nonguix VS dotfiles

I use the nonguix channel for non-free stuff https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix. It has the mainline linux kernel (instead of the free linux-libre), proprietary drivers and a bunch of other proprietary stuff.

Guix has these things called "channels" containing package definitions. They're actually just git repositories. nonguix was made to have nonfree stuff. It has a lot of stuff including the mainline linux kernel.

https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix you can use non free software if you need to. But the project itself is a gnu project and as such should not encourage users to use non free software.

I think Guix approach is good, community helps with open-source packages, some third-party manages the non-free channels. And they are as easy to use

https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix

There are flatpacks, snaps, appimages, PPAs, channels... why would you except a linux distro maintainer to work for free for a billion dollar company? Testing and maintain their software

My background consists of using/developing Guix, openSUSE/SUSE as well of OBS. I'm a co-maintainer at nonguix, where we provide non-free software which is not allowed at upstream Guix. We even run our own little build service, called Cuirass. This softwore is developed mostly by https://www.reddit.com/user/mothacehe/ :)

$ guix describe Generation 22 May 15 2022 19:02:44 (current) guix 9860c90 repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git branch: master commit: 9860c90e8e5362e0e843efbd45f4563b9746a196 guix-gaming-games 9924ad0 repository URL: https://gitlab.com/guix-gaming-channels/games.git branch: master commit: 9924ad0a66f98ea1b538761fd49521acf4f689a3 flat 094746c repository URL: https://github.com/flatwhatson/guix-channel.git branch: master commit: 094746c1e2e90f2df1e598ab1fd0abb4d75ce84d nonguix 1de0c32 repository URL: https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix branch: master commit: 1de0c32142c54bc73af5556d5e45c77152b31f0f

Thanks for the link. Although I was just planning to follow the steps in the https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix repo.

You'll want to read about "channels" which are additional software repositories you can include in Guix from anywhere, There are other channels, but the main one for non-free is https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix

Even GNU Guix System (which is a fully libre, FSF approved distro) can be used to install non-free packages. All you have to do is add the nonguix repository.

(taken from https://github.com/siraben/dotfiles/blob/master/home-manager/.config/nixpkgs/python-packages.nix) but that did not even download the packages in question.

I had the exact same kernel parameters in my NixOS configuration[0] and after some benchmarks (mostly Emacs-related) I observed a 10-15% speedup, pretty neat.

[0] https://github.com/siraben/dotfiles/commit/c0eb0b43083738cab...

Note that when you use LSP with Emacs, installing language servers can quickly lead to dependency hell. I use home-manager[0] to specify which language servers I want installed[1] (among other things such as compilers for different languages) so integration with Emacs is reproducible.

[0] https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager

[1] https://github.com/siraben/dotfiles/blob/bad2e8a29b6622e10bc...

Using Nix and home-manager I'm able to have this setup with Emacs work across Linux and macOS (x86 and arm64) because it compiles the grammars from Nixpkgs itself (the grammar list can also be augmented declaratively with other grammars).

[0] https://github.com/siraben/dotfiles/blob/a0f49781ecb05693908...

I recently got into running my own NixOS server—setting up Nextcloud[0], a website[1], DNS server and most recently a mail server[2] were all incredibly easy, in fact, setting up DNS records is more involved than configuring a mail server on NixOS! This was all done on a server with less than 10 GB of disk space as well.

With additional software such as NixOps, personal servers can also be easily spun up and provisioned.

While inevitably there are rough edges if you look deeply enough, I think the default OOTB experience has been incredible for use on a server and as a day-to-day distro. Highly predictable and declarative configurations is the way to go.

[0] https://github.com/siraben/dotfiles/blob/ffaaacf8888a5c4167b...

[1] https://siraben.dev

[2] https://gitlab.com/simple-nixos-mailserver/nixos-mailserver