Re: Proposal: Differentiate products more clearly (Cycle 01)

[Luis Felipe]

Hi pinoaffe,

El 12/10/23 a las 20:30, pinoaffe escribió:
> 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.

In this proposal, that clear list of what Guix can do would be the 
feature list, linked early in the home page, right after Guix's 
definition. The features list already exists in the manual, but I think 
it could provide more information.

Regarding the separation of both products, as I see it, it already 
exists, it is just that it is not that clear. There are separate 
downloads for both products and the manual, for example, has specific 
sections for the package manager and the operating system.

Now, I do agree that "package manager" and "operating system" don't 
quite make potential users picture the whole range of features provided 
by Guix... Would you still disagree with the differentiation of both 
products if the definition of Guix changed from "package manager" to, 
say, "a tool for reproducible deployment at every level of scale", as 
Ricardo suggest 
(https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2023-10/msg00142.html)? 
Or something along those lines?

> Luis Felipe <luis.felipe.la@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 may be misreading you, but I think your points are in line with the 
idea of changing the definition of Guix to better communicate its many 
other features, instead of simply calling it a "package manager".

If I read you correctly, I think having an additional presentation and 
definition for the Guix System (the OS), as suggested in this proposal, 
would not conflict with a possible change to Guix's definition.

> > [...]
> >
> > 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

Anytime, pinoaffe. Thanks for your feedback :)

P.S. I'm backing out from implementing this proposal for now (which I 
was planning to start today). I'll let more people read the feedback so 
far and think about it.

Cheers,

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