Guix System Latest: Installation report

[Luis Felipe]

Hi,

This is to report my experience installing the Guix System yesterday on a new 
old machine. In general, the installation went almost flawlessly and I'm happy 
to have another machine with the Guix System around.

Installer: w0wi4jvanaddk1zcvwzhlnn7fkfwab82-image.iso

Host: 20324 Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 10
Kernel: 6.0.8-gnu
Resolution: 1366x768
CPU: Intel Celeron N2806 (2) @ 1.999GHz
GPU: Intel Atom Processor Z36xxx/Z37xxx Series Graphics & Display
Memory: 690MiB / 1871MiB



1. DOWNLOADING THE INSTALLER

I already knew my way through the Guix website, but I was thinking that I still 
see people unsure about what installer they should download: Standard or Latest?

Personally, I think the Latest should be prescribed somehow. Maybe add some 
hints to make people be sure that that one is the recommended installer? I 
don't know...

But then I think what to do with the Standard, and I don't know. Because, as I 
see it, standard, versioned releases are useful to

+ Let contributors wind down, enjoy and reflect
+ Let current users know what's new and what's next
+ Spread the word about Guix around new neighbourhoods


2. INSTALLER: KEYBOARD LAYOUT SELECTION

I was wondering if it is possible to provide a text box to let people try out 
the selected distribution. Because, for example, Spanish has many options and 
I'm always unsure about whether I selected the right one, and whether selecting 
a wrong one could affect password creations in later steps during the 
installation (although one can enable the "show password" option).


3. INSTALLER: PRINTING AND DOCUMENT SERVICES SELECTION

I pretty much skipped that step because I didn't understand exactly what it was 
about (I've never used CUPS, I think). After looking up CUPS on Wikipedia just 
now, I'd propose that installation step to read along the lines of:

  Enable CUPS if this machine is going to provide printing services to other 
devices in your network.


4. INSTALLER: AFTER INSTALLING ALL PACKAGES

After the whole process of downloading, grafting and installation of packages, 
the installation of the system seemed to be frozen in

  Inicializando el sistema operativo en /mnt

I don't know the source English string for that. Maybe

  Initializing operating system in /mnt

It took around 30 minutes in my case to continue. I thought it had failed or 
something. But, finally, the little success window appeared telling me to 
remove the installation media and restart.


5. INSTALLER: INSTALLATION COMPLETE STEP

I clicked the Restart button in the installer window, removed the installation 
media, and then saw a kernel panic message. The machine didn't restart. I had 
to restart it manually.

Unfortunatelly, I didn't took a picture of the message, and I don't remember 
anything else (I panicked myself :)).

I wonder if not following the exact instructions caused this. Because I pressed 
the Restart button and then removed the media, instead of doing it the other 
way around...


6. LOGGING IN TO GNOME DESKTOP FOR THE FIRST TIME

I saw two things:

6.1. The desktop background is a flat blue background. I was expecting to see a 
default GNOME background, or a Guix background.

(I have some Guix backgrounds that I've been planning to package. Maybe one of 
them could be used by default?).

6.2. WiFi was activated, but not connected to any network. I was expecting it 
to be already connected to the same network I used during the installation. Is 
it not supposed to work like that currently?

But now that I think about it, I saw some network related message when the 
kernel panicked...

Anyways, thanks for all the work on improving the installer and booting time. 



Cheers,


---
Luis Felipe López Acevedo
https://luis-felipe.gitlab.io/

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