel-introduction
            "c72e15e84c4a9d199303aa40a81a95939db0cfee"
            (openpgp-fingerprint
              "9E53FC33B8328C745E7B31F70226C10D7877B741"))))
      (channel
        (name 'guix)
        (url "https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git")
        (branch "master")
        (introduction
          (make-channel-introduction
            "9edb3f66fd807b096b48283debdcddccfea34bad"
            (openpgp-fingerprint
              "BBB0 2DDF 2CEA F6A8 0D1D  E643 A2A0 6DF2 A33A 54FA")))))

[email protected]

Hardware must be well supported in fully-libre-land ... had to go nonguix pretty much right away.

Yep, same here. I started with nonguix. I didn't realize it was easy to add additional channels.

Profound meditation and enlightenment on the essence of Scheme is a must. I had one of those ‘no, this is where you don’t want a closing brace’ moments and my zen was blown out of the water.

Aaaah. I juuuust had this happen to me. Took me a bit to balance the parens again! Although, so far Scheme seems nicer than Nixlang. I've also had curiosity to learn a functional language, so Guix gives me a reason to learn about functional programming.

[email protected]

I love it especially because of the guix shell and guix shell container for dev environment isolation. It is a whole different ecosystem from the ground up though so it's not an easy ride. But those two features make it worth it for me. Also it's GNU distro which imo is a plus.

[email protected]

guix shell and guix shell container for dev environment isolation

Yeah! This is one of the features I'm most interested in. I haven't gotten to using this feature yet, but I was curious about it.

Let's say I'm working on a project that requires Go, Node, maybe some C library, and GNU Make. Seems like I would be able to use guix shell for this, right? Great.

Now if a friend wanted to work on the project, could I share my guix shell configuration with him? (Assuming he's also a Guix user.)

I'm currently using distrobox.ini plus distrobox assemble for this kind of workflow, but of course this isn't totally reproducible.

[email protected]

Btw, here's the guix home configuration file I used to add the contents of flatpak.sh into my ~/.profile, in order to update the XDG_DATA_HOME env var.

(use-modules (gnu home)
             (gnu home services shells)
             (guix gexp)
             (gnu services))

(home-environment
  (services
    (list
      (simple-service 'flatpak-service
                      home-shell-profile-service-type
                      (list (local-file
                              (string-append (getenv "HOME") "/.guix-profile/etc/profile.d/flatpak.sh")
                              "flatpak.sh"))))))

[email protected]

Btw, here's how you install distrobox on Guix.

First, install rootless Podman: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Miscellaneous-Services.html#Rootless-Podman-Service.

You need to edit your /etc/config.scm or where ever you store your system config. Import the right modules/services, add your user to cgroup, add iptables-service-type to your services, add rootless-podman-service-type and configure it.

(use-service-modules containers networking …)
(use-modules (gnu system accounts))  ;for 'subid-range'

(operating-system
  ;; …
  (users (cons (user-account
                (name "alice")
                (comment "Bob's sister")
                (group "users")

                ;; Adding the account to the "cgroup" group
                ;; makes it possible to run podman commands.
                (supplementary-groups '("cgroup" "wheel"
                                        "audio" "video")))
               %base-user-accounts))
  (services
    (append (list (service iptables-service-type)
                  (service rootless-podman-service-type
                           (rootless-podman-configuration
                             (subgids
                               (list (subid-range (name "alice"))))
                             (subuids
                               (list (subid-range (name "alice")))))))
            %base-services)))

Then of course you run guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm.

Now you can do a simple guix install distrobox. If you install distrobox first, you don't end up using rootless podman and you run into more problems that way. (You have to use distrobox --root.)

After that command, everything should work like normal. Enjoy.

distrobox create --image docker.io/library/archlinux:latest --name arch-dev
distrobox enter arch-dev

[email protected]

Let's say I'm working on a project that requires Go, Node, maybe some C library, and GNU Make. Seems like I would be able to use guix shell for this, right? Great.

Iirc guix shell is for one off package or programs you want to test, say you want to quickly format a drive to exfat or so, when you exit the sub-shell, the installed packages are discarded

guix shell containers would work best for your scenario but I have little experience with them

[email protected]

Also, welcome to Guix System Distribution, I hope you stick around

[email protected]

personally I like Arch first and foremost because I can (and do) have a local repo by rsyncing a rotation of mirrors couple of times a week.

Are these mirrors for prebuilt packages? If not, you should be able to pull from other channels, create your own channel and include all your packages while building them locally.

agnos.is Forums

Installing Guix as a Complete GNU/Linux System - System Crafters