Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com>]

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Hi,

This is a proposal to help differentiate Guix, the package manager, from Guix System.

Background: As far as I understand, Guix was supposed to be GNU's
package manager, and GNU was supposed to be the operating system: two products with two different websites. Unfortunatelly, that didn't happen and the Guix website became the home for two products: Guix, the package manager, and Guix System, a distribution of the GNU operating system. Since then, both products have been presented almost as a single one in the website. Probably as a result of this some people call both products by the same name (Guix), and some other people don't understand what «Guix» is by skimming through the home page.

I've seen comments related to this issue in different places through the years. Some examples:

2018-01-17 · website: say what Guix is at the very top
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2018-01/msg00232.html

2020-01-02 · How to present Guix to a wider audience
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2020-01/msg00002.html

2022-09-16 · Guix as a tool for computational science
https://10years.guix.gnu.org/video/guix-as-a-tool-for-computational-science/


Proposal: In summary, I'd like to propose clearer product differentiation, starting with the following changes:

0. Main menu: Change Overview and Download items to

   Overview
   • Package manager
   • Operating system

   Download
   • Package manager
   • Operating system

1. Home page: Focus on Guix, the package manager.
2. Download page: Likewise.
3. Operating system home page: New page.
4. Operating system download page: New page.

The following mockups illustrate the proposed changes. You can start in the Home page mockup, and click links to go to the other mockups. If your browser doesn't support PDF, you can find a PNG version of each mockup in the same URL paths (simply change the "pdf" extension to "png").


·········
Resource: Home page
Path: https://guix.gnu.org/
Mockup: https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/home-page.pdf
·········
Resource: Download page
Path: https://guix.gnu.org/en/download/
Mockup: https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/download-package-manager-page.pdf
·········
Resource: OS Home page
Path: https://guix.gnu.org/en/operating-system/
Mockup: https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/os-home-page.pdf
·········
Resource: OS Download page
Path: https://guix.gnu.org/operating-system/download/
Mockup: https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/download-os-page.pdf
·········


(The source files of the mockups can be found in https://codeberg.org/luis-felipe/guix-graphics/ in the "mockups" directory.)

I can help implement several of the proposed changes.

Subsequent changes (hinted in the mockups) with the same goal of product differentiation could be:

5. Guix Features section in the manual: Improve it.
   + Separate in sections to make it easier to browse
   + List forgotten functional features (if any)
   + List non-functional features
   + Compare with similar products
6. Guix System Features section in the manual: Add it.
7. Guix System Configurations page: A collection of configurations, ideally of real systems currently used in production environments.

That's it for now.

Looking forward to your comments,


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

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