[HN Gopher] Rde: A configuration framework for GNU Guix [video]
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       Rde: A configuration framework for GNU Guix [video]
        
       Author : akkartik
       Score  : 34 points
       Date   : 2023-05-30 21:35 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | rstarast wrote:
       | So rde is intended to be a more user friendly variant of Guix
       | System as a Linux distribution? It's quite hard to tell for me...
       | http://trop.in/rde/manual#Introduction is the clearest project
       | description I can find.
        
       | WhatIsDukkha wrote:
       | https://guix.gnu.org/en/blog/2022/keeping-ones-home-tidy/
       | 
       | Guix home was developed as an outgrowth of RDE and is perhaps a
       | better start.
        
       | yewenjie wrote:
       | Guix/GuixSD is great - it has some awesome ideas that still
       | hasn't made it to Nix/NixOS - the only impractical part is number
       | of packages in Guix is really small compared to Nix - and to do
       | anything that is not hardliner FLOSS you have to really grok the
       | entire thing and build everything yourself.
       | 
       | I checked rde almost two years ago - this video was mostly the
       | only documentation back then. IIRC I think now it is even
       | officially part of Guix?
       | 
       | Anyway, I really wish there existed a rewrite of Nix in a saner
       | language, that embraced the new ideas, and still had the
       | pragmatic approach of current nixpkgs.
        
         | turboponyy wrote:
         | Could you share a bit about what new ideas Guix has?
         | 
         | What do you not like about Nixlang? I think it's quite nice and
         | an especially well-suited DSL for the problems it tries to
         | solve.
        
         | InitEnabler wrote:
         | >Anyway, I really wish there existed a rewrite of Nix in a
         | saner language, that embraced the new ideas, and still had the
         | pragmatic approach of current nixpkgs.
         | 
         | I'd love something like this but in HCL
        
           | pxc wrote:
           | As a user of Nix for several years who has only recently
           | taken up HCL: why? They're already very similar languages.
        
         | hardwaresofton wrote:
         | > the only impractical part is number of packages in Guix is
         | really small compared to Nix
         | 
         | For reference Guix has 21,798 packages while Nix has 80,000+.
         | 
         | I think another issue with Guix is that some packages just seem
         | to go away after a while, and it's a tiny bit inconvenient to
         | get at older versions once they've slipped out:
         | 
         | https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/698811/in-guix-how-...
         | 
         | That said I'm all for guix over nix (though day to day I use
         | neither) because I think a full programming language is the
         | better tool for this use case (in my mind terraform vs pulumi
         | all over again).
         | 
         | Also there's one more issue which is related to guix's
         | avoidance of binary blobs -- IIRC this means stuff like gfx
         | drivers can be hard to come by/make work and I think this is by
         | design.
         | 
         | Before that just meant that gamers maybe were left out (they
         | weren't really the focus anyway), but now it might leave out a
         | whole bunch of AI enthusiasts as well.
        
           | yoyohello13 wrote:
           | I've given both the package managers a shot with home-manager
           | and Guix home running on Ubunutu. I enjoyed guix a lot, but
           | because it's so focused on building from source installing
           | software took a very long time. Maybe my setup wasn't right,
           | but it would often take several minutes to install a package
           | because it had to compile a bunch of dependencies. I've since
           | moved back to Nix for the day to day, but I may try guix
           | again at some point.
        
           | aidenn0 wrote:
           | Nix is a full programming language, just a really
           | idiosyncratic one with syntax only a mother could love.
           | 
           | I've been using lisp for over 20 years now and would much
           | prefer if guile replaced the nix language (or Common Lisp, if
           | I can dream), but I still use NixOS for practical reasons.
        
           | pxc wrote:
           | Guix has more stuff in it now than Nixpkgs did when I started
           | daily driving NixOS. I'd say it's quite usable, especially if
           | you're willing to package whatever extras you need.
           | 
           | Encouragingly, as well, the Guix package collection is
           | growing at an exponential rate (as is Nixpkgs). In a few
           | years there'll be twice as many packages or more, so if you
           | can make it work now, it won't be tough to stick with it.
        
       | cppenjoyer wrote:
       | [dead]
        
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