My experiences with GuixSD

My experiences with GuixSD

[Jonathan Brielmaier]

Hello Guix,

two weeks ago I got a new desktop computer. I decided to remove the
ubuntu on it and tried to install GuixSD on it. I'm not a
super-linux-crack just an "average" user.

I'll describe my experiences and ask some questions/give some input
(indicated with "=>").

1. I had a hard time during installation on the "live-system" to figure
out how to do the GRUB setup the right way. The error was quite simple:
I only have to write "target /dev/sda" instead of "target /dev/sda1".

=> Beside I'm not very experienced with setting up GRUB, something like
"guix lint" for the system config would be nice :)

2. After booting in the installed GuixSD the fonts were awful and I
didn't get them to a better state.

=> I never saw such "bad rendered" fonts on other Linux distributions.
It would be nice if the default font setup would be more pretty. (could
be connected to 3.)

3. The system was using CPU (llvmpipe or how it's named) as renderer and
not the GPU. I have an AMD Radeon RX 480 card which worked quite well on
Ubuntu with FOSS driver. I added a package which includes the non-free
firmware, but after all I didn't got GPU rendered distro :(

=> I bought an AMD card because of there all-open Linux drivers and I
want to support them in that way (=> Nvidia...). The drivers work well
on other distros. I know they need non-free firmware, I don't like it
but there is no "real" alternative. Having just CPU accelerated graphic
is for me a blocker to _not_ use GuixSD. What can we do to solve or just
to ease that situation?

4. Icecat... I had to restart it like every five minutes because it
doesn't show websites. Yes, I disabled all those add-ons (LibreJS etc.).
It was not usable for me, really not. And without all those FOSS add-ons
on addons.mozilla.org Icecat/Firefox is bad.

=> Could we not just have a Firefox ESR version without DRM, Pocket and
the other closed-source stuff, but _with_ the ability to install add-ons
and stability?

After lots of hours (10-20h) investing in the setup of GuixSD I decided
to install Ubuntu as the system was not "usable" for me :(

Beside those "negative" records I have to say: guix package rocks
(install, environment...)!!!

So for the moment I stay a guix user on foreign distros :P

Cheers
Jonathan

P.S: This week the OpenSUSE repo-servers were down for two days. So I
"replaced" zypper with guix package and it was nice :)

Re: My experiences with GuixSD

[Thompson, David]

Hello Jonathan,

On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 6:58 PM, Jonathan Brielmaier
<jonathan.brielmaier@web.de> wrote:
> Hello Guix,
>
> two weeks ago I got a new desktop computer. I decided to remove the
> ubuntu on it and tried to install GuixSD on it. I'm not a
> super-linux-crack just an "average" user.
>
> I'll describe my experiences and ask some questions/give some input
> (indicated with "=>").
>
> 1. I had a hard time during installation on the "live-system" to figure
> out how to do the GRUB setup the right way. The error was quite simple:
> I only have to write "target /dev/sda" instead of "target /dev/sda1".
>
> => Beside I'm not very experienced with setting up GRUB, something like
> "guix lint" for the system config would be nice :)

I agree. Something that would detect that you are trying to install
GRUB to a partition instead of the disk itself would be nice.

> 2. After booting in the installed GuixSD the fonts were awful and I
> didn't get them to a better state.
>
> => I never saw such "bad rendered" fonts on other Linux distributions.
> It would be nice if the default font setup would be more pretty. (could
> be connected to 3.)

What desktop environment were you using?  I use GNOME and it's default
configuration is quite nice, I think.  Please note that unlike Ubuntu,
GuixSD is not a "just works" distro for beginners at this time.  It's
essentially a framework for creating your own distro.  Making things
nice is generally up to you.  Maybe if you point out which desktop
environment had the displeasing fonts we could potentially make the
default better.

> 3. The system was using CPU (llvmpipe or how it's named) as renderer and
> not the GPU. I have an AMD Radeon RX 480 card which worked quite well on
> Ubuntu with FOSS driver. I added a package which includes the non-free
> firmware, but after all I didn't got GPU rendered distro :(
>
> => I bought an AMD card because of there all-open Linux drivers and I
> want to support them in that way (=> Nvidia...). The drivers work well
> on other distros. I know they need non-free firmware, I don't like it
> but there is no "real" alternative. Having just CPU accelerated graphic
> is for me a blocker to _not_ use GuixSD. What can we do to solve or just
> to ease that situation?

The solution is for the graphics card vendors to stop shipping
proprietary firmware.  The Guix project has no power over these
companies.  Instead of thinking of things that we are powerless to
change, we can focus on what we can.  We could do a better job of is
pointing users to places where they can get hardware that is
compatible.  I run GuixSD on a laptop and a desktop with fully free
GPU drivers as I use compatible Intel and Nvidia GPUs, respectively.
This works because I knew from many years of using fully free distros
that Linux, despite being allegedly free, ships lots of proprietary
firmware that linux-libre removes, and purchased hardware accordingly.
I think it should be easier for newcomers to discover if their systems
are compatible and what they can do to fix the incompatible bits.

> 4. Icecat... I had to restart it like every five minutes because it
> doesn't show websites. Yes, I disabled all those add-ons (LibreJS etc.).
> It was not usable for me, really not. And without all those FOSS add-ons
> on addons.mozilla.org Icecat/Firefox is bad.
>
> => Could we not just have a Firefox ESR version without DRM, Pocket and
> the other closed-source stuff, but _with_ the ability to install add-ons
> and stability?

Maintaining our own Firefox fork would take a lot of effort.  Instead
it would best to send feedback to the IceCat maintainer so they can
set better defaults.  I don't use LibreJS either.  I will say right
now that pointing to addons.mozilla.org isn't going to ever happen as
long as Mozilla continues to encourage users to install proprietary
extensions.

> After lots of hours (10-20h) investing in the setup of GuixSD I decided
> to install Ubuntu as the system was not "usable" for me :(
>
> Beside those "negative" records I have to say: guix package rocks
> (install, environment...)!!!
>
> So for the moment I stay a guix user on foreign distros :P

Thanks for the feedback.  Sorry that GuixSD doesn't work for you.  I
would say that the GPU and IceCat things are "won't fix" (these aren't
GuixSD problems, nor really problems at all, they are facts of life
for running a system that fully respects your freedom), and the GRUB
and font thing could definitely be improved with some effort.

Thanks!

- Dave

Re: My experiences with GuixSD

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

"Thompson, David" <dthompson2@worcester.edu> skribis:

> On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 6:58 PM, Jonathan Brielmaier
> <jonathan.brielmaier@web.de> wrote:

[...]

>> 1. I had a hard time during installation on the "live-system" to figure
>> out how to do the GRUB setup the right way. The error was quite simple:
>> I only have to write "target /dev/sda" instead of "target /dev/sda1".
>>
>> => Beside I'm not very experienced with setting up GRUB, something like
>> "guix lint" for the system config would be nice :)
>
> I agree. Something that would detect that you are trying to install
> GRUB to a partition instead of the disk itself would be nice.

Right, I agree.

At the GHM there were also discussions about detecting other issues at
‘init’ time, such as the use of wrong UUIDs or file system labels.  We
actually already have everything we need to check whether there really
is a file system with the given UUID/label, so it wouldn’t be hard to
add.  Yet, it would make a big difference since that’s apparently a
common mistake.

> Thanks for the feedback.  Sorry that GuixSD doesn't work for you.  I
> would say that the GPU and IceCat things are "won't fix" (these aren't
> GuixSD problems, nor really problems at all, they are facts of life
> for running a system that fully respects your freedom), and the GRUB
> and font thing could definitely be improved with some effort.

Agreed.

I wonder what happened with the font issue.  Jonathan, if you could
reproduce the issue in ‘guix system vm’ (you can do that on your foreign
distro), that would allow us to investigate.

Thanks for your feedback!

Ludo’.

Re: My experiences with GuixSD

[Mark H Weaver]

Jonathan Brielmaier <jonathan.brielmaier@web.de> writes:

> 4. Icecat... I had to restart it like every five minutes because it
> doesn't show websites. Yes, I disabled all those add-ons (LibreJS etc.).
> It was not usable for me, really not.

Could you elaborate more precisely on how IceCat misbehaved?  I've been
using IceCat as my primary web browser for a couple of years now, and
have found it to work very well.  I've not heard other GuixSD users
reporting problems like this.

> And without all those FOSS add-ons on addons.mozilla.org
> Icecat/Firefox is bad.

It is true that addons.mozilla.org is not the default site that is
visited from within the "Get Add-ons" portion of the built-in
"about:addons" page.  However, as far as I know, you should be able to
manually visit addons.mozilla.org and install the add-ons there.  Did
you try that?

> => Could we not just have a Firefox ESR version without DRM, Pocket and
> the other closed-source stuff, but _with_ the ability to install add-ons
> and stability?

This is exactly what IceCat is meant to be, and what I've found it to
be.  I'm not sure why it worked so poorly for you.

> After lots of hours (10-20h) investing in the setup of GuixSD I decided
> to install Ubuntu as the system was not "usable" for me :(

Okay.  I'm sorry that the system worked so poorly for you, and I very
much appreciate you taking the time to tell us of your experience.

    Regards,
      Mark

Re: My experiences with GuixSD

[Jonathan Brielmaier]

Am 11.09.2017 um 01:33 schrieb Mark H Weaver:
> Jonathan Brielmaier <jonathan.brielmaier@web.de> writes:
> 
>> 4. Icecat... I had to restart it like every five minutes because it
>> doesn't show websites. Yes, I disabled all those add-ons (LibreJS etc.).
>> It was not usable for me, really not.
> 
> Could you elaborate more precisely on how IceCat misbehaved?  I've been
> using IceCat as my primary web browser for a couple of years now, and
> have found it to work very well.  I've not heard other GuixSD users
> reporting problems like this.

As I rebooted often I restarted IceCat quite often and about one in two 
it doesn't show (maybe load) the websites. So I gave in the url, hit 
enter but there was nothing beside a white page (just white). I disabled 
all add-ons. If I remember correct there where websites who worked, 
gnu.org definitively doesn't work.

>> And without all those FOSS add-ons on addons.mozilla.org
>> Icecat/Firefox is bad.
> 
> It is true that addons.mozilla.org is not the default site that is
> visited from within the "Get Add-ons" portion of the built-in
> "about:addons" page.  However, as far as I know, you should be able to
> manually visit addons.mozilla.org and install the add-ons there.  Did
> you try that?

I tried installing from addons.mozilla.org but without success. There 
was an error message.

Re: My experiences with GuixSD

[Adonay Felipe Nogueira]

I wonder which error message there was.

Jonathan Brielmaier <jonathan.brielmaier@web.de> writes:

> I tried installing from addons.mozilla.org but without success. There
> was an error message.
>
>

-- 
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  gratis).
- "WhatsApp"? Ele não é livre. Por favor, use o GNU Ring ou o Tox.
- Contato: https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Adfeno#vCard
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  (apenas sem DRM), PNG, TXT, WEBM.

Re: My experiences with GuixSD

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi Jonathan,

Jonathan Brielmaier <jonathan.brielmaier@web.de> writes:

[...]

> 2. After booting in the installed GuixSD the fonts were awful and I
> didn't get them to a better state.

I also was dismayed at the font rendering when using GuixSD with a basic
(lightweight desktop) config. Presumably things look better under more
fullfledged DE since I don't see many complaints about it ;).

What greatly improved the font rendering on my side was to create a
~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf containing the following:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font" >
    <edit mode="assign" name="autohint" >
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
      <const>hintfull</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
      <const>rgb</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
      <const>lcddefault</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern">
    <edit name="dpi" mode="assign"><double>92</double></edit>
  </match>
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer><family>Hack</family></prefer>
  </alias>
   <alias>
    <family>fixed</family>
    <prefer><family>Hack</family></prefer>
  </alias> 
</fontconfig>
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

You may leave the font family alias depending on your preference,
although if you keep those you should install the `font-hack' package
(and possibly run `fc-cache -f' since we're not yet doing that
automatically yet[1]).

> 3. The system was using CPU (llvmpipe or how it's named) as renderer and
> not the GPU. I have an AMD Radeon RX 480 card which worked quite well on
> Ubuntu with FOSS driver. I added a package which includes the non-free
> firmware, but after all I didn't got GPU rendered distro :(
>
> => I bought an AMD card because of there all-open Linux drivers and I
> want to support them in that way (=> Nvidia...). The drivers work well
> on other distros. I know they need non-free firmware, I don't like it
> but there is no "real" alternative. Having just CPU accelerated graphic
> is for me a blocker to _not_ use GuixSD. What can we do to solve or just
> to ease that situation?

I did the same thing for one of my systems; in retrospect it seems it
wasn't a very wise decision at the *current time*. The amdgpu driver is
getting quite good but IIUC without the firmware binary blob there's no
3D acceleration, which will leave you with an overpriced 2D accelerator
on truly free distros such as GuixSD and Debian. Hopefully that
situation can be improved in the future.

> 4. Icecat... I had to restart it like every five minutes because it
> doesn't show websites. Yes, I disabled all those add-ons (LibreJS etc.).
> It was not usable for me, really not. And without all those FOSS add-ons
> on addons.mozilla.org Icecat/Firefox is bad.

What do you mean *without these add-ons*? AFAIU you can still manually
visit that page and install anything you like. It's just not integrated
tightly, for good reasons (makes you think twice before installing some
random closed source add-on form the net in your browser).

Also, do you have an example of a site which cannot be shown? If you are
not using any extensions, it could be related to Icecat refusing to save
cookies form third party domains (this is blocked by default). Icecat
security choices are much tighter than vanilla Firefox or Chrome. I have
a government site which uses weak tls 1.0 encryption (!). Icecat will
warn me about it and not load the site; Firefox & Chrome will. This can
be fine-tuned in about:config, but I'm glad to be made aware of it so
that I can ping their sysadmins about it. Overtime, I think you will
grow to appreciate Icecat for the care which is put into safeguarding
your security.

If you often use cafes and airport wifi, you'll also find that their
authentication setup often is broken, and Icecat by default will prevent
you form using those. It can be changed in about:config if you want to
push through anyway.

> => Could we not just have a Firefox ESR version without DRM, Pocket and
> the other closed-source stuff, but _with_ the ability to install add-ons
> and stability?

Given that Icecat seems to works great for most, I don't see much value
there. The reason Icecat exists in the first place is also because of a
branding licensing issues IIRC. I think if you persevere you'll find what
needs to be adjusted so that it works well with your sites as well.

> After lots of hours (10-20h) investing in the setup of GuixSD I decided
> to install Ubuntu as the system was not "usable" for me :(

I concede that usability wise GuixSD still has ways to go; at this time
10-20h seems a bit short to get everything running smoothly ;)

> Beside those "negative" records I have to say: guix package rocks
> (install, environment...)!!!
>
> So for the moment I stay a guix user on foreign distros :P
>
> Cheers
> Jonathan
>
> P.S: This week the OpenSUSE repo-servers were down for two days. So I
> "replaced" zypper with guix package and it was nice :)

Please try it again next time when your foreign base gets broken by
updates or forces majeures! This is one obvious place where investing
time in GuixSD pays off. Thank you for sharing these first impressions!

Maxim

Footnotes: 
[1]  https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=26877

Re: My experiences with GuixSD

[Jonathan Brielmaier]

Am 11.09.2017 um 18:39 schrieb Maxim Cournoyer:
> Hi Jonathan,
> 
> Jonathan Brielmaier <jonathan.brielmaier@web.de> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
>> 2. After booting in the installed GuixSD the fonts were awful and I
>> didn't get them to a better state.
> 
> I also was dismayed at the font rendering when using GuixSD with a basic
> (lightweight desktop) config. Presumably things look better under more
> fullfledged DE since I don't see many complaints about it ;).
> 
> What greatly improved the font rendering on my side was to create a
> ~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf containing the following:
>  [...]

Oh yes, that could be the reason. I installed only i3 in
lightweight-desktop.scm. Thanks for those tips Maxim, when I ever try
again to install GuixSD again :)

>> 3. The system was using CPU (llvmpipe or how it's named) as renderer and
>> not the GPU. I have an AMD Radeon RX 480 card which worked quite well on
>> Ubuntu with FOSS driver. I added a package which includes the non-free
>> firmware, but after all I didn't got GPU rendered distro :(
>>
>> => I bought an AMD card because of there all-open Linux drivers and I
>> want to support them in that way (=> Nvidia...). The drivers work well
>> on other distros. I know they need non-free firmware, I don't like it
>> but there is no "real" alternative. Having just CPU accelerated graphic
>> is for me a blocker to _not_ use GuixSD. What can we do to solve or just
>> to ease that situation?
> 
> I did the same thing for one of my systems; in retrospect it seems it
> wasn't a very wise decision at the *current time*. The amdgpu driver is
> getting quite good but IIUC without the firmware binary blob there's no
> 3D acceleration, which will leave you with an overpriced 2D accelerator
> on truly free distros such as GuixSD and Debian. Hopefully that
> situation can be improved in the future.

I'm totally with you beside that if I would by a new graphic card I
would surely by AMD again. Otherwise I support every attempt to reverse
engineering the firmware blobs :P

>> 4. Icecat... I had to restart it like every five minutes because it
>> doesn't show websites. Yes, I disabled all those add-ons (LibreJS etc.).
>> It was not usable for me, really not. And without all those FOSS add-ons
>> on addons.mozilla.org Icecat/Firefox is bad.
> 
> What do you mean *without these add-ons*? AFAIU you can still manually
> visit that page and install anything you like. It's just not integrated
> tightly, for good reasons (makes you think twice before installing some
> random closed source add-on form the net in your browser).

As described this didn't work. I haven't installed closed-surce add-ons
on Firefox before. The wide majority on AMO is FOSS from my perspective.

> Also, do you have an example of a site which cannot be shown? If you are
> not using any extensions, it could be related to Icecat refusing to save
> cookies form third party domains (this is blocked by default). Icecat
> security choices are much tighter than vanilla Firefox or Chrome. I have
> a government site which uses weak tls 1.0 encryption (!). Icecat will
> warn me about it and not load the site; Firefox & Chrome will. This can
> be fine-tuned in about:config, but I'm glad to be made aware of it so
> that I can ping their sysadmins about it. Overtime, I think you will
> grow to appreciate Icecat for the care which is put into safeguarding
> your security.
> 
> If you often use cafes and airport wifi, you'll also find that their
> authentication setup often is broken, and Icecat by default will prevent
> you form using those. It can be changed in about:config if you want to
> push through anyway.

That wasn't the case. I use Firefox with NoScript et. al. so I'm a bit
"experienced" on getting websites back to work...

Thanks guys for all that feedback on my "issues".
Jonathan

Re: My experiences with GuixSD

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Jonathan Brielmaier <jonathan.brielmaier@web.de> writes:

> Am 11.09.2017 um 18:39 schrieb Maxim Cournoyer:
>> Jonathan Brielmaier <jonathan.brielmaier@web.de> writes:

[...]

>>> 4. Icecat... I had to restart it like every five minutes because it
>>> doesn't show websites. Yes, I disabled all those add-ons (LibreJS etc.).
>>> It was not usable for me, really not. And without all those FOSS add-ons
>>> on addons.mozilla.org Icecat/Firefox is bad.
>> 
>> What do you mean *without these add-ons*? AFAIU you can still manually
>> visit that page and install anything you like. It's just not integrated
>> tightly, for good reasons (makes you think twice before installing some
>> random closed source add-on form the net in your browser).
>
> As described this didn't work. I haven't installed closed-surce add-ons
> on Firefox before. The wide majority on AMO is FOSS from my perspective.

Maybe something under Preferences -> Security. I see that I under
"Exceptions..." I have https://addons.mozilla.org set to Allow. I also
unchecked the "Block dangerous and deceptive content" on that same tab.

HTH,

Maxim