GUIX and Shepard

13 May 2023, 14:18:28

Has anyone looked at GUIX and Sheepard? I'm sort of looking over my shoulder to see what might be next in the world in terms of Free Software OS options. I doubt one can use GUIX on an arch based Linux system as it would mean changing the package manager.

I figure I have about 15 years or less of computing life left in me because I'm finished. So I need to cover that window with Free OSes.

Re: GUIX and Shepard

Reply #1 – 01 July 2024, 07:17:27

I gave the Guix OS as a whole a trial run for about a week in my quest to find a distro to switch to. It was certainly interesting. It took a lot of getting used to the syntax for their terminal commands. The upside is that their website has some pretty good documentation but the downside is that some things, such as upgrading the system files like the kernel, take a lot more effort than any other distro I tried. For instance if I want to upgrade Artix I can type "sudo pacman -Syu". With Guix it was :

"guix pull
GUIX_PROFILE="$HOME/.config/guix/current"
. "$GUIX_PROFILE/etc/profile"
hash guix
guix upgrade
sudo guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm"

The packages were a mixed bag as some were pretty up to date but others were way out of date. The installer was very simple and easy to use. I loved how they give you a choice of DE during install.

All in all if I want a distro more in line with the FSF, but one that doesn't use SystemD, i'll probably install Devuan and put the libre kernel on top of it.Much less headaches as well as more freedom of choice of the init system.