Decided not to integrate Guix into EasyOS

I posted yesterday about Guix package manager:

• Guix works with EasyOS — September 20, 2024

After a couple of enthusiastic days intensely working on Guix, and planning to integrate it into EasyOS, doubts started to creep in.

In balance, I decided that it doesn't bring enough "to the table" to warrant inclusion. Yes, I want to expand the package repository; however, will focus on improving the existing package managers. For example, can add more Flatpaks to Flapi.

Regarding Flatpaks, I installed ShotCut and OpenShot video editors, just to confirm they work OK. Reason for doing that, is OpenShot installed via Guix, sound didn't work; sound with ShotCut was OK. Midori web browser installed via Guix didn't work.

With Guix, it is advised to run "guix pull" which performs package updates -- unfortunately, this takes a very very long time. Then there's the size of downloads; I used to think Flatpaks were big, but now think they are not so bad. Flatpak downloads are bundles of packages, whereas Guix downloads individual packages; prefer the former.

The "last straw" was when I shutdown and saved the session, shutdown hung. Somehow, $PATH got stuffed up. Yeah, I was experimenting with guix-binary tarball from git master branch, so could not expect high degree of stability. Even so, it has been years since Easy hung at shutdown.

I think Guix will work best in the Guix OS, not as a foreign package manager.

Another thing I didn't like, is although Guix claims to only install to /gnu and /var/guix; in fact, it creates or requires (or requires editing) folders and files in other places. Trying to recall... /etc/guix, /root/.config/guix, /root/.guix-profile, /etc/profile.d/guix, /etc/.bashrc, /etc/init.d/guix-daemon

It's an OK product, just don't think it is a good fit with EasyOS.   

Tags: easy