Recently GNU Guix 1.0 Package Manager and GuixSD Distribution Release Announced (Guix System Distribution), built on its foundation.
In this new release a significant change in version number is due to the completion of all the objectives set for the formation of a stable launch. The problem summed up seven years of work on the project and it is recognized as ready for daily use.
The distribution package allows installation as a standalone operating system on virtualization systems, in containers, and on conventional computers, in addition to running on already installed GNU / Linux distributions, acting as a platform to implement applications.
Guix is based on the workload of the Nix projectIn addition to the typical package management functions, it supports features such as performing transactional updates, the ability to roll back updates, work without obtaining superuser privileges, support specific user profiles, programs, garbage collection (identification and removal of unused versions of packages).
Supports the ability to use ready-made packages for the Nix package manager and located in the Nixpkgs repository.
In addition to package operations, You can create scripts to manage application settings. When creating a package, all related dependencies are downloaded and compiled automatically.
It is possible to download ready-made binary packages from the repository and compile from source with all dependencies. Tools were implemented to keep the versions of installed programs up to date by organizing the installation of updates from an external repository.
major developments
With the launch of this first stable version, it is highlighted that a new interactive installer which works in text mode.
Another novelty of this version is that a new image has been prepared for virtual machines, suitable both for learning about the distribution kit and for creating development work environments.
With which new system services added cups-pk-helper, imap4d, inputattach, localed, nslcd, zabbix-agent, and zabbix-server.
Likewise, the versions of the applications were updated in 2104 packages, 1102 new packages were also added.
Including updated versions of clojure 1.10.0, cups 2.2.11, emacs 26.2, gcc 8.3.0, gdb 8.2.1, ghc 8.4.3, gimp 2.10.10, glibc 2.28, gnome 3.28.2, gnupg 2.2.15, go 1.12.1 , guile 2.2.4, icecat 60.6.1-guix1, icedtea 3.7.0, inkscape 0.92.4, libreoffice 6.1.5.2, linux-libre 5.0.10, mate 1.22.0, ocaml 4.07.1, octave 5.1.0, openjdk 11.28, python 3.7.0, rust 1.34.0, r 3.6.0, sbcl 1.5.1, shepherd 0.6.0, xfce 4.12.1, and xorg-server 1.20.4.
The GNU Shepherd Service Manager has been updated to version 0.6, which implements the one-shot service mode, in which the service is flagged immediately after a successful launch, which may be required to start working a only once before other services, for example, to perform cleaning or initialization.
What's new in Guix 1.0
As for the new features for the package manager, an indicator of the progress of the operations has been added and the highlighting of the diagnostic messages with colors. By default, most commands now run without verbose results on the screen, which is enabled by a separate "-v" (–verbosity) option.
On the other hand, a new command was received «guix system delete-generation»And the options«guix pack - save-provenance "," guix pull - news "," guix environment - preserve "," guix gc - list-roots "," guix gc –delete-generation "," guix weather –coverage ".
Se added new package conversion options "–With-git-url" and "–with-branch".
Keyboard layout configuration fields have also been added to define a keyboard layout, xorg configuration to configure the X server, label for a section label, and essential services to define basic services.
Of the other changes in Guix 1.0, the following stand out:
- Added "guix pack -RR" command to create tar files with relocatable executable files that can be run both relative to paths in user namespace and relative to Proot.
- In "guix pull", the formation of a package cache is provided to speed up search operations by name and the incorporation of the package "glibc-utf8-locales" is provided.
- As input manager, GDM is used instead of SliM.