this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2023
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I use Guix. It's fully free, it's basically the de-facto GNU system, and I like the features of the Guix package manager.
How is the experience? Packages, updates, desktops, flatpak, podman etc? Nowadays most apps work everywhere but the core is different
I've not been running it for very long, so I can't comment in depth. But, installing packages is easy (guix install), updates are quite easy (guix pull && guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm) (but it is an unstable rolling distribution so sometimes updates need to be pushed along with --keep-going if they fail). I'm using EXWM so I can't really comment on DEs but it has Plasma, Gnome, XFCE and a few others so it can be quite familiar.
A nice thing about updates is that you can very easily roll back to a previous point in GRUB. Whenever you run system reconfigure it puts a new point in that menu.
I haven't used Flatpak so I can't comment.
The only thing that might be annoying to some people is the kernel it uses by default. The mainline Linux kernel, which for some reason permits proprietary blobs, is not used. Linux-libre is used, which kicks them out. Which means if you don't have hardware that has been fully freed, you'll have problems.
I believe mainline Linux can be installed by changing some things in the system config and adding an extra repository, but it'll build by source instead (since Guix is a build-from-sourve distribution with transparent binary substitution where they are available). And of course, then you'll make the de-facto GNU system run proprietary software. Which is certainly an odd thing to do, but if your hardware requires blobs to run then you unfortunately don't really have much of a choice.
Oh, and that's another point. You configure pretty much everything in config.scm. Users, kernel arguments, etc.
You can also use the GNU Hurd kernel if you want, but unless you have very specific hardware it won't work because of the lack of drivers so for most people right now that's meaningless.
It's not really a distribution friendly to new users, but I'd love to see it succeed. Maybe I'll write a nice installer and package manager GUI for it in the future?
Damn that sounds great! Build from source when needed too, this means everything will just run?
I am curious about using the linux libre kernel, as modern hardware doesnt often even support / has a ported to coreboot.
I have a Clevo NV41MZ next to me and I will soooon coreboot it. Also a Thinkpad T430. One will get Nitrokeys heads (as it seems to be updated better, or I should just compile heads) and the other one Dasharo.
But these firmwares both require blobs, still wayy better than proprietary firmware, but just to see how crazy this is, all these machines everyone uses are proprietary unupdated garbage.
Really curious about Guix, want to try it out. I really like Flatpaks now as I am on Fedora Kinoite, so nearly every distro will just work for me as long as its modern and has Wayland and systemd I guess
It's kind of similar to the AUR, if someone writes a script to build a program for Guix you can install it. Either from the official repo or a third party one.
The blobs in Linux and the blobs in your BIOS are different. Coreboot support isn't linked to linux-libre support, but modern devices can often be quite difficult.
Guix uses shepherd as it's init system, so you might not like it. I think the init scripts are written in GNU Guile, but I haven't played around with that.
Thanks for the infos!