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

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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.

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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.

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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"))))))

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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

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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

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

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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.

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You have to setup a Nix service and do some symlink-ing

https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Miscellaneous-Services.html

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Btw, here's how you configure HiDPI for GNOME. Unfortunately, my laptop has a hydeepeeay display, so it's not fully compatible with Linux. (It's 3840x2160, so at least 2x scaling is possible, hypothetically.)

Commands from the Arch Wiki, but also adds cursor scaling:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "[{'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor', <2>}, {'Gtk/CursorThemeSize', <48>}]"
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2

The default GNOME configuration is some how missing that. I didn't have to do that in Arch, but I do in Guix. IDK. Anyway, if you don't run those commands certain apps will be tiny, including a tiny mouse cursor.

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Sure, but then I'd be downloading every single source 'package' and compiling for both x86 and ARM - not exactly feasible. Keeping just the sources might be an option though. The point is to have the whole repo, not just the packages I use, so that in the SHTF scenario I can help others install Arch and any software they may need on their machines. Muhahaha, Arch will prevail

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yes, you would share with him guix manifest which is a file that specifies which packages should be present. What is important to note are inferiors which is a mechanism to version lock the packages.

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share with him guix manifest

Aaaah: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Writing-Manifests.html

# Write a manifest for the packages specified on the command line.
guix shell --export-manifest gcc-toolchain make git > manifest.scm

Heck yeah!

projectmoon

I want to love Guix (both the package manager and the distro). I want to love Scheme. But I can never find any good tutorials for Scheme and using it with Guix. The GNU documentation is more of a reference than a tutorial. I use Emacs on the daily, and I just can't get into Scheme.

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I use Emacs on the daily, and I just can’t get into Scheme.

Do you find that Elisp and Scheme are too different? I don't know either, so they look almost the same to me.

projectmoon

@[email protected] I mean... I don't really fully understand Elisp either, despite my Emacs config being 10 years old!

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