Re: A Forum for Guix Users

[kiasoc5]

On 7/13/23 11:21, Csepp wrote:
> Robby Zambito <contact@robbyzambito.me> writes:
>
> > Hi Sarthak,
> >
> > > As of now, it's a bit difficult for beginners to find answers to their problems 
> > > in the mailing list or in IRC logs as they aren't very
> > > easy to navigate compared to forum threads.
> >
> > I personally think that it would be wiser to improve the documentation
> > relating to the mailing lists and IRC logs, rather than fragmenting the
> > places that someone should look for answers. Maybe a new / additional
> > frontend that is more approachable for new users would also be good.

Imo, fragmentation is abound in Guix.

The official docs, while very good, is missing things that often need to 
be answered by reading the source/commit log. Some examples: the manual 
is missing API documentation for many of the Guile functions for the 
Guix DSL. The custom kernel chapter in the cookbook doesn't mention 
using #:extra-options keyword yet. The packaging videos on the website 
still refer to old-style inputs, and there's no section in the cookbook 
that describes packaging paradigms such as avoiding assoc-ref.

If it's not in the manual, I (and probably many others) turn to my 
search engine. But there's a relative lack of blogs covering usage of 
Guix, probably because most people have difficulty using Guix on nonfree 
hardware. And the unofficial forums for Guix on Reddit/Lemmy, where 
there's the occasional question, commonly answered by "I don't know, did 
you read the manual/ask the mailing list/IRC?" Yes, I end up on the 
mailing list and IRC, but that's because it's not easy to find 
information that's not in the manual.

Compare this to Nix. It's likely more popular because users have access 
to the most number of updated packages on their (likely nonfree) 
computers and OSes (as Nix works on Mac). These users then write blog 
posts and engage with their community to espouse how amazing their Nix 
experience is, which in turn serves as informal documentation. More 
users = more contributors = more blog posts and engagement = more users 
= positive feedback loop.

The positive feedback loop is comparatively lacking on Guix, which might 
explain the "small, and possibly shrinking" community 
(https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2023-07/msg00072.html). 
There should some instruction to learn the "Guix way" in an organized 
and efficient manner, as well as to encourage users to document their 
experiences and share them online. If a forum helps with this, then I 
would support it.

> Sourcehut has full-time employees working on making these accessible, so
> it really boggles my mind why we aren't using that instead of Savannah
> and Debbugs.

I would support a migration to Sourcehut. It really has brought the 
forge to mailing list development. Maybe Guix can host their own 
Sourcehut instance, after sourcehut is packaged.