Re: Communication and Design at Guix

[swedebugia@riseup.net]

On 2019-01-16 16:31, George Clemmer wrote:
> Hi Lprndn,
> 
> I am glad to see your interest in these issues.
> 
> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> L  p R n  d n    <guix@lprndn.info> skribis:
>>
>>> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>>> A very concrete task that could be of interest to you is the “name
>>>> change” (a bit of a strong word) that we’d like to implement by 1.0.
>>>> I’ll try to summarize.  Currently we have “Guix” and “GuixSD”, and that
>>>> confuses things: people visit the web site, they see a “GuixSD” logo and
>>>> get confused because they were just looking for a package manager, not a
>>>> whole distro, or they think “GuixSD” is a storage device ;-), things
>>>> like that.
>>>>
>>>> The idea is to bring everything under the “Guix” name.  Most of the
>>>> time, writing “Guix” is good enough—after all, one can run ‘guix system’
>>>> on a foreign distro, too.  When we really need to make the distinction,
>>>> for instance in the manual, we would write “Guix System” to designate
>>>> what we currently call “GuixSD”.
>>>
>>> Hum. It might just be as easy as getting rid of the GuixSD logo and
>>> wording for the most part. Then we can find a *preferred* way to
>>> designate GuixSD (a Guix system (probably), Guix distro, Guix os).Here,
>>> it's more about making GuixSD "disappear" but we could also just rebrand
>>> GuixSD with some kind of "subtitle": "Guix, the system", derive a logo
>>> from the Guix's one. It depends a lot from what we want to put under
>>> the spotlight.
>>
>> The idea is more to have a single “brand”: Guix.
> 
> Yes a single brand is the way to go. But, piecemeal changes to the web
> site are unlikely to get us there unless we work from a unified "Guix
> Brand" product description. E.g., earlier I proposed ...
> 
> "'Guix' is a software environment manager that creates user environments
> that are completely and independently specified by users. Guix users are
> never stuck needing software that a Sysadmin can't, won't, or hasn't
> installed. A Guix user can run multiple, differing environments
> simultaneously and can replicate any environment on any Guix run-time
> platform.  Guix provides system-wide environment management when
> appropriate to the run-time platform.  Creation, modification, and
> upgrade are atomic and roll-back is instantaneous, so Guix users and
> sysadmins are never stuck with a broken user environment or system.
> Guix implements a functional specification of package, user, and system
> configurations using the Scheme language.  Guix complies with the FSF
> Four Essential Freedoms and Free System Distribution Guidelines and
> provides easy and immediate access to the exact source being run.  By
> default, Guix uses pre-built package substitutes from the Guix build
> farm and mirrors but users may build any package, or a complete system,
> from package developer sources."[1]
> 
>> Then “Guix System” would be a component of Guix, so to speak, similar
>> to GNOME and its applications.
> 
> "Guix System" is a "bad" name for "GuixSD." Why? Because a new user's
> first expectation is for "Guix system" to refer to the whole of Guix,
> which we want to call "Guix" (referred to as "Guix Brand" below).
> 
> But if we call GuixSD the "Guix System", we create a counter-intuitive
> thing to explain. E.g., we will be saying, "Our GNU/Linux System
> Distribution, 'Guix System' is just one of multiple ways to use 'Guix
> Brand', which includes the Guix package manager, for which we also use
> the 'Guix Brand' label.
> 
> Another "bad" thing about calling it "Guix system" is that when a user
> searches "guix system" they hit the 'guix system' "Guix Brand" package
> manager' command that, BTW, also generates "Guix VMs".
> 
> It will simplify our work if we present GuixSD as simply one of several
> Guix download/deployment options. E.g., earlier I suggested ...
> 
> "Guix is available on multiple run-time platforms including bare metal
> (GuixSD), Virtual Machines (QEMU image), and any GNU/Linux distro (Guix
> Binary).[1]"
> 
> With this approach, we only need a distinctive label for GuixSD that
> doesn't puzzle users to produce reliable search hits on the relevant
> parts of our message and documentation. E.g., GuixOS.
> 
> HTH - George
> 
> [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2018-01/msg00444.html

+1 Nice work George. 

GuixOS gives us the advantage of OS already being known as a complete
useful separate thing to boot and install (e.g. NixOS, ReactOS, Chrome
OS, iOS, etc.)

Guix is now an octopus with many arms :)

-- 
Cheers 
Swedebugia