GNU Guix Wants To Replace The Linux-Libre Kernel With The Hurd Micro-Kernel

[blackiwid]

Ok guys it was a joke.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2020-04/msg00013.html

GNU Guix will continue to support GNU/Linux Libre, but they also intend to support the GNU Hurd, possibly even recommend the GNU Hurd over the Linux Libre kernel.

Lol then I am more crazy then them, because I thought that is pretty reasonable if we have in mind what they did before... well then maybe they can start the next 5 years to finaly get lvm support in their installation

[c117152]

They just took advantage of the on-going efforts to support Hurd as an April's fools joke.

[Apteryx]

Does someone even use that package manager? Or it's dead just like Hurd?

I use Guix System on all of my machines (both at home and at work). I have an install that dates back to the end of 2016 -- still doing well :-). If you visit #guix on freenode you'll find it has an active community (267 users in the channel at the time I write this).

[Vistaus]

I would definitely try it. Unfortunately, Guix doesn't have enough packages available, so I couldn't use it as a daily system as I wouldn't be able to get my work done on it. And with the Hurd kernel, probably fewer packages still will work. But I would love to see what they can make it do. I think this is really what the Hurd has been needing all along - for a distro to commit to it and to be forced to try to get it working in a lot more situations.

A couple things:
SMP is over-rated - not even needed for about 98% of what the average computer user does on their system. My own tests in turning it off for a couple weeks last year showed me that I was absolutely fine without it, hardly ever noticed it being off at all. And it's clearly a security nightmare. If I were working on the Hurd kernel, I wouldn't make SMP a top priority.
And Linux-libre supports a ton of hardware. My year old Asus laptop with i7, 16GB ram, NVME SSD and many other modern features runs very well any time I use the Linux-libre kernel. Anyone who thinks Linux-libre can't support modern hardware knows very little about the kernel itself.

Lolwut? You're confusing SMP with SMT.

[Michael_S]

Does someone even use that package manager? Or it's dead just like Hurd?

To back up Apteryx - the Guix package manager and distribution is under active development with dozens of contributors. I only have it in a VM and I only fire up the VM every few months, but everything works fine and when I do a 'guix pull' to update all of the system software it works fine.

A lot of the contributors have the GuixSD full distribution on their hardware but many also have it installed alongside the default package manager on Debian-derivatives, Red Hat derivatives, or Arch derivatives.

The downside of the GuixSD distribution for most people, including Linux enthusiasts, is that it's oriented towards 100% free-as-in-freedom software packages. So no Steam, no Chrome browser, no Minecraft, no support for 802.11ac wireless (since as far as I know all 802.11ac devices require proprietary firmware), and so forth. I support their goals in principle but I have to admit that I have Steam open right now on this Ubuntu MATE install and occasionally watch Netflix too.

I also have no problems with systemd, I'm using it at home and at work, but I had no problems with the GNU Shepherd init system in GuixSD either so having a choice is nice.

[jbranso]

There is ungoogled-chromium. Though I must admit, Guix System is not as stable as I would like. I am personally planning on migrating to Debian, if I cannot install Firefox on Guix. My bank does not let me view the online account, when I use GNU Icecat. And sometimes (a lot of times) Icecat freezes up on various sites. I have similar issues with ungoogled-chromium.

[Apteryx]

There is ungoogled-chromium. Though I must admit, Guix System is not as stable as I would like. I am personally planning on migrating to Debian, if I cannot install Firefox on Guix. My bank does not let me view the online account, when I use GNU Icecat. And sometimes (a lot of times) Icecat freezes up on various sites. I have similar issues with ungoogled-chromium.

There was a time around the end of 2016 where IceCat would crash a lot unless the canvas renderer was manually set to skia [0], but otherwise it's been rock stable for me in the last couple of years. Perhaps try to launch IceCat from a fresh profile and see if it resolves. IceCat is really just Firefox ESR (their long term supported, stable version for the enterprise), with some privacy switches defaulting to more strict values. I've occasionally had problems with those settings causing banks or government websites to break (I could remedy this by visiting about:config).

[0] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/h.../msg00008.html

[onicsis]

Yes. On modern systems, multi-core and 64bit memory access with more than 4GB addressable RAM support it's a must. Without proper drivers support can be useless. Frown