Re: website: say what Guix is at the very top

[ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès)]

Hello,

Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com> skribis:

> Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> writes:
>
>> Hi Guix,
>>
>> on the website it starts right away with a list of features:
>> “Liberating”, “Dependable”, and “Hackable”.  But what is this thing
>> called Guix?
>>
>> We should add a very short paragraph above that list to say what Guix
>> and GuixSD are.
>>
>> What do you think?
>
> How is Guix different from other package managers?  Why is it better?

That’s what Liberating (free software), Dependable (transactional,
etc.), Hackable (it’s a Scheme API) tries to convey.

The hope was that by reading these 3 items people could tell how it
differs from APT/dpkg, Conda, or Nix.

> Perhaps the best way to do that would be to write a problem statement.
> Instead of explaining what Guix is, explain what problems Guix solves.
> The first chapter of Eelco Dolstra's Ph. D. thesis [1] did a fantastic
> job of explaining what problems Nix solves, and by the end of that
> chapter, I was really excited to learn more about Nix (and Guix) and try
> it out.  In particular, the list of problems with the state of the art
> in section 1.3 "Motivation" and the list of solutions that Nix offers in
> section 1.5 "Contributions" were particularly concise and convincing.
> Maybe we can aim for something similar on our Guix website?

The “Introduction” and “Features” sections of the manual aim to achieve
that goal, but in a “constructive” way (stating what properties it has,
rather than what properties other solutions lack.)  However, I think
it’s not that concise and it’s quite technical, so I’d keep that in the
manual rather than on the front page.

Thoughts?

Ludo’.