Re: GNU Guix

[David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>]

On Tue 29 Sep 2020 at 17:10:13 (-0400), Miles Fidelman wrote:
> On 9/29/20 1:04 PM, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> 
> > I tried GNU Guix a few years back.  I did not find a compelling reason
> > other than package roll back to leave Debian for it.  Bullseye has the
> > nix-bin package available for those wanting to try it without leaving
> > Debian, I guess.
> 
> I've been thinking the main reason that I'd adopt Guix is to avoid the
> systemd ecosystem.  The question for me, is whether Guix is mature &
> stable enough for production use - vis-a-vis say Gentoo, or building
> Linux-from-Scratch, or one of the BSDs (though SmartOS is starting to
> look pretty interesting).

My first reaction when reading the¹ wiki page on GNU Guix was—
which wise guy decided to name the OS and its package manager the same?
So here we go: a post about the OS, replying to a post about the
package manager. Confusion.

I haven't watched the OP's video link: but not being a lisp programmer,
I decided that an OS so wedded to Guile/Scheme was not for me. Guile
seems to have had a chequered history, and Guix is still rather young.

So was Debian when I started using it (buzz), but then, so was I.
So was linux. But I was prepared for it to evolve, for the benefits of
having unix on a PC, at home, at no cost. It was worth it after 25 years
of mainframes punctuated by expensive proprietary minicomputers.
Personally, I see no reason to leave Debian and apt/dpkg.

¹ Google chose Guix the package manager for the top-right panel on the
  results page, with its link to Wikipedia.

Cheers,
David.