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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: November 26th, 2023

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  • 100% correct about what? That people trying to offer different bits of advice/explanations are driving people away? Even if some of the advice is not the best/contradict one another, it’s still support being given to another user.

    Comments like these don’t say or do much of anything. They just finger wag and scold people for not being the “100% best Linux representative” they can be. Believe it or not, people who are in Linux communities aren’t a monolith of perfect technological wisdom and understanding.

    My problem isn’t even with the basis behind the comment which I actually somewhat agree with. It’s just framed in a cowardly way that obnoxiously blames community members for driving people away.

    So yes comments like these are useless and the people who make them are lazy.






  • jaeme@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlWhat are your opinions of Guix?
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    7 months ago

    That’s a bit disingenuous wording as modern hardware that can run without proprietary firmware is an absolute rarity at this point.

    But it’s not impossible, nor is it something that can’t be solved in the future with CPU architectures like RISC-V.

    The project should have really kept the GuixSD name. Much clearer separation and also sounds a lot better.

    Agreed.

    package managers who attempt to sweep nonfree software under the rug and try to make the issue invisible.

    I should have been more clear, excluding nonfree blobs were widely decided to be a lost cause across the distribution space. The final being Debian very recently. Tbh I do sometimes wish that Guix took the Nix approach with hardware-configuration.nix, but the fact remains is that the Guix maintainers do not wish to maintain nonfree packages and I respect that decision as Guix doesn’t go out of its way to prevent others from installing the nonfree blobs/packages themselves.


  • jaeme@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlLex fridman is Joe Rogan in a suit
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    7 months ago

    To give a non-politial example, imagine someone who made a post explaining why they like Windows better than Linux.

    You’re just projecting. People have already made posts like these and they have always led to very heated discussions because news-flash: Windows and Free operating systems are very political topics that invite a lot of discussion.



  • Guile Scheme is the official extensions language for the GNU Project. Guile and Guix’s history often intersect as Guix is seen as the shining poster child of Guile and contributes to a lot of Guile’s development.

    When you say “Scheme” you should also refer to what type of Scheme you’re referring to as there are multiple with different feature sets/goals.


  • OP didn’t clarify whether they were talking about Guix System or Guix the package manager, but a great use case for Guix (and for Nix as well) is it can be installed on top of a stable distro (or a distro that provides binary blobs) like Debian or POP!_OS to get the latest versions of desired packages.

    Just wanted to mention that.


  • Guix System is the NixOS equivalent. It is a GNU FSDG compliant, rolling release, non-systemd GNU/Linux operating system.

    Guix System also has a much smaller community compared to NixOS (also more than a decade younger), but it is a community of passionate hackers who work to improve the distribution one way or the other. The big difference of course being that it is all written in Guile Scheme rather than a Domain Specific Language. So you’ll learn about things like g-expressions (Guix’s take on LISP’s s-expressions), Guix services (system and home), and Guile Scheme itself.

    If you want to work with Guix, you basically have to become a contributor to the project, but it’s really a rewarding experience if you choose to do so.


  • jaeme@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlWhat are your opinions of Guix?
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    7 months ago

    Later I found out it’s based on some LISP variant.

    Wait how did you find out it was written in Scheme after you installed it? Sounds like someone didn’t do their research.

    firefox

    Mozilla is picky with where their trademark is being used, not a “GNU specific” problem, it had affected Debian for years before Mozilla backed off. Guix instead uses GNU Icecat which is a completely libre web browser that doesn’t run proprietary JS by default. Of course you can still install Firefox since Guix community members have already packaged it in their own channels.

    nix has terrible documentation

    One thing that Guix excels at.


  • jaeme@lemmy.mltoLinux@lemmy.mlWhat are your opinions of Guix?
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    7 months ago

    GUIX is a GNU project and acts like proprietary software does not exist/is not a basic necessity in 2023.

    Gross oversimplification, Guix absolutely knows that proprietary software exists, but also Guix is a project that values transparent build process (unlike Nix, which allows binaries and nonfree packages).

    If you don’t have the requisite bare metal to run Guix by itself, you can run it as a foreign package manager (on top of your existing distribution), in a virtual machine, or alongside package channels outside of guix that package nonfree software.

    The linux-libre kernel is only an issue for Guix System (the analogue to NixOS for Nix) and for users who need that specific hardware to be used. Guix is a breath of fresh air in package managers who attempt to sweep nonfree software under the rug and try to make the issue invisible.


  • Zorin OS 17 isn’t going to dethrone Linux Mint any time soon. I wish they switched to following Ubuntu LTS releases instead of being on their own timeline. 22.04 package base is going to be 2 years old by the time this releases.

    They obviously spent a lot of time on aesthetics and simplicity which seems to be the main appeal of the distribution.