Reposting because it looks like federation failed.

I was just reading about it, it sounds like a pretty cool OS and package manager. Has anyone actually used it?

  • Octorine@midwest.social
    ·
    11 months ago

    I tried and failed to install it on my laptop last year. Couldn't figure out the problem and went back to pop. I'm messing around with it in a vm, though, and liking it a lot. I may try again when I have some more time to troubleshoot.

    • jaeme@lemmy.ml
      ·
      11 months ago

      OP didn't clarify whether they were talking about Guix System or Guix the package manager, but a great use case for Guix (and for Nix as well) is it can be installed on top of a stable distro (or a distro that provides binary blobs) like Debian or POP!_OS to get the latest versions of desired packages.

      Just wanted to mention that.

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
        hexagon
        ·
        11 months ago

        OP didn’t clarify whether they were talking about Guix System or Guix the package manager

        That was actually deliberate. I pretty much figured it's niche enough to discuss them all together without confusion.

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
      ·
      11 months ago

      it may be because you were using the default libre kernel, which is missing lots of microcode for your drivers. You need to add a substitute binary server that points to non-guix, which you can then use to supplant the libre kernel with the mainline one.

      • Octorine@midwest.social
        ·
        11 months ago

        I thought that, but I had identical results using the stock install media and the modified nonguix one from systemcrafters.

        The weird thing was that the initial install went fine, even after the first reboot. The problem was the next boot after my first system reconfigure.

        Not only could I not boot my system after that, but I couldn't boot the install media either. The only thing that would work was the installer for the most recent pop os.

        • tetris11@lemmy.ml
          ·
          11 months ago

          That sounds like a BIOS issue. I sometimes get these on my laptop where I installed an EFI partition but my laptop was in some legacy mode, and I need to fiddle with my boot options and disable various features until the system "sees" the boot partition in the same way the OS "saw" it

          • Octorine@midwest.social
            ·
            11 months ago

            I was thinking something to do with nonvolitile memory.

            The real problem was that the guided install - guix pull - system reconfigure - reboot process took about three to four hours each time, so I gave up after a few iterations.

            I did try playing around with bios settings a little, but I'm sure I missed some possibilities.

            • tetris11@lemmy.ml
              ·
              11 months ago

              guix pull - system reconfigure - reboot process took about three to four hours each time,

              That's exceptionally long. Could it be that you were building every tool from scratch, and weren't using any binary servers?

              • Octorine@midwest.social
                ·
                11 months ago

                I'm pretty sure I was set up for substitutes, but this was a while ago.

                I did end up replacing my router a few months after that, so it may have just been that my connection was very slow.

                Also, every time I tried it and it didn't work, I had to do a full Pop Os install in order for myguix install media to start working again, which added a few minutes to the process.