this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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Moving from NixOS to Guix (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by david_@discuss.tchncs.de to c/guix
 

Given the direction that the Nix project is going, I suspect that many of you Nix users reading along here are currently considering alternatives, and among them Guix.

Personally I've only been using Nix for a few weeks, so my investment is not that big, but how about you? For a technical comparison, you could start with these two articles. If you're on IRC, I'd also suggest to join #guix just in case or look at the other communication options they endorse on their website.

What gives me the most thoughts is the availability of recent-ish software on Guix; but given Guix's FSF-level copyleft culture there's at least the certainty that whatever efforts I might put in to build and package things myself would have the lowest-possible likelihood of suffering corporate/fashtech capture. And we may be picking up momentum to collectively alleviate those problems.

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[–] H4rdStyl3z@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Yep, I've dabbled in Guix before but was put off by the smaller/more outdated repository (according to repology, it has improved a lot lately but it's still nowhere near nixpkgs) and the official non-support/second-class support for non-FOSS software (which, as much as I try to avoid it, is still a necessity in my day-to-day). The ecossystem being smaller is also an issue, but I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty and contribute some of the glue myself if necessary. Something else is FSF's reliance on mailing lists and IRC; I get sticking with FOSS, obviously, but aren't there more modern/ergonomic FOSS alternatives that suit their needs? The move from Savannah to Codeberg for the repositories was a welcome one and I hope they would follow with the rest of their platform, but oh well.

Regardless, the time has come to make the jump. I can no longer afford to keep supporting a distribution being blatantly hijacked by far-right defense sector actors (for a far-right regime and their far-right allies). I hope Guix will treat me as well as I intend to treat it. :)

And I seriously pray that it is more resilient to hostile takeovers by fascists, since, to my knowledge, there are no other Linux distributions in the "declarative, reproducible, immutable" family/paradigm. It's just NixOS and Guix. So Guix it is. I got too comfortable with the guarantees this model gives me to ever go back to more standard distros, I'm afraid.

[–] david_@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Fittingly, just two days ago they did open up a Mastodon account — this one: https://hachyderm.io/@guix. I'd say be sure to boost their initial toot and possibly more.

From an email that just appeared on the devel list:

Hi,

As you will have seen GNU Guix is now on Mastodon - we have entered the social media age: https://hachyderm.io/@guix

The goal of being on Mastodon is it's another communications method (like the blog an email lists) that we can tell people about GNU Guix, but also engage with people about Guix and related topics.

It would be great to have a few people who'd like to regularly post and engage. Anyone interested?

..

[–] H4rdStyl3z@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Perfect timing haha! They might really be capitalizing on leftist/anti-fascist people moving away from NixOS. Regardless, I welcome the move.

[–] david_@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

There's a monthly Nix meetup in my area, "Nix your bugs". Never been there. I'm currently contemplating showing up there with my NixOS laptop and nix all the bugs (well, replacing them with others) by installing Guix. Given the recent developments, I don't even think most of the people who are there will consider that a dick move.

[–] H4rdStyl3z@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 2 days ago

I'll definitely try to move the people I know who are interested in/users of NixOS over to Guix. Admittedly, there aren't many to begin with haha.

[–] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Nixos is beating out guix for two reasons, flakes, and its eco system. Once you sort through all the documentation and figure out the system, it makes work easy. Lots of stuff already done and there for you. Guix on the other hand is still missing a lot of options and QOL. Not being able to use it for gaming is a no go for me.

[–] frankenswine@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

i use steam on guix without issues. where did uou get your opinions from? there's a dedicated guix gaming channel

[–] thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Steam has first class support in nixpkgs and nvidia drivers

How much effort did you spend on getting it going. Got a config I could reference. I’m interested

[–] frankenswine@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

i didn't. i think there's a steam package on the channel mentionned (guix gaming channel).

i haven't steamed in quite a while (focussing on my professional nethack career currently) but i have no doubts this still works.

people tend to dismiss guix for not being tainted with proprietary shite, but time will show that this will remain the main advantage over similar solutions

[–] vavakado 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

i have tried using guix but the speed of the initial guix pull just killed me, so i ran back to nixos(which i have been using for like 1.5 maybe even 2 years at this point) and then to gentoo(which i am currently on)

[–] frankenswine@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

was this on a old machine or s slow vm? it's not half as bad on more beefy machines but yeah, it can discourage first users