Hi! I think it's important to clarify what Guix is (and I really like your mockups/some of the concrete proposed changes), but I don't quite agree with the idea behind your proposal.
I think it would be more useful to produce and maintain a clear list of what guix can do than to bifurcate guix into a package manager and an operating system, especially since many of the aspects of Guix don't cleanly fall in either of those two categories. Luis Felipe <luis.felipe...@protonmail.com> writes: > This is a proposal to help differentiate Guix, the package manager, > from Guix System. Guix is (in my opinion) a (set of) tool(s) with a broad set of features centered around reproducibly managing software/computers. Some of those features enable you to set up and manage entire GNU/linux systems, some even enable you to do so remotely, others enable you to configure homedirs, to set up containers, to reproducibly build software or to manage your computational environment. In my view, these functions are all quite tightly intertwined, and I don't think it makes sense to categorize Guix features as belonging to either the package management or the operating system side of things. Since guix packages kernels, since it can install and configure bootloaders, and since it can manage/configure system-wide services, it can be used as an "operating system". I think that it is important to - clearly communicate the various different things guix can be used for, - emphasize how guix can be used with other operating systems and tools, - and to show how these various features relate to each other. > Background: As far as I understand, Guix was supposed to be GNU's > package manager, and GNU was supposed to be the operating system: two > products with two different websites. Unfortunatelly, that didn't > happen and the Guix website became the home for two products: Guix, > the package manager, and Guix System, a distribution of the GNU > operating system. Guix has become a package manager developed as part of and endorsed by the GNU project. GNU (to me) is an operating system family with significant overlap with the Linux family, and Guix falls somewhere in between as a distribution of both. I personally don't see this as a failure, but I guess that this largely a matter of perspective and beside the point. > Since then, both products have been presented almost > as a single one in the website. Probably as a result of this some > people call both products by the same name (Guix), and some other > people don't understand what «Guix» is by skimming through the home > page. While there is indeed confusion, presenting Guix as just an operating system and a package manager would not clear that up (in my opinion), - since ~guix deploy~ is related to managing operating systems, but is not really a function of the operating system itself, - since ~guix home~ is best used on an entire system managed by guix but can IIRC also be used on foreign distros, - since ~guix shell~ doesn't really fall into either package management or operating system territory, etc. > I've seen comments related to this issue in different places through the > years. Some examples: > > 2018-01-17 · website: say what Guix is at the very top > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2018-01/msg00232.html > > 2020-01-02 · How to present Guix to a wider audience > https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2020-01/msg00002.html > > 2022-09-16 · Guix as a tool for computational science > https://10years.guix.gnu.org/video/guix-as-a-tool-for-computational-science/ > > > Proposal: In summary, I'd like to propose clearer product differentiation, > starting with the following changes: > > 0. Main menu: Change Overview and Download items to > > Overview > • Package manager > • Operating system > > Download > • Package manager > • Operating system > > 1. Home page: Focus on Guix, the package manager. > 2. Download page: Likewise. > 3. Operating system home page: New page. > 4. Operating system download page: New page. > > The following mockups illustrate the proposed changes. You can start > in the Home page mockup, and click links to go to the other > mockups. If your browser doesn't support PDF, you can find a PNG > version of each mockup in the same URL paths (simply change the "pdf" > extension to "png"). > > > ········· > Resource: Home page > Path: https://guix.gnu.org/ > Mockup: > https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/home-page.pdf > ········· > Resource: Download page > Path: https://guix.gnu.org/en/download/ > Mockup: > https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/download-package-manager-page.pdf > ········· > Resource: OS Home page > Path: https://guix.gnu.org/en/operating-system/ > Mockup: > https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/os-home-page.pdf > ········· > Resource: OS Download page > Path: https://guix.gnu.org/operating-system/download/ > Mockup: > https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/downloads/temp/guix-website-2023-09-21-LF/download-os-page.pdf > ········· > > > (The source files of the mockups can be found in > https://codeberg.org/luis-felipe/guix-graphics/ in the "mockups" > directory.) As said before: wow, these look great! > > I can help implement several of the proposed changes. > > Subsequent changes (hinted in the mockups) with the same goal of product > differentiation could be: > > 5. Guix Features section in the manual: Improve it. > + Separate in sections to make it easier to browse > + List forgotten functional features (if any) > + List non-functional features > + Compare with similar products > 6. Guix System Features section in the manual: Add it. > 7. Guix System Configurations page: A collection of configurations, ideally > of real systems currently used in production environments. Those changes would be very valuable! Thanks a lot for all the work Kind regards, pinoaffe