* On 2017 04 Jul 19:46 -0500, Florian Zieboll wrote:
> Am 4. Juli 2017 20:23:28 MESZ schrieb Nate Bargmann <n0nb@???>:
> >* On 2017 04 Jul 13:17 -0500, Joel Roth wrote:
> >>
> >> Nix is also relevant.
> >
> >As is Guix.
>
>
> I'd be really curious about some more first hand Guix impressions!

It has been several years and at that time I don't recall being able to
install it in a VM and IIRC, I had it installed in its own partition on
a laptop. I'm not sure if X was working on it yet then or not. At the
Bash prompt it looked and worked like any other. Startup was different
as it used its own init system.

The touted cool feature was being able to install an app as a regular
user which stored it in an area writable by that user (may have been the
home directory, I don't recall exactly). Each user could then maintain
their own version set of software independent of the system software, or
the admin could install things that were available system wide. Along
with the installation method, another feature was being able to maintain
separate versions and roll back at will.

It has implemented some interesting concepts that will likely find their
niche. From what I saw, it will require plenty of disk space over time.

At the time it used the Linux kernel (GNU libre'd, of course) and I
think the plan was to transition to the HURD kernel as it is now
considered the official OS project for the GNU System. Solidifying its
official GNU project status, RMS did post to the mailing list while I was
a member.

All of this is from memory so any errors are mine. Its home page is
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/ and glancing at the manual, things
have matured a lot so it may well be worth taking look.

- Nate

--

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