A Review of the GuixSD GNU/Linux System Software Distribution

I'm again at a loss as to what I should review this month, and so decide to review a distribution of
GNU/Linux.  I installed GuixSD over six years ago, and have been using it on my primary work machine
ever since, although it's never worked perfectly, and the package installer eventually broke itself.

The software, its documentation, and more resources are available under these two domains following:
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix
https://guix.gnu.org

I've never used a distribution of GNU/Linux I actually liked.  All of them suck in a unique way, but
most all software sucks in ways that should be criminal, and GNU/Linux is still that best available.

I should probably reinstall GuixSD at some point since it's undoubtedly improved, although I believe
the high-level members were previously part of an attempted coup within the GNU project.  The system
known as Nix is the counterpart to Guix, with less support and using its own system language instead
of some Lisp, which has also recently undergone a coup, one unfortunately successful.  I'm a man who
chooses to install all of his preferred software immediately after the system software is installed,
because I've regularly had systems degrade and become unable to install anything more thereafter.  I
see it in GuixSD also, but haven't the wherewithall to reinstall the damned thing; it'd break again.

The graphical GNU Emacs never worked properly with my system for some unknown reason, failing to run
every time, so I've been stuck with the inferior version ever since.  A major problem with that idea
of reproducible software ``builds'' is the fact that decades of software have been written without a
care in regards to this, meaning many important programs such as GNAT for Ada programming aren't and
never will be available under Guix, greatly impacting my work.  Even though I'm a Lisp programmer, I
never could bring myself to care for the Lisp aspects of Guix.  There are only two kinds of programs
in the Free Software world: trivial to install and use, or so complicated that only a few can do it.

One very nice characteristic of GuixSD is its use of GNU Shepherd over other ``init'' programs.  The
system still uses PulseAudio, however, which works poorly as software from its demented author does.

The wireless hardware in my preferred IBM ThinkPad isn't supported by GuixSD, due to its proprietary
nature, and I chose to buy supported wireless hardware used over a USB interface, which never worked
worth a fuck and which gave me grief until it finally died, leaving the laptop indefinitely offline.

I never gave the so-called ``desktop environments'' much thought until I worked without any for such
a long time; I just leave various system programs constantly running so that I may mount devices and
whatnot without much issue.  Leaving all things interesting to random programs is such a bad design.

All in all, I'm more inclined to learn how I may configure the tower of convention, that monument to
shitty programming practices known as the Linux kernel, to make a custom system than I'm inclined to
learn how to use Guix beyond the bare minimum.  It's not secret that making software too complicated
to customize or compile is a known workaround to the four freedoms of Free Software, and it's been a
great success in all manner of vile bullshit which worms its ways into dependency lists and whatnot.

Personally, I'm disgusted by the software which is too damned hard to install and use, which is most
of it; this is one very good reason why I always prefer software only distributed as source code for
entry into an interpreter or some similar such thing.  Whenever I need to install some software, and
the system package manager is long broken, I always look around for some GNU Emacs code for the task
and find it; I'm never left with a GNU Emacs unable to take in more Emacs Lisp, not much differently
than any other interpreter or language implementation.  The software I write for myself is never any
issue either, but that's due most to familiarity, although it also fits my given description.  I see
installing just enough to get the language interpreters and whatnot installed to be the best method.

The extremely complicated software with sizes in the gigabytes are lost causes regardless of method.

I'll paraphrase Kierkegaard: Install GuixSD or do not install GuixSD, one will regret it either way.