this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
70 points (89.8% liked)
Linux
48179 readers
1184 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'd love to use guix instead of nix, the language is far better and the repl is incomparably more useful.
But nix has 4x the packages, a third of guix packages are seriously out of date (last time I checked docker was behind even Debian), and those numbers are inflated by Emacs and lisp packages most people won't use. And that's before going into a serious lack of prebuilt bins causing you to leave large projects like firefox to compile over night, having to add additional repos to get nonfree packages, and essentially being forced to use Emacs for good UX.
Even installing guixos on a laptop requires a special ISO and instructions from system crafters due to nonfree packages.
Being Linux only is also hurting its applications for work, but that's not as relevant for personal use.
Guix is still really far away from being a real alternative.