Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

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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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Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.]

Hi Felipe,

On Thu, Oct 12 2023, Luis Felipe wrote:

> people call both products by the same name (Guix)

I totally agree with you. The confusion is unfortunate. I would call the
package manager "Guix," which does the greatest justice to history [1]
and pick a new name for the operating system.

While the -ix and -ux endings have long traditions in the operating
system space, the Guix name is already trademarked by someone else for
that kind of software. [2]

Hoping for a change as you are, I tried to purchase stampede.org from
the original inventor of Stampede Linux [3] a year or so ago in order to
offer it to the project, but that went nowhere from either side.

Meanwhile, I have some other names I would be happy to purchase and
donate to the project, but I cannot disclose them to the public before
doing so.

The impetus for change is low. Please don't give up!

Kind regards
Felix

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.4584.pdf
[2]
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87948650&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch
[3] https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=stampede

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi Felix,

El 12/10/23 a las 1:54, Felix Lechner via Development of GNU Guix and 
the GNU System distribution. escribió:
> Hi Felipe,
>
> On Thu, Oct 12 2023, Luis Felipe wrote:
>
>> people call both products by the same name (Guix)
> I totally agree with you. The confusion is unfortunate. I would call the
> package manager "Guix," which does the greatest justice to history [1]
> and pick a new name for the operating system.
>
> While the -ix and -ux endings have long traditions in the operating
> system space, the Guix name is already trademarked by someone else for
> that kind of software. [2]

Hmm, I've heard about this trademark issue before... I'm not sure, but I 
think the subject was planned/proposed for discussion during the ten 
years of GNU Guix event, but I haven't seen any information about it.

> Hoping for a change as you are, I tried to purchase stampede.org from
> the original inventor of Stampede Linux [3] a year or so ago in order to
> offer it to the project, but that went nowhere from either side.
>
> Meanwhile, I have some other names I would be happy to purchase and
> donate to the project, but I cannot disclose them to the public before
> doing so.
>
> The impetus for change is low. Please don't give up!
I intentionally omitted any suggestion of name changing in this proposal 
to lower the chance of resistance :) But maybe this is a good time to 
consider if renaming the operating system is the thing to do.

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Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Thu, 12 Oct 2023 at 21:23, Luis Felipe <sirgazil@zoho.com> wrote:

>> While the -ix and -ux endings have long traditions in the operating
>> system space, the Guix name is already trademarked by someone else for
>> that kind of software. [2]

[...]

>> [2]
>> https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=87948650&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch
>
> Hmm, I've heard about this trademark issue before... I'm not sure, but I 
> think the subject was planned/proposed for discussion during the ten 
> years of GNU Guix event, but I haven't seen any information about it.

The name is registered only in USA, right?

Does it lead to concrete troubles?


>> Hoping for a change as you are, I tried to purchase stampede.org from
>> the original inventor of Stampede Linux [3] a year or so ago in order to
>> offer it to the project, but that went nowhere from either side.
>>
>> Meanwhile, I have some other names I would be happy to purchase and
>> donate to the project, but I cannot disclose them to the public before
>> doing so.

Well, I am not aware of any legal issue with the name Guix.  There is
one?

Somehow, don’t fix it if it is not broken. :-)


Cheers,
simon

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Thu, 12 Oct 2023 at 00:15, Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> wrote:

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

I agree with this proposal.

For what it is worth, I remember a discussion past year at 10 Years of
Guix with researchers – interested by reproducible research and not
really knowing what Guix is – and after some search engine queries, they
ended on the website guix.gnu.org.  From the information there, 1. they
did not get what Guix is and 2. they had the feeling that Guix is not
for their tasks.  Your proposal really helps here!


> Mockup:
> https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/home-page.pdf

Well, comments.

1.
Instead of replicate or reproduce that have different meaning depending
on communities, I prefer to use the weak-defined ’redeploy’ which cover the
idea.

    “and make these eaiser to redeploy in one or many devices, and over time.”

For instance, the word “replicate” could confuse this community who
expect the word “reproduce”.

“What’s the difference between replication and reproduction?“
https://rescience.github.io/faq/

Well, for instance:

“Reproducibility vs. Replicability: A Brief History of a Confused Terminology”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5778115/


2.
I would not write “without superuser privileges” since you need at least
once – for installing.  Hum, I have no alternative wording.

3.
I would not write “50 years later”.  Instead, just “Get the same
environment in the future”.

Here, similarly as #1, I would use the term “redeploy”.

4.
How to go from “Guix Package Manager” to “Guix System” and vice-versa?

> Looking forward to your comments,

Well, from my perspective, your proposal makes clearer information about
the different Guix.

Cheers,
simon

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi Simon,

El 12/10/23 a las 8:07, Simon Tournier escribió:
> Hi,
>
> On Thu, 12 Oct 2023 at 00:15, Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This is a proposal to help differentiate Guix, the package manager,
>> from Guix System.
> I agree with this proposal.
>
> For what it is worth, I remember a discussion past year at 10 Years of
> Guix with researchers – interested by reproducible research and not
> really knowing what Guix is – and after some search engine queries, they
> ended on the website guix.gnu.org.  From the information there, 1. they
> did not get what Guix is and 2. they had the feeling that Guix is not
> for their tasks.  Your proposal really helps here!

Glad to hear that :)


>> Mockup:
>> https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/home-page.pdf
> Well, comments.
>
> 1.
> Instead of replicate or reproduce that have different meaning depending
> on communities, I prefer to use the weak-defined ’redeploy’ which cover the
> idea.
>
>      “and make these eaiser to redeploy in one or many devices, and over time.”
>
> For instance, the word “replicate” could confuse this community who
> expect the word “reproduce”.
>
> “What’s the difference between replication and reproduction?“
> https://rescience.github.io/faq/
>
> Well, for instance:
>
> “Reproducibility vs. Replicability: A Brief History of a Confused Terminology”
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5778115/

Thanks, I'm taking note of this.


> 2.
> I would not write “without superuser privileges” since you need at least
> once – for installing.  Hum, I have no alternative wording.

Right. I've been living in the Guix System for so long now...


>
> 3.
> I would not write “50 years later”.  Instead, just “Get the same
> environment in the future”.

The reason I used the specific number was to make it clearer that Guix 
should allow reproducible outputs for generations to come, instead of 
just some near future.


> 4.
> How to go from “Guix Package Manager” to “Guix System” and vice-versa?

I don't think I understand. Do you mean how would people go from the 
package manager home page to the operating system page?


>> Looking forward to your comments,
> Well, from my perspective, your proposal makes clearer information about
> the different Guix.
Thanks for checking it out, Simon :)

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Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Hi,

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

Hey, that’s me!  Naturally, I do agree that we need clearer product
differentiation and your drafts are pretty and clear as always.

On the other hand I’ve always felt that the term “package manager” is so
limiting.  It primes people to expect a package manager, but none of
the features in the “guix system” family of commands match that.
Likewise, all that container stuff we do with “guix shell -C” lies just
outside of what one would think of when hearing “package manager”.

In my presentations I try to drive home the point that Guix is a
solution for reproducible deployment at every level of scale.  I have a
set of slides similar to the “Reproducible Outputs” section in your
home-page.pdf, going from package to environments to containers to
systems to sites (via “guix deploy”).

I wonder if we should find a way to phase out the use of the term
“package manager”, which seems to fire the wrong synapses and awaken
associations with things that aren’t at all like Guix.

(Imagine we came from the build system side and positioned Guix as “A
Better GNU Make”.  That would be similarly flawed and evoke images that
fail to match what Guix actually is.)

-- 
Ricardo

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Thu, 12 Oct 2023 at 14:28, Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net> wrote:

> In my presentations I try to drive home the point that Guix is a
> solution for reproducible deployment at every level of scale.  I have a
> set of slides similar to the “Reproducible Outputs” section in your
> home-page.pdf, going from package to environments to containers to
> systems to sites (via “guix deploy”).

Thinking aloud.

For what it is worth, I also present Guix using levels, and depending on
the audience I focus on one or the other.  Somehow, I draw this picture:

  package manager                                       guix package
    transactional and declarative                       rollback, manifest.scm
      eases development experience                      guix shell
        produces shareable packs                        guix pack
          produces isolated virtual machines            guix system
            used to build a whole GNU/linux distribution
              and also a Scheme library                 guix repl

And the end of the presentation, I often conclude that Guix is
a computational environment manager on steroids.

Most of the time, we need an entry point to embark people on the
journey.  The linear layers is inaccurate but ease in talk mode – since
a talk is story where all the dots must be connected.  The entry point
is what speaks to a broad audience for being hooked in.

For instance, the website Emacs opens the webpage with: « An extensible,
customizable, free/libre text editor — and more. » The entry point is
“text editor” and then you embark for a journey… and it can end to be
your Window Manager. ;-) The entry point “A Lisp platform for text
manipulation” is probably more accurate but it would not speak to most.

The question is which entry point for Guix if not “package manager”? :-)

I do not know what is the best entry point for describing Guix.  Adapted
from Nix webpage: declarative builds and reproducible deployments.

  GNU Guix is a reproducible deployment manager for GNU/Linux systems.
  It is designed to give users more control over their general purpose
  and specialized computing environments, and make these easier to
  redeploy in one or many devices, and over time.

Cheers,
simon

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi Ricardo,

El 12/10/23 a las 12:28, Ricardo Wurmus escribió:
> Hi,
>
>> 2018-01-17 · website: say what Guix is at the very top
>> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2018-01/msg00232.html
> Hey, that’s me!  Naturally, I do agree that we need clearer product
> differentiation and your drafts are pretty and clear as always.

Glad to hear that.


> On the other hand I’ve always felt that the term “package manager” is so
> limiting.  It primes people to expect a package manager, but none of
> the features in the “guix system” family of commands match that.
> Likewise, all that container stuff we do with “guix shell -C” lies just
> outside of what one would think of when hearing “package manager”.

Right. I agree.


> In my presentations I try to drive home the point that Guix is a
> solution for reproducible deployment at every level of scale.  I have a
> set of slides similar to the “Reproducible Outputs” section in your
> home-page.pdf, going from package to environments to containers to
> systems to sites (via “guix deploy”).

Yeah, I've watched your presentations. I used "FOSDEM 2019 GWL: GNU 
Workflow Language" as one of my references; any similarity to actual 
slides is no coincidence :)


> I wonder if we should find a way to phase out the use of the term
> “package manager”, which seems to fire the wrong synapses and awaken
> associations with things that aren’t at all like Guix.

As with product renaming, I also avoided changing the purpose of Guix in 
the proposal to reduce resistance to big changes, but I was tempted to. 
Maybe this is a good time for redefining Guix as well.



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Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[pinoaffe]

Hi!

I think it's important to clarify what Guix is (and I really like your
mockups/some of the concrete proposed changes), but I don't quite agree
with the idea behind your proposal.

I think it would be more useful to produce and maintain a clear list of
what guix can do than to bifurcate guix into a package manager and an
operating system, especially since many of the aspects of Guix don't
cleanly fall in either of those two categories.

Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> writes:
> This is a proposal to help differentiate Guix, the package manager,
> from Guix System.

Guix is (in my opinion) a (set of) tool(s) with a broad set of features
centered around reproducibly managing software/computers.  Some of those
features enable you to set up and manage entire GNU/linux systems, some
even enable you to do so remotely, others enable you to configure
homedirs, to set up containers, to reproducibly build software or to
manage your computational environment.  In my view, these functions are
all quite tightly intertwined, and I don't think it makes sense to
categorize Guix features as belonging to either the package management
or the operating system side of things.

Since guix packages kernels, since it can install and configure
bootloaders, and since it can manage/configure system-wide services, it
can be used as an "operating system".  I think that it is important to
- clearly communicate the various different things guix can be used for,
- emphasize how guix can be used with other operating systems and tools,
- and to show how these various features relate to each other.

> 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.

Guix has become a package manager developed as part of and endorsed by
the GNU project.  GNU (to me) is an operating system family with
significant overlap with the Linux family, and Guix falls somewhere in
between as a distribution of both.  I personally don't see this as a
failure, but I guess that this largely a matter of perspective and
beside the point.

> 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.

While there is indeed confusion, presenting Guix as just an operating
system and a package manager would not clear that up (in my opinion),
- since ~guix deploy~ is related to managing operating systems, but is
  not really a function of the operating system itself,
- since ~guix home~ is best used on an entire system managed by guix but
  can IIRC also be used on foreign distros,
- since ~guix shell~ doesn't really fall into either package management
  or operating system territory, etc.

> 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.)

As said before: wow, these look great!
>
> 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.

Those changes would be very valuable!

Thanks a lot for all the work

Kind regards,
pinoaffe

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi pinoaffe,

El 12/10/23 a las 20:30, pinoaffe escribió:
> Hi!
>
> I think it's important to clarify what Guix is (and I really like your
> mockups/some of the concrete proposed changes), but I don't quite agree
> with the idea behind your proposal.
>
> I think it would be more useful to produce and maintain a clear list of
> what guix can do than to bifurcate guix into a package manager and an
> operating system, especially since many of the aspects of Guix don't
> cleanly fall in either of those two categories.

In this proposal, that clear list of what Guix can do would be the 
feature list, linked early in the home page, right after Guix's 
definition. The features list already exists in the manual, but I think 
it could provide more information.

Regarding the separation of both products, as I see it, it already 
exists, it is just that it is not that clear. There are separate 
downloads for both products and the manual, for example, has specific 
sections for the package manager and the operating system.

Now, I do agree that "package manager" and "operating system" don't 
quite make potential users picture the whole range of features provided 
by Guix... Would you still disagree with the differentiation of both 
products if the definition of Guix changed from "package manager" to, 
say, "a tool for reproducible deployment at every level of scale", as 
Ricardo suggest 
(https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2023-10/msg00142.html)? 
Or something along those lines?

> Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> writes:
>> This is a proposal to help differentiate Guix, the package manager,
>> from Guix System.
> Guix is (in my opinion) a (set of) tool(s) with a broad set of features
> centered around reproducibly managing software/computers.  Some of those
> features enable you to set up and manage entire GNU/linux systems, some
> even enable you to do so remotely, others enable you to configure
> homedirs, to set up containers, to reproducibly build software or to
> manage your computational environment.  In my view, these functions are
> all quite tightly intertwined, and I don't think it makes sense to
> categorize Guix features as belonging to either the package management
> or the operating system side of things.
>
> Since guix packages kernels, since it can install and configure
> bootloaders, and since it can manage/configure system-wide services, it
> can be used as an "operating system".  I think that it is important to
> - clearly communicate the various different things guix can be used for,
> - emphasize how guix can be used with other operating systems and tools,
> - and to show how these various features relate to each other.
>
>> 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.
> Guix has become a package manager developed as part of and endorsed by
> the GNU project.  GNU (to me) is an operating system family with
> significant overlap with the Linux family, and Guix falls somewhere in
> between as a distribution of both.  I personally don't see this as a
> failure, but I guess that this largely a matter of perspective and
> beside the point.
>
>> 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.
> While there is indeed confusion, presenting Guix as just an operating
> system and a package manager would not clear that up (in my opinion),
> - since ~guix deploy~ is related to managing operating systems, but is
>    not really a function of the operating system itself,
> - since ~guix home~ is best used on an entire system managed by guix but
>    can IIRC also be used on foreign distros,
> - since ~guix shell~ doesn't really fall into either package management
>    or operating system territory, etc.

I may be misreading you, but I think your points are in line with the 
idea of changing the definition of Guix to better communicate its many 
other features, instead of simply calling it a "package manager".

If I read you correctly, I think having an additional presentation and 
definition for the Guix System (the OS), as suggested in this proposal, 
would not conflict with a possible change to Guix's definition.

>
>> [...]
>>
>> 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.)
> As said before: wow, these look great!
>> 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.
> Those changes would be very valuable!
>
> Thanks a lot for all the work

Anytime, pinoaffe. Thanks for your feedback :)

P.S. I'm backing out from implementing this proposal for now (which I 
was planning to start today). I'll let more people read the feedback so 
far and think about it.

Cheers,


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Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[pinoaffe]

Hello!

Luis Felipe <sirgazil@zoho.com> writes:
> El 12/10/23 a las 20:30, pinoaffe escribió:
>> I think it's important to clarify what Guix is (and I really like your
>> mockups/some of the concrete proposed changes), but I don't quite agree
>> with the idea behind your proposal.
>>
>> I think it would be more useful to produce and maintain a clear list of
>> what guix can do than to bifurcate guix into a package manager and an
>> operating system, especially since many of the aspects of Guix don't
>> cleanly fall in either of those two categories.
>
> In this proposal, that clear list of what Guix can do would be the
> feature list, linked early in the home page, right after Guix's
> definition. The features list already exists in the manual, but I
> think it could provide more information.
>
> Regarding the separation of both products, as I see it, it already
> exists, it is just that it is not that clear. There are separate
> downloads for both products and the manual, for example, has specific
> sections for the package manager and the operating system.

It kind-of exists, but it kind-of doesn't either - guix and guix system
are developed as one joint project, you interact with both through a
common interface, there is no clear division between what is part of
what, etc
>
> Now, I do agree that "package manager" and "operating system" don't
> quite make potential users picture the whole range of features
> provided by Guix... Would you still disagree with the differentiation
> of both products if the definition of Guix changed from "package
> manager" to, say, "a tool for reproducible deployment at every level
> of scale", as Ricardo suggest
> (https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2023-10/msg00142.html)?
> Or something along those lines?

I personally really like that definition, though "guix system" could
also fall under that definition, so that may be an issue or a benefit
depending on your point of view :)

[omitted]

> I may be misreading you, but I think your points are in line with the
> idea of changing the definition of Guix to better communicate its many
> other features, instead of simply calling it a "package manager".

My points are very much in line with that, my opposition is solely with
categorizing Guix/Guix System into a package manager and an operating
system

> If I read you correctly, I think having an additional presentation and
> definition for the Guix System (the OS), as suggested in this
> proposal, would not conflict with a possible change to Guix's
> definition.

Yeah, I really support that

[omitted]

Kind regards,
pinoaffe

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Wilko Meyer]

Hi Luis,

Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> writes:

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

This sounds like a good plan.

> 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),

Splitting up the website in a "guix for package management" and "guix as
a operating system" part sounds reasonable. I've reread the landing page
and to me, one of the biggest issues it currently has is, that it
vaguely describes attributes, but doesn't work well as a Guix primer for
either Guix as a package manager or Guix System as an OS.

> and some other people don't understand what «Guix» is by skimming
> through the home page.

This seems directly related to the landing page not being too great as a
brief introduction for Guix. If I'd be a first time visitor of the
landing page, I'd probably have questions along the realms of:

- what is Guix?
- why should I use it? what can it do for me/in my field?
- do I want to use guix as a package management/or Guix System as a OS?

On that note, I really appreciate and like how Guiles[0] landing page works
in this regard. As it is written in a pretty clear language and answers
pretty straight forward:

- What Guile is.
- What it has to offer/what potential common use cases are.
- Usage examples on how to get started.

reading it provides yet enough information to get a grasp of what Guile
is and how to use it/how to get started and what to look up next.

While writing this mail I also had a look at the mockups of potential
solutions you provided; and they do address these points in a pretty
good way, especially as it uses a clear and straight-forward language!

[0]: https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/

-- 
Kind regards,

Wilko Meyer
w@wmeyer.eu

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi Wilko,

El 13/10/23 a las 9:41, Wilko Meyer escribió:
> Hi Luis,
>
> Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> writes:
>
>> This is a proposal to help differentiate Guix, the package manager,
>> from Guix System.
> This sounds like a good plan.
>
>> 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),
> Splitting up the website in a "guix for package management" and "guix as
> a operating system" part sounds reasonable. I've reread the landing page
> and to me, one of the biggest issues it currently has is, that it
> vaguely describes attributes, but doesn't work well as a Guix primer for
> either Guix as a package manager or Guix System as an OS.
>
>> and some other people don't understand what «Guix» is by skimming
>> through the home page.
> This seems directly related to the landing page not being too great as a
> brief introduction for Guix. If I'd be a first time visitor of the
> landing page, I'd probably have questions along the realms of:
>
> - what is Guix?
> - why should I use it? what can it do for me/in my field?
> - do I want to use guix as a package management/or Guix System as a OS?
>
> On that note, I really appreciate and like how Guiles[0] landing page works
> in this regard. As it is written in a pretty clear language and answers
> pretty straight forward:
>
> - What Guile is.
> - What it has to offer/what potential common use cases are.
> - Usage examples on how to get started.
>
> reading it provides yet enough information to get a grasp of what Guile
> is and how to use it/how to get started and what to look up next.
>
> While writing this mail I also had a look at the mockups of potential
> solutions you provided; and they do address these points in a pretty
> good way, especially as it uses a clear and straight-forward language!

Thanks for taking the time to review the proposal. I'm glad to hear 
you'd find the changes useful.

Cheers,


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Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi,

El 12/10/23 a las 0:15, Luis Felipe escribió:
> Hi,
>
> This is a proposal to help differentiate Guix, the package manager, from Guix System.
>
> [...]
>
> 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.

Okay, I'll start implementing this proposal on November 1 if there's no 
objection :)

I think most of the changes can be done and kept unchanged regardless of 
future changes to the operating system name or the purpose of Guix. I'm 
hoping to get things ready before FOSDEM and LibrePlanet (and hopefully 
before/during the jolly season).


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Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi Luis,

I’m big fan of what you propose, both graphically in terms of how we
present things!

I love the “cubes” that represent the different levels of Guix
(reminiscent of the hexagons Ricardo had in some of his presentations);
we could add a “systems” (plural) cube that I didn’t see here, but
that’s a detail.  I love that the mockups insist on “User Control” and
“User Autonomy” too.

Like Ricardo, I’m less enthusiastic about the term “package manager”,
but we should be able to work around it.

We should also make sure IMO that Guix System is not perceived as a
completely independent/separate beast, and instead insist on that notion
of a continuum.

Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@protonmail.com> skribis:

> 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.

Makes sense to me.  This something those of us less into design and more
into coding can help with.

Thank you!!

Ludo’.

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

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Hi,

El 12/10/23 a las 0:15, Luis Felipe escribió:

[...]
> ·········
> 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
> ·········

I sent a patch that implements the mockup above 
(https://issues.guix.gnu.org/72314). The only differences are:

  * I didn't use the custom web font for the headings because I thought
    they were too heavy (almost 1MiB).
  * I had to lay out the cubes in Reproducible Outputs differently to
    make the section responsive.

The changes in the patch still refer to Guix as a "package manager" 
since, to my knowledge, it hasn't been decided what else to call it.

 From the feedback it is not clear to me whether having a separate page 
for the Guix System is desired or not, so I'll leave the rest of the 
mockups unimplemented:

> 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
> ·········

Cheers,



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Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Hello Luis.

I very much like your Guix download page mock-ups that make the download
pages give clear instructions.  They avoid referring to the manual; this
is better at least to many users (who currently probably download the
Guix tarball before they learn it was useless).

The question of wording is if it would be an improvement to use terms
popularized elsewhere.  I have opinions, but perhaps I’m wrongly
conservative in this regard.

Guix is all about packages, therefore it is a package manager.  I
believe the shell and container and system, home support are still about
packages.  Despite other package managers not doing it.

Also you write in the system download page mock-up, Guix System were a
distribution of the GNU operating system.  I believe this is wrong; Guix
(not Guix System) is a distribution of the GNU operating system.

The definition of OS should not be something like Windows, running on
top of an IBM Bios or Intel Management Engine.

Regards,
Florian

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Marek Paśnikowski]

"pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> writes:

> The question of wording is if it would be an improvement to use terms
> popularized elsewhere.  I have opinions, but perhaps I’m wrongly
> conservative in this regard.
>
> Guix is all about packages, therefore it is a package manager.  I
> believe the shell and container and system, home support are still about
> packages.  Despite other package managers not doing it.
>

If I may, I would like to interject with my own thought here — I have
come to understand Guix as a service manager.  This is because packages
are objects of a profile service, one of many services declarable with
Guix.  As a result of this understanding, I stopped using the 'packages'
fields of operating-system and home-environment, preferring to declare
the packages in profile services' extensions.

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

Marek Paśnikowski <marek@marekpasnikowski.pl> writes:
> "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <pelzflorian@pelzflorian.de> writes:
>> Guix is all about packages, therefore it is a package manager.  I
>> believe the shell and container and system, home support are still about
>> packages.  Despite other package managers not doing it.
> If I may, I would like to interject with my own thought here — I have
> come to understand Guix as a service manager.  This is because packages
> are objects of a profile service, one of many services declarable with
> Guix.  As a result of this understanding, I stopped using the 'packages'
> fields of operating-system and home-environment, preferring to declare
> the packages in profile services' extensions.

Interesting.  Yes, in Guix System and Guix Home, we can view packages as
objects of services, but not in the rest of Guix.  The term “Package
manager” is more encompassing.

Regards,
Florian

Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

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El 6/08/24 a las 10:26, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) escribió:
> Hello Luis.
>
> I very much like your Guix download page mock-ups that make the download
> pages give clear instructions.  They avoid referring to the manual; this
> is better at least to many users (who currently probably download the
> Guix tarball before they learn it was useless).

Thanks for the feedback, Florian. I'll consider sending patches for 
these then.


> The question of wording is if it would be an improvement to use terms
> popularized elsewhere.  I have opinions, but perhaps I’m wrongly
> conservative in this regard.
>
> Guix is all about packages, therefore it is a package manager.  I
> believe the shell and container and system, home support are still about
> packages.  Despite other package managers not doing it.

Yeah... Well, and I guess there's not much interest in changing the 
definition anyways. So :)


> Also you write in the system download page mock-up, Guix System were a
> distribution of the GNU operating system.  I believe this is wrong; Guix
> (not Guix System) is a distribution of the GNU operating system.
>
> The definition of OS should not be something like Windows, running on
> top of an IBM Bios or Intel Management Engine.

Thanks, I'll take that into account for the patches.



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