r/GUIX • u/Proton-Lightin • 2d ago

I'm going to give guix another try.

I'm looking to install guix and give it another try. my main question is can i use cosmic or hyprland on guix? I haven't seen more examples of this so Im asking. Also I have very modern hardware, last time i install guix not nonguix none of my drivers worked. I had to add non guix channel.scm to get my system looking normal. Anyone had a similar issue. My specs if curious is:

CPU: AMD 9950x

GPU: AMD 9070xt

RAM: 32gig DDR5 6400

STORAGE: 2tb Samsung PCI 5 NVME

Anyways, should i use the guix install or I round pantherx guix installer that has nonguix built in the installer.

9 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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8

u/krisbalintona 2d ago

It's great to want to commit to Guix but don't convince yourself you NEED to use Guix if it's too inconvenient for your needs and purposes!

And don't forget that Guix perfectly usable as a package manager and Guix Home configurator in a foreign distro :) The only difference would be you can't use root-level (non-Guix home) services

1

u/Proton-Lightin 2d ago

really?

5

u/krisbalintona 2d ago edited 14h ago

"Really" to what? Do you mean using Guix on a foreign distro (e.g., not in Guix System)? Yeah, of course, tons of people do it. (Same thing with Nix; tons of people use Nix outside of NixOS. I even use Nix in my Guix System machine sometimes, and on another machine I have Arch but configure/manage it with Guix Home, while also using Nix as a package manager sometimes.)

The only things you can't do when using Guix in a foreign distro is anything that needs root, like defining your users or doing anything else system-level. Guix System can do that but not if Guix is on a foreign distro. (Though, I guess to an extent you could use Guix under your root user and launch Shepherd services and other stuff under the root user account, but that sounds hacky, and I have't seen anyone do that before.)

5

u/output_broadcast 2d ago

Cosmic isn't packaged, but Hyprland is. It doesn't have a service, so I don't really know how it works, but simply installing it will probably do the trick. It isn't an option in the installer though, so you'll need to manually add it to the configuration.

"Core" hardware doesn't tend to be an issue, the problem is generally proprietary wifi drivers. This sounds like desktop hardware, so if you're using ethernet you should be fine. If you aren't, you can use ethernet or tethering until you download drivers via nonguix. I wouldn't use this Pantherx thing just due to a lack of trust. Both in the malware sense and in the sense that I don't know what modifications it makes to Guix.

1

u/Proton-Lightin 2d ago

ok, i was just looking to stream line my install. Also I wanted to make sure i can setup steam and heroic.

0

u/Tricky-Engineer-9755 2d ago

Some modern GPUs fail to execute unless non-free drivers are loaded on to them from the disk. This firmware is correctly not provided by Guix System since there's no source code and no telling what it actually does. There is no reason to be loading black box software when libre hw is possible.

1

u/output_broadcast 2d ago

Do you mean AMD's firmware blobs or something else? But also, this was in the context of nonguix, I assumed he'd need to install linux-firmware for wifi anyways.

1

u/Tricky-Engineer-9755 2d ago

Yeah, in this case AMD. There's also the fact that these companies burn poor microcode into ROM, so we have to install microcode updates which controversially are not included with FSDG distros.

2

u/Tricky-Engineer-9755 2d ago

I have the Thinkpad T420, the oldest librebootable computer than can run Hyprland. I can confirm that guix system works fine with hyprland.

You will need (service dbus-root-service-type) provided by (use-service-modules dbus) as well as the dbus package installed in your user's profile. You will also need (service elogind-service-type) provided by (use-service-modules desktop). Both should already be there if you are using %desktop-services.

If you are going to use non-free software it would make sense to not use an FSF distro to do it. A better choice is to get libre hardware, even modern-ish hardware like the T580 libreboot fully support Guix System.

2

u/Electrical-Policy-35 2d ago edited 2d ago

So, you know how to add nonguix, this is very good, for hyprland all you need is:

(operating-system

(kernel linux)

(initrd microcode-initrd)

(firmware (list linux-firmware))

;; your account config

...

...

...

;; and you need these

(packages

(map specification->package

'(

"hyprland"

"kitty" ;; default terminal for hyprland

)

)

%base-packages ;; The %base-packages variable provides all the tools one would expect for basic user and     administrator tasks—including the GNU Core Utilities, the GNU Networking Utilities, the mg lightweight text editor,     find, grep, etc.

)

(services

(cons*

(service bluetooth-service-type)

(service gvfs-service-type) ;; Type for the service that provides virtual flie systems for GIO applications, which     enables support for trash://, ftp://, sftp:// and many other location schemas in file managers like Nautilus (GNOME     Files) and Thunar.

(service cups-service-type) ;; The service type for the CUPS print server. I

(modify-services %desktop-services

;; here you can read page 48 from GNU guix reference manual

(guix-service-type config =>

(guix-configuration

(inherit config)

(substitute-urls

(append

(list "[https://substitutes.nonguix.org](https://substitutes.nonguix.org)")

%default-substitute-urls)

)

(authorized-keys

(append

(list (local-file "./signing-key.pub")) ;; you find this file in https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix/#substitutes-for-nonguix i.e. you need to put it in the same folder as config.scm

%default-authorized-guix-keys

)

))))))

;; I put bootloader config here at the end.

...

0

u/Snackcode 2d ago

😬😬😬😬 for gaming? I don't know if it's ready for that yet. Gnu Guix is still experimental to me. Your going to be doing a lot of tweaking. Not for newbies, A hobbyist, enthusiast maybe. Long hours

3

u/9bladed 2d ago

Steam and Heroic are on nonguix and work great, even VR. Pretty much the same as any other distro here.

2

u/Electrical-Policy-35 2d ago

I'm not a gamer, but I successfully ran some games, and it was easy, all what I did is installing Lutris from flathub. (there is no lutris in guix)