nix-embedded VS nonguix

Yeah I agree here, I used to find Nix somewhat unintuitive but I have now managed a few non-trivial projects. One being to package Xilinx ISE as a flake [0], and another to build a non-volatile Linux image using busybox and runit [1]. For the latter I still haven't quite gotten where I want but that's because I realised I needed dbus for avahi and dbus is just so ridiculously complex.

[0] - https://github.com/benpye/nix-fpga-tools/

[1] - https://github.com/benpye/nix-embedded

Their software freedom policy seems to be similar to Debian. All free by default, allow separate nonfree addon. In the case of Guix you can find that here: https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix .

The GUIX community has a non-free package repo, you just add it as a GUIX channel and problem solved:

https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix

Yes, being a GNU project Guix has a strict free software only policy. The biggest channel (repo) with proprietary stuff for Guix is called nonguix. It has the vanilla kernel, Nvidia drivers and a number of other proprietary packages including Steam, Chrome and the like. I don't know what the state of ZFS on Guix is though as I don't care for it myself, but I can see why its inclusion would be questioned with regards to licensing.

Since Guix is a GNU project, it doesn't support proprietary software (Steam, Discord, Zoom...). Third-party repos are available for it.

There's a git lab repo for non-free/libre software that you can add as a channel when installing. I used the following guide that shows you how to do this.

I'm trying to enable substitues for nonguix. I added the code snippet from the nonguix website to my system.scm file per the instructions. When I try to reconfigure I get the following error: