guix-hurd-20200401

operating-system · Linux

After years in the making , Guix recently gained support for running natively on the GNU/Hurd operating system . That means you will soon be able to replace... (kernel linux-libre) with (kernel hurd) (initial-herd hurd) ...in your operating-system declaration and reboot into the future! Running on the Hurd was always a goal for Guix, and supporting multiple kernels is a huge maintenance burden. As such it is expected that the upcoming Guix 1.1 release will be the last version featuring the Linux-Libre kernel. Future versions of Guix System will run exclusively on the Hurd, and we expect to remove Linux-Libre entirely by Guix 2.0. The Linux kernel will still be supported when using Guix on "foreign" distributions, but it will be on a best-effort basis. We hope that other distributions will follow suit and adopt the Hurd in order to increase security and freedom for their users. We provide a pre-built virtual machine image with the Hurd for download with SHA256 056e69ae4b5fe7a062b954a5be333332152caa150359c20253ef77152334c662 . Here is how to get started: wget https://guix.gnu.org/guix-hurd-20200401.img.tar.xz tar xf guix-hurd-20200401.img.tar.xz guix environment --ad-hoc qemu -- \ qemu-system-i386 -enable-kvm -drive file=guix-hurd-20200401.img,cache=writeback -m 1G Log in as root without password. Then try hello , guix describe , or guix install linux-libre to run Linux in userspace... We are looking forward to your feedback! About GNU Guix GNU Guix is a transactional package manager and an advanced distribution of the GNU system that respects user freedom . Guix can be used on top of any system running the Hurd or the Linux kernel, or it can be used as a standalone operating system distribution for i686, x86_64, ARMv7, and AArch64 machines. In addition to standard package management features, Guix supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package management, per-user profiles, and garbage collection. When used as a standalone GNU/Linux distribution, Guix offers a declarative, stateless approach to operating system configuration management. Guix is highly customizable and hackable through Guile programming interfaces and extensions to the Scheme language.