Many of them don’t even allow it to be a hidden file—they just require a fully unhidden “tool.yml” file sitting right there in the root of your project.

I love this. I hate when tools only allow hidden config files. I want to know where the config is—my teammates should be aware of where the config is. I don’t want to be tricked into thinking there isn’t a config file in a directory.

I actually have alias ls='ls -A' in my bashrc so I see everything.

I’ve been enjoying Guix for the last 8 days. You declare your OS and home config in a file and you can check them into source control. It was originally a fork of NixOS, but has diverged a lot.

The CLIs and APIs are pretty nice. They have a concept of “channels”, which are git repos you can download software from. The default official channel only hosts FOSS software, but you can trivially add non-FOSS channels and they work just as well as the first-party channels.

Each channel update and package install, removal, update get put on a log, which you can trivially jump between. guix package --switch-genereation=28 and boom you’re at that generation (it’s like a git commit). The software and config changes get saved in the generation so the jump is clean and atomic. I actually bisected my OS yesterday to track a bug! That was cool. You can also create and share isolated, reproducible environments.

Guix works with Flatpak and distrobox as well, in case some software isn’t available in existing channels. I got HiDPI, Zoom, Logseq, Syncthing, and Tailscale working.

The biggest drawback for me so far is that it doesn’t use systemd. Not sure if it’s a dealbreaker for me yet. Systemd does way more than just manage system services, so GNU Shepherd (which Guix uses) isn’t a real replacement.

I use Emacs on the daily, and I just can’t get into Scheme.

Do you find that Elisp and Scheme are too different? I don’t know either, so they look almost the same to me.

other contributors will not even note you are using it.

Ooooh, that’s interesting.

share with him guix manifest

Aaaah: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Writing-Manifests.html

# Write a manifest for the packages specified on the command line.
guix shell --export-manifest gcc-toolchain make git > manifest.scm

Heck yeah!

Uh, sorry. I don’t follow. Is there a way to tell all programs to write to one file in Guix?

I’m in Guix Linux land right now and I miss journald. I’m supposed to wade through all the log files in /var/log myself??

Btw, here’s how you configure HiDPI for GNOME. Unfortunately, my laptop has a hydeepeeay display, so it’s not fully compatible with Linux. (It’s 3840x2160, so at least 2x scaling is possible, hypothetically.)

Commands from the Arch Wiki, but also adds cursor scaling:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "[{'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor', <2>}, {'Gtk/CursorThemeSize', <48>}]"
$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2

The default GNOME configuration is some how missing that. I didn’t have to do that in Arch, but I do in Guix. IDK. Anyway, if you don’t run those commands certain apps will be tiny, including a tiny mouse cursor.

Btw, here’s how you install distrobox on Guix.

First, install rootless Podman: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Miscellaneous-Services.html#Rootless-Podman-Service.

You need to edit your /etc/config.scm or where ever you store your system config. Import the right modules/services, add your user to cgroup, add iptables-service-type to your services, add rootless-podman-service-type and configure it.

(use-service-modules containers networking …)
(use-modules (gnu system accounts))  ;for 'subid-range'

(operating-system
  ;; …
  (users (cons (user-account
                (name "alice")
                (comment "Bob's sister")
                (group "users")

                ;; Adding the account to the "cgroup" group
                ;; makes it possible to run podman commands.
                (supplementary-groups '("cgroup" "wheel"
                                        "audio" "video")))
               %base-user-accounts))
  (services
    (append (list (service iptables-service-type)
                  (service rootless-podman-service-type
                           (rootless-podman-configuration
                             (subgids
                               (list (subid-range (name "alice"))))
                             (subuids
                               (list (subid-range (name "alice")))))))
            %base-services)))

Then of course you run guix system reconfigure /etc/config.scm.

Now you can do a simple guix install distrobox. If you install distrobox first, you don’t end up using rootless podman and you run into more problems that way. (You have to use distrobox --root.)

After that command, everything should work like normal. Enjoy. 🍻

distrobox create --image docker.io/library/archlinux:latest --name arch-dev
distrobox enter arch-dev

Btw, here’s the guix home configuration file I used to add the contents of flatpak.sh into my ~/.profile, in order to update the XDG_DATA_HOME env var.

(use-modules (gnu home)
             (gnu home services shells)
             (guix gexp)
             (gnu services))

(home-environment
  (services
    (list
      (simple-service 'flatpak-service
                      home-shell-profile-service-type
                      (list (local-file
                              (string-append (getenv "HOME") "/.guix-profile/etc/profile.d/flatpak.sh")
                              "flatpak.sh"))))))

guix shell and guix shell container for dev environment isolation

Yeah! This is one of the features I’m most interested in. I haven’t gotten to using this feature yet, but I was curious about it.

Let’s say I’m working on a project that requires Go, Node, maybe some C library, and GNU Make. Seems like I would be able to use guix shell for this, right? Great.

Now if a friend wanted to work on the project, could I share my guix shell configuration with him? (Assuming he’s also a Guix user.)

I’m currently using distrobox.ini plus distrobox assemble for this kind of workflow, but of course this isn’t totally reproducible.

Because it’s awesome. Join us… join us… join us…

Hardware must be well supported in fully-libre-land … had to go nonguix pretty much right away.

Yep, same here. I started with nonguix. I didn’t realize it was easy to add additional channels.

Profound meditation and enlightenment on the essence of Scheme is a must. I had one of those ‘no, this is where you don’t want a closing brace’ moments and my zen was blown out of the water.

Aaaah. I juuuust had this happen to me. Took me a bit to balance the parens again! 😂 Although, so far Scheme seems nicer than Nixlang. I’ve also had curiosity to learn a functional language, so Guix gives me a reason to learn about functional programming.

Yep. Totally using nonguix. I’m trying out Guix for the reproducibility and system management, not (just) for the FOSS software.

From my initial research, I thought that Guix was only going to allow 100% FOSS software. But I’ve learned that’s not the case. It’s actually pretty easy to add additional channels in order to install non-FOSS software. The third-party channels integrate nicely!

I added nonguix and also a channel for Tailscale!

(list (channel
        (name 'nonguix)
        (url "https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix")
        (branch "master")
        (introduction
          (make-channel-introduction
            "897c1a470da759236cc11798f4e0a5f7d4d59fbc"
            (openpgp-fingerprint
              "2A39 3FFF 68F4 EF7A 3D29  12AF 6F51 20A0 22FB B2D5"))))
      (channel
        (name 'tailscale)
        (url "https://github.com/umanwizard/guix-tailscale")
        (branch "main")
        (introduction
          (make-channel-introduction
            "c72e15e84c4a9d199303aa40a81a95939db0cfee"
            (openpgp-fingerprint
              "9E53FC33B8328C745E7B31F70226C10D7877B741"))))
      (channel
        (name 'guix)
        (url "https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git")
        (branch "master")
        (introduction
          (make-channel-introduction
            "9edb3f66fd807b096b48283debdcddccfea34bad"
            (openpgp-fingerprint
              "BBB0 2DDF 2CEA F6A8 0D1D  E643 A2A0 6DF2 A33A 54FA")))))

use something like distrobox, bottles, flatpak to run extra software

YES! That’s my plan! I think I just figured out how to configure flakpak a little better.

These are only part of the steps needed: https://flatpak.org/setup/GNU Guix

You also need to source ~/.guix-profile/etc/profile.d/flatpak.sh in order to get the desktop icons to show up in the GNOME app launcher. (Using guix home for that!)

Need to work on getting distrobox setup next. I was able to guix install distrobox, but it requires some extra configuration apparently.

Neat. Although, I wanted to go through the installation pain experience. Eventually, I’m hoping to run Guix on a server. I’m starting with my laptop first.

Flatpak Zoom had no camera access.

I used Flatpak Zoom for all my job interviews recently. Camera and mic worked flawlessly.

cockpit

A what now? 🔎 https://cockpit-project.org/

Are you also scared of databases and prefer storing things in raw txt files?

Yes, actually. 😅 I can’t manage a database for more than a few weeks before I screw it up or want to easily edit something and stop using it.

I don’t think databases are bad. I think I’m too much of a fuckup to manage one.

There are several projects named zipline. I think you’re talking about this one though: https://github.com/diced/zipline