Maybe I made a mistake?

Maybe I made a mistake?

[oury.dustin]

So I've been trying to wrap my head around the manual and seeing how 
configuration of the system is laid out is really nice, but very 
intimidating to somebody like me who only understands stuff like 
Trisquel or Debian mostly since I'm used to those distros. Some simple 
packaged software that work on those distros  like Debian don't work 
with Guix System, and I also find the documentation to be really hard 
for the non-tech savvy like me to understand. I'm confused when I should 
mess with my configuration file or when to do things manually, like 
adding a supplementary group for my primary account. More advanced stuff 
with Guix is even beyond me at this point.

I really want to like Guix, but for now I might have to switch to 
something easier until the documentation gets fleshed out and more 
packages that aren't in yet are added to avoid frustration.

Re: Maybe I made a mistake?

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi,

> Some simple
> packaged software that work on those distros  like Debian don't work
> with Guix System […]

Do you mean binaries that were packaged for Debian won’t work unchanged
on Guix System?  This is expected as Guix does not provide libraries and
the loader at the location where a Debian binary would expect them.

You would need to package the software for Guix to use it there.

> and I also find the documentation to be really hard
> for the non-tech savvy like me to understand. I'm confused when I
> should mess with my configuration file or when to do things manually,
> like adding a supplementary group for my primary account.

All of this should be done via the configuration file as the system is
mostly stateless, i.e. when you reboot your system is essentially set up
from scratch using the files that were generated when you last ran “guix
system reconfigure”.

> I really want to like Guix, but for now I might have to switch to
> something easier until the documentation gets fleshed out and more
> packages that aren't in yet are added to avoid frustration.

Can you point to specific problems you have with the documentation?

--
Ricardo

Re: Maybe I made a mistake?

[Julien Lepiller]

Le 8 juin 2019 09:18:39 GMT+02:00, Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> a écrit :
>
>Hi,
>
>> Some simple
>> packaged software that work on those distros  like Debian don't work
>> with Guix System […]
>
>Do you mean binaries that were packaged for Debian won’t work unchanged
>on Guix System?  This is expected as Guix does not provide libraries
>and
>the loader at the location where a Debian binary would expect them.
>
>You would need to package the software for Guix to use it there.

Packaging software is not as hard as you think it is, but if you lack the time to learn, you can still add your sohtware to that list: https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Guix/Wishlist

It's not guaranteed that someone will work on it, as we are all volunteers.

>
>> and I also find the documentation to be really hard
>> for the non-tech savvy like me to understand. I'm confused when I
>> should mess with my configuration file or when to do things manually,
>> like adding a supplementary group for my primary account.
>
>All of this should be done via the configuration file as the system is
>mostly stateless, i.e. when you reboot your system is essentially set
>up
>from scratch using the files that were generated when you last ran
>“guix
>system reconfigure”.
>
>> I really want to like Guix, but for now I might have to switch to
>> something easier until the documentation gets fleshed out and more
>> packages that aren't in yet are added to avoid frustration.
>
>Can you point to specific problems you have with the documentation?
>
>--
>Ricardo

Re: Maybe I made a mistake?

[oury.dustin]

I'm aware that binaries packaged for Debian and derivatives like Ubuntu 
don't work. However, not being a coder or good with reading or writing 
scheme code, I'm having to work around a few of these issues.

Regarding documentation, I feel as if the manual expects a certain 
familiarity with writing scheme code, and there isn't a lot of 
documentation for diagnosing little problems like there is with Debian 
and Ubuntu. I guess that comes down to how widespread those distros are 
in the GNU/Linux community.

On 08.06.2019 10:12, Julien Lepiller wrote:
> Le 8 juin 2019 09:18:39 GMT+02:00, Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> 
> a écrit :
>> 
>> Hi,
>> 
>>> Some simple
>>> packaged software that work on those distros  like Debian don't work
>>> with Guix System […]
>> 
>> Do you mean binaries that were packaged for Debian won’t work 
>> unchanged
>> on Guix System?  This is expected as Guix does not provide libraries
>> and
>> the loader at the location where a Debian binary would expect them.
>> 
>> You would need to package the software for Guix to use it there.
> 
> Packaging software is not as hard as you think it is, but if you lack
> the time to learn, you can still add your sohtware to that list:
> https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Guix/Wishlist
> 
> It's not guaranteed that someone will work on it, as we are all 
> volunteers.
> 
>> 
>>> and I also find the documentation to be really hard
>>> for the non-tech savvy like me to understand. I'm confused when I
>>> should mess with my configuration file or when to do things manually,
>>> like adding a supplementary group for my primary account.
>> 
>> All of this should be done via the configuration file as the system is
>> mostly stateless, i.e. when you reboot your system is essentially set
>> up
>> from scratch using the files that were generated when you last ran
>> “guix
>> system reconfigure”.
>> 
>>> I really want to like Guix, but for now I might have to switch to
>>> something easier until the documentation gets fleshed out and more
>>> packages that aren't in yet are added to avoid frustration.
>> 
>> Can you point to specific problems you have with the documentation?
>> 
>> --
>> Ricardo