Re: My experiences with GuixSD

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hi Jonathan,

Jonathan Brielmaier <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

> 2. After booting in the installed GuixSD the fonts were awful and I
> didn't get them to a better state.

I also was dismayed at the font rendering when using GuixSD with a basic
(lightweight desktop) config. Presumably things look better under more
fullfledged DE since I don't see many complaints about it ;).

What greatly improved the font rendering on my side was to create a
~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf containing the following:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="hinting" >
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font" >
    <edit mode="assign" name="autohint" >
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle" >
      <const>hintfull</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="rgba" >
      <const>rgb</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="antialias" >
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="lcdfilter">
      <const>lcddefault</const>
    </edit>
  </match>
  <match target="pattern">
    <edit name="dpi" mode="assign"><double>92</double></edit>
  </match>
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer><family>Hack</family></prefer>
  </alias>
   <alias>
    <family>fixed</family>
    <prefer><family>Hack</family></prefer>
  </alias> 
</fontconfig>
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

You may leave the font family alias depending on your preference,
although if you keep those you should install the `font-hack' package
(and possibly run `fc-cache -f' since we're not yet doing that
automatically yet[1]).

> 3. The system was using CPU (llvmpipe or how it's named) as renderer and
> not the GPU. I have an AMD Radeon RX 480 card which worked quite well on
> Ubuntu with FOSS driver. I added a package which includes the non-free
> firmware, but after all I didn't got GPU rendered distro :(
>
> => I bought an AMD card because of there all-open Linux drivers and I
> want to support them in that way (=> Nvidia...). The drivers work well
> on other distros. I know they need non-free firmware, I don't like it
> but there is no "real" alternative. Having just CPU accelerated graphic
> is for me a blocker to _not_ use GuixSD. What can we do to solve or just
> to ease that situation?

I did the same thing for one of my systems; in retrospect it seems it
wasn't a very wise decision at the *current time*. The amdgpu driver is
getting quite good but IIUC without the firmware binary blob there's no
3D acceleration, which will leave you with an overpriced 2D accelerator
on truly free distros such as GuixSD and Debian. Hopefully that
situation can be improved in the future.

> 4. Icecat... I had to restart it like every five minutes because it
> doesn't show websites. Yes, I disabled all those add-ons (LibreJS etc.).
> It was not usable for me, really not. And without all those FOSS add-ons
> on addons.mozilla.org Icecat/Firefox is bad.

What do you mean *without these add-ons*? AFAIU you can still manually
visit that page and install anything you like. It's just not integrated
tightly, for good reasons (makes you think twice before installing some
random closed source add-on form the net in your browser).

Also, do you have an example of a site which cannot be shown? If you are
not using any extensions, it could be related to Icecat refusing to save
cookies form third party domains (this is blocked by default). Icecat
security choices are much tighter than vanilla Firefox or Chrome. I have
a government site which uses weak tls 1.0 encryption (!). Icecat will
warn me about it and not load the site; Firefox & Chrome will. This can
be fine-tuned in about:config, but I'm glad to be made aware of it so
that I can ping their sysadmins about it. Overtime, I think you will
grow to appreciate Icecat for the care which is put into safeguarding
your security.

If you often use cafes and airport wifi, you'll also find that their
authentication setup often is broken, and Icecat by default will prevent
you form using those. It can be changed in about:config if you want to
push through anyway.

> => Could we not just have a Firefox ESR version without DRM, Pocket and
> the other closed-source stuff, but _with_ the ability to install add-ons
> and stability?

Given that Icecat seems to works great for most, I don't see much value
there. The reason Icecat exists in the first place is also because of a
branding licensing issues IIRC. I think if you persevere you'll find what
needs to be adjusted so that it works well with your sites as well.

> After lots of hours (10-20h) investing in the setup of GuixSD I decided
> to install Ubuntu as the system was not "usable" for me :(

I concede that usability wise GuixSD still has ways to go; at this time
10-20h seems a bit short to get everything running smoothly ;)

> Beside those "negative" records I have to say: guix package rocks
> (install, environment...)!!!
>
> So for the moment I stay a guix user on foreign distros :P
>
> Cheers
> Jonathan
>
> P.S: This week the OpenSUSE repo-servers were down for two days. So I
> "replaced" zypper with guix package and it was nice :)

Please try it again next time when your foreign base gets broken by
updates or forces majeures! This is one obvious place where investing
time in GuixSD pays off. Thank you for sharing these first impressions!

Maxim

Footnotes: 
[1]  https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=26877