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GNU Guix / Guix SD 0.14 Released: ARM Port Coming, New Services

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  • GNU Guix / Guix SD 0.14 Released: ARM Port Coming, New Services

    Phoronix: GNU Guix / Guix SD 0.14 Released: ARM Port Coming, New Services

    Today marks the release of GNU Guix 0.14 as well as the GNU Guix SD (System Distribution) that is the Linux-based operating system built around this package manager...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    s/U-Boox/U-Boot/g

    Btw, the pre-built vm image is a great way to test out the system and get a feel for just how easy it is to administrate the os as well as writing and deploying your own packages: https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/ma...D-in-a-VM.html

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    • #3
      Any user of this distro can explain us what are the advantages and inconvenients of this one?

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      • #4
        Originally posted by timofonic View Post
        Any user of this distro can explain us what are the advantages and inconvenients of this one?
        GuixSD is a Linux distribution based on the Guix package manager, and it borrows a lot of ideas from NixOS Linux and its Nix package manager. The borrowing isn't theft, they give credit to the Nix team for their work. Three big differences I'm aware of are that Nix uses its own syntax for specifying packages while Guix uses Guile Scheme, Nix allows proprietary firmware and packages but Guix is an Free Software Foundation approved all-open-source-software distribution, and Guix uses the GNU Shepherd init system.

        So the big advantage of Guix and Nix as package managers is that they try to make package builds reproducible and package upgrades and downgrades atomic and package selections set on a per-account basis.

        Reproducible package builds mean that if you build the same package multiple times on different hardware, the resulting binary files are bit-for-bit identical. This is good for reliability, and it's also good for security. It makes it harder for an attacker to sneak malware into binaries without anyone figuring it out.

        Atomic package upgrades and downgrades means that if an operating system or software package upgrade fails, or you just don't like it, you can restore your working environment to exactly what it was before you installed it. The package selections set on a per-account basis means that, for example, account bob can use Python 3.5 while account alice can use Python 3.6 and account chris can use Python 3.5 on the same machine, without installing Python 3.5 in bob's home directory or Python 3.6 in alice's home directory and without causing problems because of version incompatibilities between them or incorrectly shared libraries.

        I ran Guix on a virtual machine for a while and liked it. I didn't have any problems. You do need to be comfortable with the command line to administer it. I didn't try to install it on bare hardware. The GNU Shepherd init system worked fine, but I didn't try to do anything that fancy with it. I was mostly curious about the distro because I like Scheme.

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        • #5
          I had to look up how to pronounce that , it's "Geeks".

          Source: https://www.google.ca/search?q=/%C9%A1i%CB%90ks/

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          • #6
            If GNU Shepherd is an alternative init system and it's even developed by the GNU folks, then how come it's not more popular? 'Cause everytime a systemd article pops up, the haters only mention SysV and OpenRC as alternatives. I wonder why none of the haters have tried/talked about Shepherd yet?

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Vistaus View Post
              If GNU Shepherd is an alternative init system and it's even developed by the GNU folks, then how come it's not more popular? 'Cause everytime a systemd article pops up, the haters only mention SysV and OpenRC as alternatives. I wonder why none of the haters have tried/talked about Shepherd yet?
              The license.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by c117152 View Post

                The license.
                Ah, I see. And what about runit? I never see anyone talking about that init system either.

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by c117152 View Post

                  The license.
                  Can you cite or in any other way harden that statement? Or is it just a very wild guess? I doubt it extremly. Grub is also GPL3 and every distro in the universe including devian I think? uses it. So I really extremly doubt that the lisense is the reason.

                  The lisense is interesting for developers but not for maintainers at least not for GNU/Linux distros, most of them are full of gpl 3 software so why should they exclusivly discriminate because of that on the init-system?

                  Just because Linus is a retard that missunderstood the gpl and took it because he didnt realize he hates freedom and that was the idea behind the gpl does not make the whole community hate on gpl 3, and least not to that point, that they boycott any gpl 3 software.

                  There are such people but they are more on some strange vendeta they often love bsd or see Android as the real linux cause no gnu tools in it. But I don't even disguss more about them or hear any arguments why some people here agree to that. I just state the facts that most linux distros and likely even most systemd haters don't have a (at least big) problem with the gpl v3 at least from the user perspective. Maybe they don't want to send patches to them, but as maintainer you don't nessesarily have to do that, most distros don't send many patches upstream only a few big ones do that regulary, and even they take tons of projects where they never send patches.

                  I think the real reasons are 2/3 different ones:

                  1. from the website: "The Shepherd in its early development stages"
                  2. "work on every POSIX-like system where Guile is available"

                  for people that talk bullshit about unix philosophy and they didnt get the memo that GNU stands for Gnu is NOT Unix, a guile dependency is shurly satans work.

                  3. the point of the project was never to shit on systemd or was done from some systemd haters, so the culture is not full of hate, what this haters seem to want, its more suited for developes that want to have control over every bit through the source code, also as much as many people will hate on sheperd for not written in C its a memory save language which C isnt. So security wise it makes sense. Also distros like guix want to change stuff on the init level and its much much harder to add features or change stuff in a C programm than in a guile program. So it would slow down development.

                  4. the reason why most people at least run along the few core systemd haters, was not because they really cared about unix philosophy or any deeper argument, its with every change. People hate change and they want to have very very good reasons to change.

                  So if you are a system admin that wrote 100 SysVinit scripts for your systems and you have to write them again, your natural first reaction is to dislike that. While theoreticly systemd can run the sysvinit scripts, I doubt that all work perfectly out of the box cause systemd forces more parralisation that can result in problems.

                  Also it only supports Linux, thats maybe the only common ground where Gnu Sheperd and some Systemd haters have. Gnu Sheperd don't exclusivly supports linux while Systemd does.

                  So tahts maybe then encoded what some of this haters mean when they say "its not complying to the unix philosophy" it does not support their evil BSD or other unix operations maybe some use some solaris mashines or whatever.

                  But I doubt that this purists would accept a init system written in guile and qualify that as "unix philosophy".

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                  • #10
                    btw the only reason I don't use or give at least guix a very very serious try, is because it sadly does not support lvm, would be nice if that would happen somewhere in the next 10 years so that I live long enough to be able to use that os.

                    I am a complete emacs and lisp nutjob and I use Nixos so guixsd would be clearly my logical next step, but I don't have the money for a seperate harddisk or fiddeling with normal partitions that time is over, lvm support is my minimal standard.

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