Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tgjsrkghruksd 3309 days ago
Oh come on. And what's the kernel for GuixSD? Linux.

We all know RMS is bitter that he can't take credit for a functional kernel, but it's still there.

4 comments

The difference between Guix and GuixSD isn't about alternative names for the same thing (like whether e.g. Ubuntu is "Linux" or "GNU/Linux"). Instead these names describe two distinct, but related, software projects.

Guix is a collection of programs for building, installing and distributing software (or other digital artefacts). It is specifically designed to work alongside alternatives, like apt, yum, etc. on many operating systems.

GuixSD is a particular OS distro, which uses Guix for all of its packaging, etc. If you use GuixSD, you're going all-in on Guix for everything.

The distinction between these projects is important, since Guix might be a good engineering choice for some project (say, a Web site backend, requiring particular versions of Apache, Python, various modules, etc.), whilst it may be a bad idea to switch the whole underlying OS to GuixSD.

As a concrete example, I've not used Guix or GuixSD myself, but exactly the same distinction exists between Nix and NixOS. I personally use NixOS, and I include Nix configurations in my own projects, so others can use Nix to install them with all of the right dependencies, etc. They don't need to switch distro to NixOS though; Nix will work on whatever system they already use (e.g. Ubuntu, OSX, etc. Though not yet Windows).

I don't know what exasperates you so much to justify a comment like this. My point is that it's "GuixSD", not "Guix" that uses the Shepherd.

I happen to call the system I work with and hack on "GNU", not "Linux". That's just a different perspective.

And I'm not RMS, nor am I bitter. I find your comment very confusing and confused.

> Oh come on. And what's the kernel for GuixSD? Linux.

They called you out on a minor mistake: Guix being a package-manger of sorts and GuixSD being a Linux distro (built on Guix).

And Guix doesn't run anything like dmd or systemd. GuixSD does.

It's not a big deal though. Honest mistake to make.

I'm the one who said Guix instead of GuixSD, I'm a different person than the one who made the comment about Linux and RMS.
You call your OS Linux, RMS calls it GNU, I call it Bash, my wife calls it XFCE, her granma calls it "that one with the blue mouse" (and uses it without a problem).

But I really think that the name should be Bash, because that's what holds it all together.