Guix System

Reader supplied reviews for Guix System Average rating 9.2 from 12 review(s) What are your thoughts on Guix System? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 20563891.4.01.3.01.2.01.0.1 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 1.4.0 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-02-20 Votes: 1 It's a very unique GNU/Linux distro that doesn't allow non-free software nor does it contain any of it in any of their official repositories. The configuration file is written in scheme and from that one configuration file you can configure your whole system and you can even install Guix System on other computers based on that configuration file which makes you able to reproduce the same install. It's meant for more advanced users but definitely worth learning in my opinion. It even allows you to manage your system from Emacs and has great documentation. I would recommend to everyone looking for a new experience or like the idea of it. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 1.4.0 Rating: 10 Date: 2025-02-07 Votes: 3 An innovative and rigorously principled distro that by default blocks out non-free software. Brilliant engineering and beautifully styled. I think it's a contender for the most elegant distro. It certainly has the most innovative work with the Shepherd kernel. The only problem is that getting it to interact with an unfree world generates some problems. There are solutions, but these are a bit complex and often the manuals presume a pretty high level of knowledge and since the community is small there is not an enormous amount of material online. The IRC community is helpful, just follow the rules and don't mention unfree. I've had to give up on running it as a daily driver for now. It might have a place on secondary laptop. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 1.4.0 Rating: 10 Date: 2024-03-07 Votes: 32 ** Bad: - *This is NOT a distro for beginners.* You MUST write code in order to install and configure the system. You MUST know a little bit of the Scheme programming language, specifically the Guile variant of it. - The package manager performs some very intensive computations, a slow CPU will likely be a little frustrating. Fortunately, when doing routine tasks, like security updates, it is no worse than any other Linux. - Hardware support is /sometimes/ a little sketchy. ** Good or bad (depending on your point of view) - Linux Libre, but can be tuned to receive non-free package channels. ** Good Uses a *declarative package manager,* the most high-tech package manager in existence. This is really the only reason to use Guix OS. - Write code to declare what software and services shall exist on your computer. The =(guix package --install)= command then "builds" and runs this configuration. - Uses the GNU Shepherd server manager tool that implements your server setup declarations, you use it through by writing the same package management code you use for installing software. - Allows fine-tuning of software packages and easy building packages from source, much like Gentoo. - Allows you to install multiple package "profiles" and switch between them, great for software development. WARNING: it is easy to accidentally take up a lot of disk space when using many profiles. - Allows you to "undo" (called "rollback") what packages you installed and configured. When you run an undo, it happens almost instantly and completely reliably, as it does not actually delete anything. - Run "garbage collection" to automatically remove software that is no longer used. If a software package does not belong to any profile (including any rollback history), then it is considered to be "not used" and is deleted. ** Conclusion: I hope all operating systems work like Guix OS some day. The package manager computes exactly what packages you need very precisely. Experimenting with server configurations is as easy as can be. But we need more people in the community developing the latest software packages, especially for device drivers on a wider variety of computer hardware. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 12 reader reviews of Guix System...