Re: advanced?

[Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com>]

Hi Simon,

Am Samstag, dem 26.11.2022 um 22:47 +0100 schrieb Simon Josefsson via
Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.:
> Hi
> 
> I find use of the term 'advanced' wrt Guix confusing and even mildly
> excluding, even though it is wide-spread.  What is advanced about
> Guix?
Guix is advanced – or perhaps more accurately revolutionary – in a
cultural sense.  Other well-known GNU distributions take an already
established non-GNU distribution and remove software that do not
respect user freedom.  See [1]: 5 out of 8 GNU distributions are "based
on" other distros.

Guix does not inherit any of that, it has its own way of describing
packages as well as its own way of describing anything else that goes
into an operating system.  You may see similarity with Nix mentioned
from time to time on social media and elsewhere, but that really is
just a shallow lake under a huge castle.

> Can I use it even if I'm not an advanced user?  
Probably maybe.  Whether or not you're an advanced user doesn't really
have any weight in there, but to get the "true" experience of a free
operating system, you do need the right hardware.  "Advanced" users are
more likely to pick their parts correctly given the existing
recommendations, but that's knowledge that can be achieved through
trial and error.

> What do others think?
About you using Guix user even though your not a "power" user?  Not
much, really.  We'll be happy to solve problems if they arise both in
the IRC and on help-guix@gnu.org

As for people, who do not use or maybe haven't even heard of Guix, I do
think a fair amount of them would treat you as though you announced
that you're vegan at some barbecue if you told them that you're going
to use or are already using a completely free, declarative operating
system.  

> Is there some historical background for this description of Guix?
Guix is historically very avant-garde, also with its reduction of the
bootstrap seed based on Mes, or its bootstrapping of the Java ecosystem
and other parts of the software world.

> How about the attached patch to merely drop this term in some place?
I don't think dropping it would be a good idea.  For one, it does have
an actual meaning as described above, but also, it evokes a feeling
that Guix is something capable of doing "real world user stuff" and not
just a neat toy.  And we definitely want to be in the former category.

> I would happily agree that Guix supports and encourages advanced
> features.  But that is not exactly the same as saying Guix itself is
> advanced.  If we want to use the term, I think it would be better to
> rephrase things as 'Guix supports advanced features such as X, Y and
> Z' if we really want to drive home that we are advanced.
It's not that Guix "supports" advanced features.  Guix itself is an
advanced way of doing the things Guix does, namely package management,
system management, container/vm spawning, ...

> I would prefer to use a basic or even simple operating system, and
> I'd like to think Guix can be that for me, but maybe everyone has
> different preferences, so maybe it doesn't really have to say
> anything.
Guix is simple, but basic only in that it breaks basically every
existing tradition before it.  Depending on your actual needs – e.g.
small disk footprint – there might be some that we are not going to
satisfy, but you're welcome to try and see if it fits regardless.


Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Liliana

[1] https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html