Guix: A New Package Manager & GNU Distribution

[timofonic]

You'd have better luck herding cats.

Cats are difficult felines sometimes, but they end learning how to live at the same place. Those developers are like doing the same to a bunch of religious fanaticals, they'll end killing each other.

But distribution developers are full of massively developed egos, fanaticism and hidden commercial interests.

[uid313]

What is the purpose of this?
Will it be an operating system like GNU?
Or is it just an easy way to download GNU software from whatever OS you're using?

Will this Guix be available for Windows?

[RealNC]

This is genius! Someone had the idea to provide a system where software is already pre-packaged for you. Now we won't have to install everything from tarballs and go through the dependency hell! Oh man, this is exciting! Why hasn't anyone else ever thought of this before?

Oh, wait...

[Yfrwlf]

Obligatory.




This is a problem that should be solved by getting all the distro devs in a room and not letting them out until they find a proper solution to the problem.

"Standards" are misunderstood. Is DOCX a standard? Some would say yes just because of Microsoft's monopoly, but it's a horrible one since it is proprietary and closed. Is FTP a standard? Yes, it is a real standard because it is open, it can be implemented on any platform, and there are a zillion servers and clients that support it. Are RPM and DEB packages standards? Only slightly in that they both get a lot of use, like DOCX, and that they are open, but they have some huge problems: They are NOT created to be installable on ANY distro. They are NOT compatible with multiple package managers. There is no RPM package manager that can install DEB packages or vise versa. So they are not really standards, just like DOCX isn't really one (though I think it has been semi-successfully implemented in Open/Libre Office but it's not open anyway so forget it).

Standards are just fine when they can compete freely with other standards, but RPM and DEB don't compete because they are proprietary and locked to the package managers that support them and only them and AREN'T designed to be anything more than that. They aren't designed to be cross-platform and cross-distro, they are designed to be locked into one version of one distribution. They are FAIL FROM THE BEGINNING.

I disagree as this package manager provides features not found in any other package manager, and which have the potential to solve some of the big problems in Linux. For instance it can provide central tracking and backups of settings will still keeping the traditional text file formats. It can provide a means for a developer create a binary package for which they never need fear breakage. I provides a convenient way to users to install application without royally screwing up the backbone of the install.

I agree that there are probably too many "me too" distributions out there, but this I think is a promising one.

It sounds promising if it is a cross-distro packaging format. It would be great if the existing package managers would make themselves compatible with the existing cross-distro packaging solutions out there, that is what would be really helpful, but since RPM is controlled by Red Hat and they profit off distro wars, I doubt this will ever happen. It's up to the Linux community to push for alternate package managers like this and Zero Install which can be installed on top of existing distros and their existing package managers until users can switch to distros which come with package managers that are compatible with real, cross-distro standardized packaging solutions.

This is genius! Someone had the idea to provide a system where software is already pre-packaged for you. Now we won't have to install everything from tarballs and go through the dependency hell! Oh man, this is exciting! Why hasn't anyone else ever thought of this before?

Oh, wait...

If you're smart enough to be snarky about it, maybe you're also smart enough to think about how to implement a real solution to solve this problem, such as my post addresses. The libre software community should take real things that threaten software accessibility like this seriously. Not that they shouldn't also be able to take a joke.

[droste]

oh great another package manager...

seriously, Linux needs LESS of these kinds of varieties. we need to halve the amount of distros and eliminate a package manager or 2. this kind of diversity and competition is hurting more than helping. every once in a while things like distros find a niche that they stick with, such as yellow dog being PS3 focused when it used to be just PPC oriented, or knoppix as a demo distro rather than something you seriously use every day. but how many distros have something compelling to offer? openSUSE, fedora, pclinuxos, linspire, Mandriva/mageia, are all (IIRC) desktop distros that all are RPM based, offer multiple DEs, and aren't rolling release. So what's the point of continuing every one of them? I could care less if 1 ships with Firefox while another uses chrome.

I think you oversimplify things a bit. I mean the USA, China, Russia, Mexico, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, ... are all countries with people living in there and a government. So what's the point of continuing every one of them?

[arokh]

Did you just compare package managers with countries?

[ninez]

Standards are just fine when they can compete freely with other standards, but RPM and DEB don't compete because they are proprietary and locked to the package managers that support them and only them and AREN'T designed to be anything more than that. They aren't designed to be cross-platform and cross-distro, they are designed to be locked into one version of one distribution. They are FAIL FROM THE BEGINNING.

neither deb nor rpm are 'proprietary' by any definition of the word ~ i think that is a pretty poor choice in words to describe them. There is nothing stopping people from implementing (for example) rpm support into a package manager like synaptic ~ there just is no interest in doing so (ie: they aren't proprietary, devs just have different ideas/visions on how packages should be managed) ... 2nd, they ARE standards (for their respective platforms, just not a 'distro to distro standard' in the universal sense, if that makes sense) and in the case of RPM (at least) is cross-distro (ie: Fedora/RHEL/CentOS, Suse, Mageia, etc). There are also more reasons that packages and formats are tied to their respective distro than just the package manager being used - one obvious reason being that different distros are shipping different versions of XYZ libraries, apps, compilers, etc ~ which affects portability. Another (big) reason is a package managers feature sets; ie: portage is nothing like synaptic, yum is nothing like makepkg, etc...

It sounds promising if it is a cross-distro packaging format. It would be great if the existing package managers would make themselves compatible with the existing cross-distro packaging solutions out there, that is what would be really helpful, but since RPM is controlled by Red Hat and they profit off distro wars, I doubt this will ever happen. It's up to the Linux community to push for alternate package managers like this and Zero Install which can be installed on top of existing distros and their existing package managers until users can switch to distros which come with package managers that are compatible with real, cross-distro standardized packaging solutions.

Where do you get the idea that this is what distro's even want? I can't imagine for even a second that Debian, Fedora, Suse, Archlinux, Gentoo, etc, etc would want to adopt such a package manager (by default). That isn't to say there is anything wrong with guix (in fact, i would say it has some interesting features for sure) but do you really expect distros that are (in part) defined by their package managers (and the specific features they provide, which are often a significant strength of a distro) to adopt such a system??

I know for myself, i use Archlinux in large part because of it's package management. For me, deb/rpm are both crappy choices and likewise guix while interesting in some regards, is just as unappealing in comparison - for my usage anyway.

If you're smart enough to be snarky about it, maybe you're also smart enough to think about how to implement a real solution to solve this problem, such as my post addresses. The libre software community should take real things that threaten software accessibility like this seriously. Not that they shouldn't also be able to take a joke.

I think you over-estimate the value of your posting... your post doesn't address or solve any problems.

[droste]

Did you just compare package managers with countries?

This was just an analogy to show that it's not always as simple as it seems to be and not directly related to package managers ;-)

[uid313]

I think you oversimplify things a bit. I mean the USA, China, Russia, Mexico, Canada, Spain, France, Germany, South Africa, Argentina, Australia, ... are all countries with people living in there and a government. So what's the point of continuing every one of them?

You forgot Poland.

[droste]

You forgot Poland.

I thought it isn't a good idea to say Poland should no continue to exist as a German