How to install a GuixSD desktop?

How to install a GuixSD desktop?

[Martin H.]

Hello,

first of all, thanks to everyone involved for making this project 
possible. It is a very promising alternative or rather a next step to 
package / systems management. I am Guix new newbie trying to go the full 
route of setting up a new desktop system on a laptop. My final target to 
have a system running as well as my previous (ArchLinux) one.

As seemingly all GuixSD beginners, I am feeling a bit lost. There is 
quite some documentation, but much of it works rather as a reference 
than as a guide. Also, many questions seem to have been answered on the 
mailing list already, but they are very cumbersome to find and skip 
through.

I think the project could do better lowering the barrier of entry to 
newbies, first of all through offering a FAQ. That would be really 
useful in my opinion.

Here are some questions I am currently struggling with, hoping for some 
help.

1) In addition to my operating system declaration set up using "guix 
system reconfigure", I have begun making a package manifest file 
(applied using "guix package -m") with specific packages for my user 
account, e.g. desktop applications. This seems to be a clean way of 
separating system and user packages.

When I started installing packages via the manifest (instead of 
manually), I noticed packages not in the manifest were being removed. 
Should've known what, my fault. I since then re-added packages that had 
been uninstalled.

But additionally I noticed things are not working anymore: Icons and 
window decorations in GTK applications are now missing, dmenu does not 
show any application entries. I don't know what is happening here? I 
tried switching to an older generation in my user profile, but the 
problem remains. So maybe something different changed. I am unsure why 
this XDG stuff does not work any more. Any hints?

2) I need to adjust the main Xorg configuration file in order to not 
load the synaptics driver. (From my experience, this is the only way to 
make libinput manage the touchpad, so I can get tap-to-click and 
multi-touch gestures working. This should probably be configurable in 
the future.) As gnu/services/xorg.scm does not allow adjusting these 
options, it means I have to change the original code.

So the question is, how can I replace a single service definition with 
my own one? Does this mean replacing the system guix instance with my 
own, modified checkout somehow?

3) I need to develop a few new packages for my needs. Is there a way to 
add additional package sources so I can conveniently use my own packages 
alongside the ones provides in the official Guix repo?

Thanks for listening ;)

Best
Martin

Re: How to install a GuixSD desktop?

[Mekeor Melire]

Welcome to Guix-community, Martin!


Martin H. <maze@strahlungsfrei.de> writes:

> 2) I need to adjust the main Xorg configuration file in order to not
> load the synaptics driver. (From my experience, this is the only way to
> make libinput manage the touchpad, so I can get tap-to-click and
> multi-touch gestures working. This should probably be configurable in
> the future.) As gnu/services/xorg.scm does not allow adjusting these
> options, it means I have to change the original code.
>
> So the question is, how can I replace a single service definition with
> my own one? Does this mean replacing the system guix instance with my
> own, modified checkout somehow?

I use slim as login-manager which is GuixSD's default.  I modified the
xorg-configuration in my system-configuration like this:

    (slim-service
        #:startx (xorg-start-command
            #:configuration-file (xorg-configuration-file
                #:extra-config (list
                    ;; touchpad
                    "Section \"InputClass\""
                    "  Identifier \"touchpad catchall\""
                    "  Driver \"synaptics\""
                    "  MatchIsTouchpad \"on\""
                    "  Option \"MaxTapMove\" \"231\""
                    ;; natural scrolling
                    "  Option \"VertScrollDelta\" \"-200\""
                    "  Option \"HorizScrollDelta\" \"-200\""
                    "  Option \"HorizTwoFingerScroll\" \"1\""
                    "  Option \"TouchpadOff\" \"0\""
                    "  Option \"TapButton1\" \"1\""
                    "  Option \"TapButton2\" \"2\""
                    "EndSection"))))


> 3) I need to develop a few new packages for my needs. Is there a way to
> add additional package sources so I can conveniently use my own packages
> alongside the ones provides in the official Guix repo?

Yes. Use the GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH variable which is documented in the
manual, in chapter 6.6:

    https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Package-Modules.html#Package-Modules


Good luck!

Re: How to install a GuixSD desktop?

[maze]

Am 2017-08-04 23:49, schrieb Mekeor Melire:
> Welcome to Guix-community, Martin!

Thanks for the warm welcome!

> I use slim as login-manager which is GuixSD's default.  I modified the
> xorg-configuration in my system-configuration like this:
> 
>     (slim-service
>         #:startx (xorg-start-command
>             #:configuration-file (xorg-configuration-file
>                 #:extra-config (list
>                     ;; touchpad
>                     "Section \"InputClass\""
>                     "  Identifier \"touchpad catchall\""
>                     "  Driver \"synaptics\""
>                     "  MatchIsTouchpad \"on\""
>                     "  Option \"MaxTapMove\" \"231\""
>                     ;; natural scrolling
>                     "  Option \"VertScrollDelta\" \"-200\""
>                     "  Option \"HorizScrollDelta\" \"-200\""
>                     "  Option \"HorizTwoFingerScroll\" \"1\""
>                     "  Option \"TouchpadOff\" \"0\""
>                     "  Option \"TapButton1\" \"1\""
>                     "  Option \"TapButton2\" \"2\""
>                     "EndSection"))))

Right, that at least allows using tap-to-click. But it still prevents me 
from using libinput-gestures[¹] for multi-touch gestures.

That's why I tried forcing the touchpad to use the libinput driver 
through an additional configuration block similar to yours. But that 
doesn't work - the synaptics driver is taking control of the touchpad 
nonetheless. So I have to get rid of the synaptics driver altogether.

I really think the xf86-synaptics driver can be removed altogether. 
libinput's touchpad support has become very good, if not superior, over 
the last years.

> 
>> 3) I need to develop a few new packages for my needs. Is there a way 
>> to
>> add additional package sources so I can conveniently use my own 
>> packages
>> alongside the ones provides in the official Guix repo?
> 
> Yes. Use the GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH variable which is documented in the
> manual, in chapter 6.6:
> 
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/manual/html_node/Package-Modules.html#Package-Modules
> 
> 
> Good luck!

Thanks!

[1] https://github.com/bulletmark/libinput-gestures

Re: How to install a GuixSD desktop?

[maze]

Am 2017-08-05 02:31, schrieb Joshua Branson:
> I like your idea of a faq!  That actually seems like a pretty cool 
> idea!
> I wonder what we could put in it:
>   - UEFI install issues
>   - when will guixSD reach 1.0
>   - why GuixSD
>   - what's bootstrapping
>   - what's reproducible builds
>   - etc.
> 
> I personally wish that guixSD would have a wiki.  I believe some of the
> guix maintainers want to put most of that information in the guix 
> manual
> instead.  My personal thoughts is that a wiki can have more information
> that a manual.  I personally love the Arch Wiki.  It's got trouble
> shooting tips for various packages.  It talks you through filesystems,
> boot loaders, desktop environments, etc.  I probably know much of what 
> I
> know about GNU/Linux from the Arch wiki.

Now that I read more of the manual, many of my initial questions have 
been answered. I think the manual is actually quite good in giving 
comprehensive information about many details of the project. But still I 
think as a newbie, it can be quite overwhelming.

What is missing is some more quickstart / howto-style guides. That 
should be separate from the main documentation, which can still serve as 
a reference. The Arch wiki is a very good example, where there are pages 
covering different topics. And it's mostly well-maintained.

That said, Wikipedia and Arch are probably the only well-maintained 
wikis I know.. A wiki tends to get messy and outdated over time, if 
there are no people feeling responsible for specific areas.

It's probably a good thing that the current documentation is kept under 
version control alongside the real code. So changes in functionality can 
cleanly be adopted in the documentation as well. Maybe it makes sense to 
have faq / howto's under VC as well, but I am not sure that is the best 
solution. It all depends on if there are (community) people who feel 
responsible in doing the "gardening".

> 2)  It looks like the previous email already answered this.  But
> perhaps an easier option is to pass a bootloader option to not load the
> synaptics driver.  I had to pass nomodeset for a while.  I was having
> some issues with my radeon APU.  It's now been resolved, so I don't 
> pass
> nomodeset to the kernel arguments anymore.

Well, xf86-input-synaptics is not a kernel driver but an Xorg input 
driver. It can only be enabled or disabled through the Xorg 
configuration.

> 
> 3) I believe you can just maintain your own copy of the guix git repo.
> You can create your own package sources locally, and then not share 
> your
> new definitions with upstream.

Thanks, I am going that way now.

> Or you could use the new guix potlock.
> I think that is what they were calling it once upon a time.

Hmm, not sure what it is or how it is supposed to work.

That said, it's not that I want to maintain proprietary software 
packages, but about having an "incubator" repository which I might use 
for my personal machine(s) until my packages are accepted upstream. (Or 
maybe some of them won't ever, who knows.) The GUIX_PACKAGE_PATH 
variable is probably sufficient for now.

Best
Martin