Guix System Latest: Installation report

Guix System Latest: Installation report

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi,

This is to report my experience installing the Guix System yesterday on a new old machine. In general, the installation went almost flawlessly and I'm happy to have another machine with the Guix System around.

Installer: w0wi4jvanaddk1zcvwzhlnn7fkfwab82-image.iso

Host: 20324 Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 10
Kernel: 6.0.8-gnu
Resolution: 1366x768
CPU: Intel Celeron N2806 (2) @ 1.999GHz
GPU: Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display
Memory: 690MiB / 1871MiB



1. DOWNLOADING THE INSTALLER

I already knew my way through the Guix website, but I was thinking that I still see people unsure about what installer they should download: Standard or Latest?

Personally, I think the Latest should be prescribed somehow. Maybe add some hints to make people be sure that that one is the recommended installer? I don't know...

But then I think what to do with the Standard, and I don't know. Because, as I see it, standard, versioned releases are useful to

+ Let contributors wind down, enjoy and reflect
+ Let current users know what's new and what's next
+ Spread the word about Guix around new neighbourhoods


2. INSTALLER: KEYBOARD LAYOUT SELECTION

I was wondering if it is possible to provide a text box to let people try out the selected distribution. Because, for example, Spanish has many options and I'm always unsure about whether I selected the right one, and whether selecting a wrong one could affect password creations in later steps during the installation (although one can enable the "show password" option).


3. INSTALLER: PRINTING AND DOCUMENT SERVICES SELECTION

I pretty much skipped that step because I didn't understand exactly what it was about (I've never used CUPS, I think). After looking up CUPS on Wikipedia just now, I'd propose that installation step to read along the lines of:

  Enable CUPS if this machine is going to provide printing services to other devices in your network.


4. INSTALLER: AFTER INSTALLING ALL PACKAGES

After the whole process of downloading, grafting and installation of packages, the installation of the system seemed to be frozen in

  Inicializando el sistema operativo en /mnt

I don't know the source English string for that. Maybe

  Initializing operating system in /mnt

It took around 30 minutes in my case to continue. I thought it had failed or something. But, finally, the little success window appeared telling me to remove the installation media and restart.


5. INSTALLER: INSTALLATION COMPLETE STEP

I clicked the Restart button in the installer window, removed the installation media, and then saw a kernel panic message. The machine didn't restart. I had to restart it manually.

Unfortunatelly, I didn't took a picture of the message, and I don't remember anything else (I panicked myself :)).

I wonder if not following the exact instructions caused this. Because I pressed the Restart button and then removed the media, instead of doing it the other way around...


6. LOGGING IN TO GNOME DESKTOP FOR THE FIRST TIME

I saw two things:

6.1. The desktop background is a flat blue background. I was expecting to see a default GNOME background, or a Guix background.

(I have some Guix backgrounds that I've been planning to package. Maybe one of them could be used by default?).

6.2. WiFi was activated, but not connected to any network. I was expecting it to be already connected to the same network I used during the installation. Is it not supposed to work like that currently?

But now that I think about it, I saw some network related message when the kernel panicked...

Anyways, thanks for all the work on improving the installer and booting time. 



Cheers,


---
Luis Felipe López Acevedo
https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/

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Re: Guix System Latest: Installation report

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Hi Luis, sorry for the late response; I’m somewhat behind on my mail.

Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> writes:
> Personally, I think the Latest should be prescribed somehow. Maybe add
> some hints to make people be sure that that one is the recommended
> installer? I don't know...

At <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/52596#3> I wrote this; I think it is
still valid:
> What matters is that users try first to install with the stable
> [standard] Guix System image, because it is more likely to succeed,
> but if it does not succeed, they can try the other one.


> 2. INSTALLER: KEYBOARD LAYOUT SELECTION
>
> I was wondering if it is possible to provide a text box to let people
> try out the selected distribution. Because, for example, Spanish has
> many options and I'm always unsure about whether I selected the right
> one,

There is the F1 key to change layout (among other things).  I don’t know
see how to do better.



> 3. INSTALLER: PRINTING AND DOCUMENT SERVICES SELECTION
>
> I pretty much skipped that step because I didn't understand exactly
> what it was about (I've never used CUPS, I think). After looking up
> CUPS on Wikipedia just now, I'd propose that installation step to read
> along the lines of:
>
>   Enable CUPS if this machine is going to provide printing services to other devices in your network.

It’s also for printing from the system you are installing on.  But yes,
this step apparently is confusing.


> 4. INSTALLER: AFTER INSTALLING ALL PACKAGES
>
> After the whole process of downloading, grafting and installation of
> packages, the installation of the system seemed to be frozen in
>
>   Inicializando el sistema operativo en /mnt

Yes.


> I clicked the Restart button in the installer window, removed the
> installation media, and then saw a kernel panic message. The machine
> didn't restart. I had to restart it manually.

I’m not sure if that got fixed already.

I guess you need to ask guix-devel or the installer team
<https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/etc/teams.scm.in>
in particular.  help-guix maybe is not read enough?  Not sure.



> 6.2. WiFi was activated, but not connected to any network. I was
> expecting it to be already connected to the same network I used during
> the installation. Is it not supposed to work like that currently?

Should the installer be doing set-up other than what’s in the guix
operating system config.scm file?   I guess no.

Regards,
Florian