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Advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

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File:comfy_lain (2).jpg (73.8 KB,493x600)

 No.1922

Been working on an Linux distro for the last 2 years off and on. Will probably be ready to release it to the wild at some point early next yet. I was wondering what people wanted out of a desktop/laptop OS geared toward the creation of content like audio production, video editing, programming, drawing and other forms of content creation. As we all know it's a huge pain to set-up systems for this currently.

I plan to provide a lot of things out of the box geared towards these hobbies (both production and consuming such content). A list of applications you use on the regular especially those you're forced to get from git repos and compile from source would be very helpful to me.

Current plans/status;
-Will run on Linux kernel. AMD64 is the only supported platform at the moment but should be easy to port to other archs. Technically, can run on them now with some simple config file changes.
-Kernel tuned for realtime scheduling along with many other performance tweaks
-Package manager that supports both using binaries and compiling from source. Ability to custom compile/run-time options. GUI to manage it if you don't want to use command line
-Multi-monitor support out of the box with GUI application to manage them
-New light DE based on Openbox along with some modifications I've made to it (can use most other DEs though if you want)
-A simple WM for "fall back" admin tasks when you need to fix something and the regular DE doesn't work. Or for people that just prefer a WM (ability to replace with anything you want of course)
-Consistent look and feel across Qt/gtk/other applications
-All dev and multimedia tools installed by default (but you can exclude stuff if you really want)
-ffmpeg/MLT/vapoursynth installed by default with a nice GUI application for editing and encoding video
-Various audio tools installed by default
-other misc. things like pre-installed applications for viewing and managing stuff like your manga, doujin and media collection
-Support for running Windows software out of the box (pre-configured wine) and support for running them in VM out of the box like native applications. GUI to manage both
-blah blah blah

The most important thing;
-A small base system that you can install on most anything.
-An installer for less technically inclined (my grandmother should be able to use it to browser the internet or play an old Windows game)
-Ability to manually install for people that want that and to strip it down in the "suckless" way

I could go on but I'll stop. I really need ideas about what applications to include for people that mainly archive and consume content and from people that create it.

I'll spare you the details of the base system. Just going to leave it at this isn't going to be a Fedora/Ubuntu clone. It'll be Linux but more akin to how a *BSD works. It won't limit you (can run Docker/Flatpak and such) but it'll also attempt to avoid some of the bad things that's been happening within the Linux world lately. At least in the base/default install.

Please let me know if anyone is interested in helping out with testing or in time helping me host repo mirrors.

Oh one last thing: I plan to support adding third party repos that could do things like host your favorite VNs, old games, legacy abandonware and warez in general. Not on offical repos of course. But if someone wanted to do it I won't stop them. In fact, I couldn't because I plan to add a way to host repos that aren't on ftp/git/http.

Basically, I'm looking to make a modern Amiga OS running on the Linux kernel.

 No.1923

This sounds really promising. I know the big thing holding me back from jumping off windows is that the pain of using windows isn't great enough to overcome my tech illiteracy and hesitation over being unable to play certain games or run applications. I don't have anything to suggest unfortunately.

 No.1924

File:Utawarerumono.S02E09.False….jpg (190.95 KB,1920x1080)

I don't really know any of this stuff, but it should probably feature Kuon.
(also this might be more of a /maho/ thread...)

 No.1925

>>1923
Yeah my main goal with this is to get something together that people like you can use without much headache but power users can also enjoy.

>>1924
We'll need a mascot and a name. I had a name in mind but I screwed up searching to see if the domain was for sale. It was but I didn't buy it that day. When I checked again some asshole bought it and now demanding hundreds of dollars for it.

Also yeah I'm sorry I forgot /maho/ is a thing now I don't visit the boards that often.

 No.1926

PREPARE FOR THREAD MOVING

 No.1927

File:bearsuit.png (118.29 KB,332x450)

I realized my "easy-to-use" GUI might not have been that descriptive. So I'll try to explain what I'm going for. Basically, I'm going for Win2k era GUI for the desktop for regular users. You can have your fancy modern effects of course. But the basic interface will be a bar at the top of the screen, with a "start" icon of the distro's mascot. A sys tray and a way to switch between applications and other desktops using icons in the bar itself. A simple "start menu" with a Win2k/XP like tree. None of this phone-first stuff.

Why? Because people know how this kind of GUI works and it'll be easy for them to use.

The WM/advanced GUI for people that want cmd everything will be more akin to a very customized dwm or something like i3. Currently I'm using dwm for testing. But I'll offer something more easy to configure in the actual release (probably. The easy-to-use DE comes first for obvious reasons).

At any rate. Both DE/WMs will share commong keybinds that can be configured from a simple GUI application or a text file.

 No.1928

File:drawfagging.jpg (497.03 KB,1170x650)

>>1924
I agree on thread move, however, I disagree about Kuon as mascot. In my correct opinion, I believe the mascot should be a 2hu as is customary for tech things like this. I nominate Ran, big nerd fox.
>>1926
my body is ready

 No.1929

>>1927
>None of this phone-first stuff.
From concept alone I like this. Without getting too far into the weeds on sperging I think catering to those platforms do a whole lot more harm than good, one only needs to look at Windows 8. I want a computer, not a tablet.
As for the rest of it, I grew up on XP/7 so I'll feel right at home. The other terms you're throwing around are new and from cursory research DWE and i3 are how windows and applications are handled in the GUI?

 No.1930

>>1922
>I really need ideas about what applications to include for people that mainly archive and consume content and from people that create it
Photoshop ;^)

 No.1931

File:659452168.gif (279.15 KB,500x489)

I was writing out a long-winded post about my use case with linux and how I'm not creative-oriented, but scratch that. Just a semi-casual user here.
Daily Pop!_OS user of at least 5 years, Mint+Fedora prior to that. Not one to do much ricing, but definitely not against it.
Regular user of Kdenlive, GIMP, Audacity. Near-daily user of ffmpeg in terminal + yt-dlp for stream archiving and shunting over to a local NAS.

>what applications to include for people that mainly archive and consume content
>pre-installed applications for viewing and managing stuff like your manga, doujin and media collection
I've been waffling on using Hydrus Network for a long time now and finally getting the motivation to play with it. As a Platinum user on Danbooru for over 8 years (and saving plenty of images from boards like these), managing a large image collection has been a struggle for many years. I learned that it has built-in tag services which includes Danbooru, which is exactly what I wanted, so that's a lifesaver. Might be helpful for fellow anons with large image collections.
For those with a NAS, I've been using Jellyfin for my anime stash but I think its media player is kinda ass since scrubbing through a video often de-syncs the softsubs. Because of this, I just watch them with VLC from my local share drive since it just works.

>Support for running Windows software out of the box (pre-configured wine)
This is great, since some software just refuses to play nicely with Wine (not talking about games). For example, something like VNyan using Spout2 in Wine will not port that data into OBS running natively on the system. If you've got some magic to throw into it then that's a big plus for users.

>ffmpeg/MLT/vapoursynth installed by default with a nice GUI application for editing and encoding video
Great inclusion for ffmpeg. Sometimes, programs just throw out a file that's too large. For example, letting GIMP export a .webp image letting Kdenlive export a .gif - both of those create files that are way larger than what I could just get on my own with ffmpeg in the terminal. Handbrake is fine and all but if you've got something that makes custom ffmpeg commands less scary to regular users, then that's also a big plus.
Having spoken about softsubs earlier, perhaps inclusion of a tool to edit those would be nice, since correcting misspellings/typos in some releases proves more work than its worth.

>An installer for less technically inclined
Perhaps the suggestions in this post are merely adding more bloat, but it's convenient if you're talking about a linutil/Ninite style installer. Not sure how feasible that is, but I'm just spitballing ideas at this point.
Sounds like a pretty cool venture overall.

 No.1932

>>1928
Yeah, the Kuon thing was more of a joke and 2hu stuff is probably a good idea. Although the best mascot would be an original OS-tan creation, but those are probably pretty hard to get right.

 No.1933

>>1929
The original reason why I started this years ago was because I was growing very frustrated with the way GUIs were going. Everyday I had to tard wrangle more and more websites then eventually my local desktop itself to work in a manner I'd learned since we actually got viable graphical UIs in the mid-80s. In other words. They threw out 30+ years of research in favor of a new way of doing things. A worse way of doing things. I don't even like the current way GUIs are written when I'm using a table or smartphone. Much less when I have access to a real pointing device and a full keyboard.

So it was a project born out of frustration. I assume a few key important things in my distro;

1) The device is a real home computer (be it desktop, laptop or full blown workstation) with real input devices (keyboard,mouse/trackball and things like controllers, drawing tablets and such).

2) The device is owned and used primarily by one person. Meaning all software assumes it doesn't need a "multi-seat" set-up from corporate/public environments. This allows for many positive improvements in user experience, allows one to remove a lot of recent cruft from the base system and makes configuration much easier.

3) The device is primarily used for multimedia. Be it creating, editing, watching or playing it (and it should do this by default without requiring the user to spend many hours setting it up).

4) The device is used by someone that isn't stupid for lack of a better term. You don't need to be an expert but you do need to be willing to do some reading from time to time (or seek out advice). At the same time; nothing is hidden or abstracted away from the user. If you want to lean over on it like a motorcycle rider on the edge that's fine. Just don't complain when it breaks.

>DWN/WMs
The idea with this is to take advantage of the fact that in UNIX land there are multiple consoles/ttys running at the same time. This means if the primary GUI/DE is borked you can use a simple key combo (ctrl+alt+2 for example) to instantly access another simplified GUI to debug your problem that also still has all your applications running. It also serves as a default GUI for people that don't prefer full blown DE that you primarily use via a pointing device.

In other words. A happy medium less threatening to a novice than the console. Where a user can hopefully debug their problem by accessing the package manager or config options using the same layout as used in the full blown GUI. This is the GUI I've developed first before moving on to polishing the one that most will use as default (e.g. the Windows 2k "clone").

(cont.)

 No.1934

>>1928
>>1932
>mascot / OS-tan
My hope was someone would eventually draw one. I love OS-tans and I think a girl designed to represent this project would be very helpful. As it gives the project an identity, would be easy for others to associate the project with in their mind and would build our "brand". An OS-tan is perfect as it's both a call back to the good old days and represents well the primary use of the OS (creating multimedia). In time this will have all the tools one would need to make their own manga or anime installed right out of the box.

A 2hu is fine to. But something new would be even better.

 No.1935

>>1931
>ffmpeg/video tools
My primary reason for wanting to do this to start with outside of my frustration with the state of modern GUIs was working with video/audio. As setting up a "studio" workstation is a huge pain no matter what kind of OS or distro you're on. You end up having to compile/patch your own kernel, compile ffmpeg with the options you need, run shit in wine which always takes hours to initially set-up correctly and a whole other host of problems (vapoursynth/avisynth is a clusterfuck of set-up. Sometimes just getting it running takes hours mucking around with python or wine). So working with video, audio and subtitles is something I plan to have pretty polished up before the first public preview. I'll try to remember to go into more details later. But yes I am building a GUI to ffmpeg+mpv to simplify things. As all existing ones like handbrake leave _a lot_ to be desired. Mine is closer to virtualdub or other NLE video applications. Using mpv to render the video stream and ffmpeg to process/filter it. Backed by a lot of *synth filters which will be maintained with proper repos instead of forcing you to chase them down all over the web from sometimes 20+ year old dead links.

Following the UNIX way all video, audio and any other kind of multimedia should be able to pipe from one application to another. So in the case of your OBS issue that would be considered a bug and effort would be made to fix it.

>wine
The gist of this is I want to provide pre-configured bottles for common (warez) applications. I would prefer to do full blown repos with said warez applications hosted directly along with the config files. But I don't want to kill this before it takes off. In the future I'm hopeful to add the ability to host repos on something like IPFS where they can never be taken down. That way people could access third party repos that have warez/games for other OSs hosted along with the needed wine config/bottle. In addition to other stuff the powers that be would prefer people didn't host. You could do this now on ftp/http of course. But you'd be playing a game of wack-a-mole with DMCA.

>Installer
At first it'll just be a script and require use of console. In time I'll build a proper graphical installer (or lift one of the existing ones) to walk the end user through installation. You will always have the ability to install it manually like arch/gentoo of course. The hardest part will be partitioning the disks as it has always been. But I do want to provide an easy way to configure the system globally at install time.

 No.1936

>>1931
(cont. last)

I probably missed some of your comments. Sorry it's late.

My last comment for now. I envision the eventual set-up to look something like this;

- Base system
This will be the "core" of the OS. It will be GCC+the GNU tools. Provides a standard POSIX implementation and basic hardware support for all AMD64 systems. Should be able to run all Linux and *BSD software. Small. Minimal. Nothing goes in here unless absolutely needed even by the most minimal of installations.

- Standard desktop
This is the next level up. Provides advanced/modern graphics (e.g. anything that's not the frame buffer) and standard suite of libraries applications and tools to run the basic desktop(s). The "minimal" installation for people that want more than just vim, awk, grep and other CLI tools. Things like ffmpeg, wine and qemu go here as well.

On top of this you could add most anything you want of course. I won't go into details now but you'll be able to access most everything from repos like the AUR and GURU. Although sometimes not directly unless you want to do additional set-up (see: Bedrock Linux). Through simple config files/changes in GUI you can substitute any application you want for another. You can also have as many versions/copies of each application installed as you want and they will play nice together.

The long term goal: The system should become smaller and simpler as the years go on. There are _many_ things about the current set-up I'm running that I _really_ dislike. But they've been retained because they're a PITA to hack around and break some common user configurations at the moment. An example would be dbus. Something I wish to remove all together and can on my personal install. However, some common things like Steam rely upon it. I'm also not opposed to the idea of IPC daemon itself I just dislike the dbus implementation of the concept. Solution? Make a better IPC daemon. I've been helping someone work on one for awhile now. But it isn't ready or stable. Once it's stable I'll switch over to it then provide a way for it to emulate dbus. In time. Hopefully others will prefer ours to dbus and switch over to. There are many things like that in the current base system due to the state of Linux development world.

I'll try to remember to come back and post updates. Thanks for your attention. I wish I had more time to work on this because I would have gotten it out a couple of years ago now if I did. But it kind of turned out to be a good thing. Since some improvements happened in the distro I'm basing it on recently that were good for once. So now is a preferable time to fork compared to years ago. On the other hand. Another project I was pulling a lot of code in from folded recently. Leaving me to maintain that stuff myself.

I am hopeful we will be able to make improvements to the overall *nix ecosystem while avoiding the ideological debates that mostly serve to prevent any real discussion or improvements from happening. But I know the attack dogs will come out in full force when I do eventually publish this. The best thing we can do is ignore them, patch/hack around their nonsense when needed, fork when required and provide a better overall user experience than they do. The last one isn't that hard. It just takes the will to care about the end users and not assume they're brain dead. In other words: We just have to be nice to them and write good documentation.

Also in time this should be able to run on many non-x86_64 archs. It already does. But starting out AMD64 is the only platform that will have published binaries that don't require building everything from source. Speaking of that; One requirement for any package within the repos will be that it builds from source. You will be able to mix and match bin and from-source packages. Also unlike most distros (like Debian) all dev tools will be installed by default assuming something built with them exists in the system.

 No.1937

>>1936
>Also unlike most distros (like Debian) all dev tools will be installed by default assuming something built with them exists in the system.

A small note about this: Coding is "art" to. See: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hacker-ethic.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic#The_hacker_ethics

Specifically;
>5. "You can create art and beauty on a computer"

If you want to know about my motivations. Those two links are all you need to know.

 No.1940

Serious answer for default creation programs I typically install:
Subtitle creation/editing - Aegisub (there is a version out there that comes prebuilt with a plugin-repository plugin that lets you easily grab a bunch of stuff necessary for advanced typesetting so use that if you can)
.mkv packaging - mkvtoolnix
Audio editing - Audacity
Video editing - Kdenlive (I rarely use this so there could be better stuff out there)
Video watching - mpv
Raw downloading - Hakuneko (also ftp and torrent clients for accessing certain sites)
Anime tracking - honestly I don't think any of the "Taiga but for Linux" programs can fully compete even if some are satisfactorily functional so just having Taiga on WINE might be the best choice.
VN editing tools are pretty fragmented and often Windows-only so WINE/VM stuff is probably sufficient there.
Image editing - no, seriously, it needs to have an easy way to get Photoshop running, this is the number one reason my main machine still runs Windows even though everything else has been on Debian or a derivative for 10+ years. GIMP (and Krita) are not replacements and if you say they are I will disregard your distribution as the product of a deranged madman.

Also, does ffmpeg allow the creation of keyframe files like avisynth does these days? That becomes really useful for subbing anime when the included keyframe indicators aren't accurate.

 No.1946

>OS-tan
>mascot
I think you should have a logo for the OS, and the OS-tan/mascot different but based on the logo. Preferably created by a user (i.e. not the creator). That's how it usually goes for OSs.

 No.1947

>-other misc. things like pre-installed applications for viewing and managing stuff like your manga, doujin and media collection
I'd been working on a GUI for something to manage my (ero) manga collection: a database search GUI with tags, title, character, etc based searches. Haven't worked on it or used it in a while (been busy with life...). Think that's something you'd include in the distro? I think I have the source code backed up somewhere. Could continue work on it if it can turn out useful. Might have to re-factor the code since it was one of the first huge programs I'd created.

 No.1948

>yet another distro
please anon have you seen how many are already out there, go use gentoo or artix if you hate systemd, whatever

 No.1949

kuon is never a joke!

 No.1950

>>1948
Went out of my way not to talk about init. Someone shows up to defend cancer init anyway. Just like every other discussion on the internet for the last 10 years about Linux.

We don't care that you don't care. We get it. As long as udev keeps working and you can view porn in a web browser you don't care about anything else. Some of us actually use our computers for doing actual work.
>Use Gentoo or Artix if you hate system
Oh boy. Another init+systemd! Such an improvement!

Maybe 1,000 distros exist and they keep multiplying because they're all garbage re-skins of RedHat. You ever consider that? Of course you didn't. You have no idea how anything works.

 No.1951

>>1940
>Also, does ffmpeg allow the creation of keyframe files like avisynth does these days? That becomes really useful for subbing anime when the included keyframe indicators aren't accurate.
You can get keyframes from any video file by simply scanning it and looking for I-frames. It isn't a hard feature to implement and ffmpeg can do it easily. It's just no one has bothered to make GUI for it.

>>1946
OS-tans became corporate creations around the time of Windows 7 when Microsoft killed them by making official ones.

>>1947
I would consider it depending on what dependencies it needs. The goal is to keep the base desktop+system under 700MB so it can fit on CD-R.

>>1940
>no, seriously, it needs to have an easy way to get Photoshop running, this is the number one reason my main machine still runs Windows even though everything else has been on Debian or a derivative for 10+ years. GIMP (and Krita) are not replacements and if you say they are I will disregard your distribution as the product of a deranged madman.
I am not a photoshop expert. But I assume the CS<x> ones are good enough. I will make a virtual package that will pre-configure wine for installation of Photoshop that you must provide the .exe for. I would go all of the way. But if we put that .exe in the repos they'll sue us off the internet before we ever get off the ground.

I agree none of the GNU shit is a proper replacement. I am not a zealot in that respect. I don't care that license something is released under (GPL, BSD, MIT or even commercial). If I have the code or a copy of a compiled binary without source code I feel like I have the right to modify, run and share it. I ignore EULAs to. I only care about them in the respect that they admit they're spying on the end user. In which case I feel we have the right to yank out that spyware code.

 No.1952

>>1950
>Some of us actually use our computers for doing actual work.
says the loonix user lmao

 No.2070

>>1922
>Please let me know if anyone is interested in helping out with testing or in time helping me host repo mirrors.
Any kind of preliminary contact, website, anything would be useful for this. Your project sounds very interesting and I believe I fruitlessly inquired about it in a /qa/ thread quite a while ago. The extension from good takes on inits to good takes on repos, warez and scope heightens my hopes further.

 No.2125

>>2070
I'm still around just been very busy. I'm not to the point yet where I want to invest in infrastructure because it would sit unused for many months before things would be ready to go live. I also refactored this entire project again recently so I started from scratch sometime last month. But it was for the best because bending Portage to my will was getting old really fast and I was going to have to write a ton of code to make it do the things I want.

What I've ended up landing on in Guix package manager. Which does everything Portage did sans global USE flags. But those don't matter because you can write reproducible package definitions using Scheme. So it's just a matter of modifying each package to compile in or exclude what we want in the base system. I've been spending the last several weeks porting over my work from Gentoo/portage and finally got a booting system a couple of days ago that replicated most of the base config.

While you wait I highly suggest going through the guix documentation and maybe setting up a test system yourself. Since if you have a working Guix system switching over will be a simple process. You'll just have to clone one text file and rebuild your system with a simple command.

https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/index.html

The docs are _really really_ good. The downside of this is they're so good you won't get many copy/paste snippets from google searches when you run into problems. Since you're expected to RTFM and the GNU guys only communicate and work together through the mailing lists. They're old school like that. That said I've not had any trouble myself switching over. I find it better than Nix because what is called home-manager and flakes in Nix actually works in Guix and the docs are much better. If you want Nix for whatever reason you can still have it by installing it under your ~ directory. Same goes for Flatpak and Docker and all that kind of stuff.

Another downside is the Guix people don't support non-libre software at all. Meaning driver support in the default installer for things like common wifi chips and GPUs isn't there. But it's a simple matter of changing a couple of lines in your system config to pull in the usual kernel from non-gnu channels. If you need that stuff your best bet is using an installer put together by some guy called System Crafters at the moment (or you can do it manually with the regular Guix installer).

The installer is _really_ good by the way. One of the few that can get encrypted /boot right out of the box in my experience. Just need to modify some things in it to install my base system by default and allow non-GNU approved software. I don't like their politics but at least they aren't too forceful with them. I expect if I don't do it someone in the next few years will build a new distro on GNU Guix and it'll take off. There are just a few corner cases with some software to work out first. Some things like KDE DE aren't ported yet and other software doesn't play nice with the cow-store because it uses hardcoded paths. But so far I haven't found anything major. Steam and Proton works along with most of the wine stuff I've tested.

I've kind of gone to the dark side these days. I find myself no longer really leaving emacs for anything. But I'm still working on a GUI for people that aren't a fan of such a workflow. But lower level stuff needs to be finished before I get back to that.

Guix uses the Shepard init by the way. I'm finding it to work really well and I've opted to use it instead of trying to tard wrangle the moving target that is s6 (they've made me start over twice in just the last couple of years with API changes). Most important services have been ported over from systemd already and those that haven't are easy to write.

Really the only downside at the moment are no tard friendly documentation and how to guides. If you're willing to read technical manuals it's all there in detail. But there isn't a lot of stuff like
>If <x> is broken that's a common problem just copy/paste <y>

What you get in return for re-learning some stuff is really nice though. Nearly impossible to brick a system or screw up your config. The package manager won't let you make system-wide breaking changes. No more random shit laying around /etc from years ago that you forgot about when attempting to update/migrate.

The main reason I'm using Guix is because there is a lot of work being put towards true p2p distro of packages. Meaning build servers aren't required and everyone using the OS can share their built bins with each other with the assurance that they're good and not tampered with. It isn't ready yet but I expect it to be finished very soon. This was going to be the core reason for making a new distro for me. So I prefer to chip in and help out these guys instead of going it alone. It'll also be useful for some other stuff I have planned (the ability to offload video/audio encoding to other machines/servers).

If you do decide to give it a try do let me know if you run across anything that isn't already packaged or doesn't play nice with how Guix uses symbolic links everywhere. I stumbled upon one this morning that I was able to fix with a couple of lines of code.

I'm becoming a bit of a lisper lately. I've known it for many years but I always avoided writing much in it for whatever reason. But this project is forcing me to use it more often. I don't really mind it once I got emacs set-up to do some highlighting to keep track of all the (((((()))))). It's a really good language.

 No.2135

File:e3b990d14488e0802ac0b9ff7a….jpg (8.63 KB,256x219)

>>2125
Funny, I was following along and I was thinking about metioning that I wouldn't be interested unless it supported things I now consider basic features like being declarative+reproducible*, and rollback/atomic upgrades, but I didn't want to try to force you to adopt whatever my own preferences are. I use NixOS right now, but I was thinking of switching to Guix anyway because I prefer Lisp. I already use emacs, so Guix+emacs+a Lisp window manager and most of my system would have nice to look at easily modifiable code. NixOS works very well but the language is gross and I find it confusing to write at times. The real benefit of Nix and NixOS is the huge number of packages and all of the pre-existing configs that have been posted all over the internet for anything you can imagine. The tradeoff is that writing your own packages kind of sucks. I have a few extra PCs, some of which run NixOS and some of which run debian, so I'm sure I could find something to install this on.

 No.2155

>>2135
You should switch to Guix. If you want access to Nix packages you can have it anyway inside of your home folder. The reason you should switch to Guix boils down to;
-1) Home management actually works
-2) Channels actually works
-3) The language is much better

The only real draw back isn't really a draw back. It's the same issue with every GNU project: The hostility towards anything non-libre keeping away 95% of the population. Since almost no one's computer is supported by the kernel Guix ships with unless it's already 10+ years old. If you have any kind of modern GPU you're shit out of luck unless you know what you're doing and pull-in the non-gnu channels. Which are maintained by third party channels and not allowed to be discussed at all on the main mailing list.

Another issue is for whatever reason the GNU mirrors have been really really slow lately. Can't figure out why considering how much money they're getting through donations. But sometimes their website just simply refuses to load for hours at a time.

Upside is the documentation is very good. So even though there isn't an existing config for you to pull-in you should have little trouble making your own.

Someone is going to take Guix and the non-GNU channels. Put them together and make a lot of money attracting a large user base over the next few years. Since it has already solved all the issues with NixOS at a fundamental level. Mostly because it had the benefit of being developed after Nix using a proper language.

There are some questionable defaults in the default graphical installer though. Nothing but ext4 is supported by default unless you write a config file manually (and manually partition). It uses GDM as a log-in manager by default as well. Which is really slow for some reason and refuses to pick up my ~/.Xsession. Most likely because it's Gnome and Gnome is horrible. No KDE (yet) if you're into that. The Cookbook is outdated and wrong in several areas.

What I've been going is looking at other people's configs and trying to work out how stuff differs from the Cookbook and the areas with docs are limited in some places (like Xorg config). Issue there is a lot of people seem hellbent on using Wayland now. So recent examples for global Xorg config is hard to come by.

Upside is if you break it it isn't a big deal. Just rollback in Grub and try again.

 No.2156

>>2155
If you want to try on a system that doesn't support Linux-libre kernel (or want your GPU/networking to use the manufacture drivers). This is the best .iso/installer currently around; https://github.com/SystemCrafters/guix-installer/releases

Note that post-install you'll want to remove the pinned commits from channels.scm for the non-gnu channel before running Guix pull + system reconfigure to update.

Full instructions here: https://systemcrafters.net/craft-your-system-with-guix/full-system-install/

That should give you a system that boots. If you want file system other than ext4 I think the installer can handle that if you set-up partitions manually then return to the guided install. It'll generate a system.scm config for you based on what it finds. From there you'll need to drop back to another tty to finish installation because of the Non-GNU channels. It's pretty straight forward once you've gone through it one time.

The only other thing that's different from NixOS aside from the language used for config files is the lack of systemd init. Guix uses Shepard which is lisp-based as you've probably already guessed. I haven't found anything major that hasn't been ported over yet. I like it better than systemd (but that isn't saying much. Anything is better than systemd). It's a good init system and if you're familiar with lisp you shouldn't have any issues writing your own services should it come to that. Starting, stopping, restarting and all the usual stuff isn't hard and you can actually be sure things will start in the correct order. It isn't doing any voodoo behind your back.

You should limit what you install globally through the system.scm. You can use guix install for installing packages needed on a per-user basis inside your home folder. You can set-up temp. environments using guix shell to test packages before installing them for real. Read the docs for more information on all that stuff. If you're coming from NixOS a lot of it should already be familiar to you but it's more well though out in Guix land.

Most emacs popular emacs packages are maintained in the GNU channel. So you don't need something like elpaca/straight or use-package. You can use your existing config file for emacs and it'll just werk with guix emacs packages. If you use EXWM guix will auto-create an ~/.exwm file inside of your home folder. You should stick your EXWM config stuff there instead of the usual init.el.




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