Re: website: say what Guix is at the very top

[Chris Marusich]

Ricardo Wurmus <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi Guix,
>
> on the website it starts right away with a list of features:
> “Liberating”, “Dependable”, and “Hackable”.  But what is this thing
> called Guix?
>
> We should add a very short paragraph above that list to say what Guix
> and GuixSD are.
>
> What do you think?

How is Guix different from other package managers?  Why is it better?
I think that's the most important thing to explain.  I've also found
that it's one of the most difficult things to explain.  I think we
should entice readers by concisely explaining that, if we can.

Perhaps the best way to do that would be to write a problem statement.
Instead of explaining what Guix is, explain what problems Guix solves.
The first chapter of Eelco Dolstra's Ph. D. thesis [1] did a fantastic
job of explaining what problems Nix solves, and by the end of that
chapter, I was really excited to learn more about Nix (and Guix) and try
it out.  In particular, the list of problems with the state of the art
in section 1.3 "Motivation" and the list of solutions that Nix offers in
section 1.5 "Contributions" were particularly concise and convincing.
Maybe we can aim for something similar on our Guix website?

Footnotes: 
[1]  https://nixos.org/~eelco/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf

-- 
Chris

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