Question about Guix documentation

Question about Guix documentation

[Laura Lazzati]

Hi everyone :)

I have some questions as regards documentation:

 Yesterday I mentioned that I installed GuixSD on bare metal over IRC
channel, in my retroPC that in December this year will be 13 years old
:)
I did a basic installation, almost followed the first example in:
https://guix.info/manual/en/Using-the-Configuration-System.html#Using-the-Configuration-System,
since it is old and it cannot support a GUI, for a example.

I would like to read some other stuff this weekend, but there were
some parts of the documentation that were confusing for me or in which
I made mistakes because instead of being example texinfo commands they
were code. I don't know if that is on purpose.

The example for desktop.scm has the line:
 (device "my-root") instead of (device (file-system-label "my-root"))
I also don't know if that is a mistake or if it is on purpose because
of being newbie :)

I wanted to ask you before doing anything because I'd rather read
other stuff, but if it is OK, then they are two lines, I can change
them and patch them.

Regards :)
Laura

Re: Question about Guix documentation

[Giovanni Biscuolo]

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Hi Laura,

Laura Lazzati <laura.lazzati.15@gmail.com> writes:

[...]

>  Yesterday I mentioned that I installed GuixSD on bare metal over IRC
> channel, in my retroPC that in December this year will be 13 years old
> :)

happy birthday retroPC! a teenager :-)

[...]

> The example for desktop.scm has the line:
>  (device "my-root") instead of (device (file-system-label "my-root"))
> I also don't know if that is a mistake or if it is on purpose because
> of being newbie :)

good work: it's a mistake as documented here
https://guix.info/manual/en/File-Systems.html#File-Systems

the file to fix is this:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/system/examples/desktop.tmpl

because it is included in the documentation here:
(https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/doc/guix.texi#n9863)
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
@lisp
@include os-config-desktop.texi
@end lisp
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
   
built via make as defined here
(https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/doc/local.mk#n107)
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
%D%/os-config-%.texi: gnu/system/examples/%.tmpl
   	$(AM_V_GEN)$(MKDIR_P) "`dirname $@`";	\
   	cp "$<" "$@"
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

> I wanted to ask you before doing anything because I'd rather read
> other stuff, but if it is OK, then they are two lines, I can change
> them and patch them.

yes please, fix that template

thanks!
Gio

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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Re: Question about Guix documentation

[Laura Lazzati]

Hi!
On Sat, Dec 1, 2018 at 2:17 PM Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu> wrote:

> happy birthday retroPC! a teenager :-)
It's not its birthday yet, but thank you ;) I just did a basic
installation, since it only has 1GB of RAM memory. But I love it and
criticizing  my retroPC is one of the things people should never do
hahahaha.

> yes please, fix that template
Thank you for the advice. And I know that if the patch is not OK, then
I can fix it if it is wrong, Even if I test it before sending it.

Regards :)
Laura

Re: Question about Guix documentation

[swedebugia]

On 2018-12-02 16:05, Laura Lazzati wrote:
> Hi!
> On Sat, Dec 1, 2018 at 2:17 PM Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu> wrote:
> 
>> happy birthday retroPC! a teenager :-)
> It's not its birthday yet, but thank you ;) I just did a basic
> installation, since it only has 1GB of RAM memory. But I love it and
> criticizing  my retroPC is one of the things people should never do
> hahahaha.

1GB of RAM? That is a *lot* :)
I have 2 GB on my 2 day-to-day laptops. 1 with GNOME3 GuixSD and 1 with 
Parabola+MATE. Both work fine and I rarely have to wait for other 
programs than the really heavy ones (Libreoffice comes to mind).

I choose light programs: mpv, mpsyt, generally console programs over gui 
if possible and suitable.

A friend of mine have a 4-core Samsung with 8 GB RAM and GNOME3 and I 
feel no big difference compared to my laptop (besides when compiling of 
course)

If you configure a good size swapfile or partition you will probably 
have no trouble running X11 and a light desktop manager (i.e. anything 
besides GNOME3). (I admit I did not actually check GNOME3 on a 1 GB RAM 
PC).

I would say it is possible to configure a desktop system to run smoothly 
with anything above 512MB RAM and 1-2 Ghz 1 core processor. (in 2003 I 
started out with GNU/Linux on a 350Mhz with 512MB RAM with no problems 
besides playing DVDs which caused glitches during playback because the 
processor could not keep up)
-- 
Cheers
Swedebugia

Re: Question about Guix documentation

[Laura Lazzati]

> 1GB of RAM? That is a *lot* :)
> I have 2 GB on my 2 day-to-day laptops. 1 with GNOME3 GuixSD and 1 with
> Parabola+MATE. Both work fine and I rarely have to wait for other
> programs than the really heavy ones (Libreoffice comes to mind).
Oh no! my retroPC is fancy :O and I did not know :) I was going to add
that I did almost up to 4th year of university with it but felt
ashamed. I guess you know where the name  MATE comes from ;), it is at
the end of the site. I will check the processor. because I don't
remember how many cores it has.
And send the patch, of course.

Regards :)

Re: Question about Guix documentation

[swedebugia]

On 2018-12-03 00:39, Laura Lazzati wrote:
>> 1GB of RAM? That is a *lot* :)
>> I have 2 GB on my 2 day-to-day laptops. 1 with GNOME3 GuixSD and 1 with
>> Parabola+MATE. Both work fine and I rarely have to wait for other
>> programs than the really heavy ones (Libreoffice comes to mind).
> Oh no! my retroPC is fancy :O and I did not know :) I was going to add
> that I did almost up to 4th year of university with it but felt
> ashamed. I guess you know where the name  MATE comes from ;), it is at
> the end of the site. I will check the processor. because I don't
> remember how many cores it has.

Actually what makes a bigger difference than CPU speed/number of cores 
is the hdd/ssd speed. Because of the heavy store/hardlinking/profile 
generation hooks etc. Guix is quite disk I/O intensive.

So installing ssd in your old laptop would probably speed things up. 
They are cheep these days and you can get away with buying a small one 
for little money 32Gb is enough if you trim generations and run guix gc 
regularly).

-- 
Cheers
Swedebugia

Re: Question about Guix documentation

[Laura Lazzati]

yes, I knew about the I/O operations stuff, I turned my fancy retroPC
on just to check, it is not a laptop, it is a desktop PC. It is has a
monocore Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, and a Parallel ATA hard drive. Please. do
not say it is fancy anymore, I have just written a post for my blog
about it being fancy :)

Regards!
Laura