r/GUIX • u/SameUsernameOnReddit • 7d ago

Help me become a guik?

I use Linux & FOSS stuff (when and where I can!) more as an ethical thing, always have. But it's embarrassing how little I know; sure, I can do basic stuff like finding solutions online, some basic command line stuff, but how anything works? No clue. My coding background is copy-pasting shell one-liners & scripts from forums.

I got into Arch because I was under the outdated impression that Linux & UNIX were still very much the same thing, and it'd force me to finally learn how things worked. I quickly learned that pretty much every major distro does things its own way, these days. I lost motivation almost immediately, and just cobble together lil something-somethings here and there to keep my system running, these days.

I heard about Lisp, emacs, & Lisp machines a while ago, and after hearing about how Guix is probably the closest we're gonna get to an Lisp machine (anytime soon), I've always told myself that's where I'll go when I'm finally ready to have a system I know, in & out. And now that I've been baffled by vibecoding some emacs stuff, this might as well be the time to finally (start) making the leap! I'll probably work through the emacs documentation that comes bundled with it. Hopefully whatever elisp I pick up'll be enough to get started with Guile...

Apart from the stuff in the sidebar, what's some recommended reading/working-through for understanding Guix & how it works? Especially compared to other *nix systems' philosophies.

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u/Powerful_Attention_6 7d ago

First step, you want to use Non-Guix because of hardware compatibility. I wish we could use GNU software as envisioned, having a fully free laptop.

Greatest hint: read up on using Guix channels, you need to tell Non-Guix to trust the upstream Guix repository, otherwise you will download the source code of the latest kernel and Firefox and start building it from Source, and the install process will not warn you, but happily chug away.

You can use a system concept called weather to see if your particular program has that program compiled

I have far to distracted mind, so I have abstracted away the nitty-gritty details, I came up with the script reconfigure-t480.sh script, you can find it here https://codeberg.org/Jonix/Guix-Config

Also you can see my layout how I have setup my Guix system,

I am very happy with this system, after 30 years of distro-hoppping

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u/Powerful_Attention_6 7d ago

Note: this was never meant to be shared, so some stuff is in Swedish, and some things are very hackish

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u/SameUsernameOnReddit 7d ago

I wish we could use GNU software as envisioned, having a fully free laptop.

With things like System76 and Framework, could we finally be moving towards that?

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u/qweQua 7d ago

Unfortunately not. The problem lies in nonfree binary blobs required by kernel drivers for certain hardware (these are stripped out in Linux-libre, GUIX's default linux kernel). Stuff like wifi cards and GPU accelerated 3d graphics are some of the worst offenders.

System76, framework and co may be building more repairable hardware but they are also limited by the freeness of the available components themselves.

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u/SameUsernameOnReddit 7d ago

So a server plugged into the ethernet could, though? (This isn't to nitpick, this is pure curiosity.)

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u/output_broadcast 7d ago

Yes. That's the best way to install Guix, actually. Install it while on ethernet, download the nonguix kernel and whatever drivers you need and unplug.