I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro

Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by mbakke on Saturday November 20, 2021 @12:26PM (#29289986)

Guix will never prevent you from doing what you want with your hardware. Nor will it give you software that is not properly free (as in freedom).

The "nonguix" channel mentioned in the article does have Intel and AMD microcode for users who want it. This is similar to Debian, where you have to opt-in by enabling the "nonfree" repository and "apt install" the microcode package corresponding to your CPU.

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Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by raverbashing on Saturday November 20, 2021 @12:51PM (#29290219)

Good to know, but still

> where this Linux fork actively removes security warnings informing users that they need to update their CPU microcode

Is not ok

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Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by mbakke on Saturday November 20, 2021 @01:30PM (#29290586)

I believe that argument is based on the same FUD that I addressed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29290087

...at least, I don't see any such code in the actual deblobbing script: https://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/5.15....

edit: since you called linux-libre a "fork", I feel compelled to point out that Linux-Libre is just the vanilla Linux kernel with that script applied. No more, no less.

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Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by seoaeu on Saturday November 20, 2021 @01:45PM (#29290712)

I'm sorry, but this (and a bunch of other similar blocks) seem pretty intentional...

    # Do no recommend non-Free microcode update.
    announce X86_LOCAL_APIC - Undocumented
    clean_blob arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic.c
    clean_kconfig arch/x86/Kconfig X86_LOCAL_APIC
    clean_mk CONFIG_X86_LOCAL_APIC arch/x86/kernel/apic/Makefile

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Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by pxc on Saturday November 20, 2021 @02:59PM (#29291353)

If the kernel can't load it without code changes and recompilation, due to the de-blobbing process, it doesn't make much sense to recommend to users that they load it.

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Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by marcan_42 on Sunday November 21, 2021 @02:38AM (#29294784)

You can often also update your microcode by updating your BIOS/firmware.

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Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro by pxc on Sunday November 21, 2021 @12:47PM (#29298119)

That's a good point! Adjusting the message to direct people down that route rather than simply removing it seems like a good idea.

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