blog.gabrielsimmer.com/content/posts/from-guix-to-nixos.org

#+title: From Guix to NixOS
#+date: 29/09/2021
*it's a matter of compromise*

I really, really like the idea of a declarative model for things - define a state
you want an application to be in, and let the system figure out how to get there.
It's what drew me to Terraform (my first real exposure to declarative systems)
and what eventually lead me to paying particular attention to Guix. NixOS was on
my radar, but having been inducted into the [[/posts/emacs-induction][land of lisps]] I didn't particularly
like the configuration language.

It was inevitable I would end up with a Guix install, but it didn't last long -
the move was motivated by a recent kernel upgrade I had done on my up-until-then
very stable Arch install. The hard lockups got irritating to the point I decided
to hop distributions, and Guix was the natural choice - I had already been
experimenting with it in a virtual machine, and had written a rather complete
configuration file as well. But I quickly ran into a big roadblock:
/graphics drivers/. I rather like playing video games on the old Steam, and
having an nvidia graphics card means the graphics drivers included in the Linux
kernel don't quite cut it. But don't panic! There's a community driven [[https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix][nonguix]]
repository that focuses on packaging nonfree applications, drivers and kernels
for Guix systems (my install image [[https://github.com/SystemCrafters/guix-installer/][was based on it the nonfree kernel]]).
Unfortunately, support for nvidia drivers is spotty - this isn't really the fault
of the community, with nvidia being rather disliked in the Linux kernel and
community ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_36yNWw_07g][case in point]]). No problem though. A few versions behind isn't that
big of a deal, since I don't play many new triple-A games anyways. Alas, the
troubles arose again when I ran into incompatibilities with GNOME and GDM. While
is has been reported to be compatible with an alternative login manager and
desktop environment, I was comfortable with GNOME (despite disliking the overall
look and feel, it's a comfortable place to be and I'm rather tired of tiling
window managers). Having at this point become incredibly frustrated with the
edit-reboot-test loop, I decided to instead turn to NixOS, which benefitted from
not adhering to free-software-only to a fault. While I do crave the ability to
only use free software, at some point I have to make a comprimise to continue
enjoying the hobbies and acitvities that I do.

A fresh NixOS install USB in hand, I set about spinning up a new installation
on my desktop. The initial install had a few missteps - while my memory is
somewhat fuzzy on the cause, my first go lead to a constant boot into systemd
emergency mode. Going back to square one seemed to resolve the issue, and I had
a happily running NixOS install at the end of the day. So I guess I'm learning
Nix! Which is really not the worst thing ever - given the package manager itself
can run on more systems (including macOS, making it a likely candidate to replace
=brew= for me), I can't think of any real downsides to having it in my toolbelt.
It furthers my goal of having a declarative for systems I use, which is a slow
but ambitious end game.

My initial impressions of Nix's DSL versus Guix's Guile (scheme) is that of
curiousity. Nix's language comes across as more of a configuration system akin
to (and I hesitate to make this comparison, but I'm in the early stages of
learning) YAML or TOML, while Guile is (as expected) a very flexible lisp. While
I do still invest my time into learning and embracing lisps (especially in
emacs), and I really want to return to Guix at some point, I feel the current
comprimise I have to take will lead me to never doing so (unless I switched to
an AMD GPU and optimized for nonfree operation). So my current path is to stick
with NixOS and optimize and share my configurations (you can expect to see them
on my [[https://github.com/gmemstr/dotfiles][dotfiles repository]] soon-ish).

I hope to write more on this soon!