GNU Guix 1.5 is out after three years, delivering Plasma 6.5, GNOME 46 on Wayland, rootless package management, and more than 12,500 new packages.

After three years in development, GNU Guix 1.5 has been released, marking the start of a newly adopted annual release cycle. But if this name has flown under your radar, let me briefly explain what it is before we move on to the news.

First and foremost, Guix is both a transactional package manager and a full GNU/Linux distribution built around it. As a package manager, guix can be installed on top of most existing Linux systems, where it operates independently of native tools like apt or dnf.

At the same time, Guix System is a standalone operating system (Linux distro) that uses the same technology to declaratively manage the entire OS, including the kernel, system services, and user environments.

  • ikiddEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    kexec reboot support

    Does that mean bootless kernel updates?

    If so, between that and declarative configuration, it sounds way better than I envisioned the product was going to be.

    • Baleine@jlai.lu
      5·
      2 days ago

      Yeah, I think that’s what that means. How it works is that you will reconfigure your system, which will load the new version into kexec. Then you can simply launch reboot --kexec to switch to your new system, including the new kernel.

  • Scoopta@programming.dev
    91·
    2 days ago

    Guix just makes me think someone looked at nix and was like

    Hmmm, needs more parentheses, we should do that but lisp

    • devfuuu
      3·
      1 day ago

      It started as a fork of nix for that exact reason so…

    • aport@programming.dev
      8·
      2 days ago

      As someone who has worked a lot with both, I think that’s a very measured reaction to seeing Nix

  • TheGrandNagusEnglish
    42·
    2 days ago

    Gnome 46? And they won’t update it for at least another year?

    Jeez, we’re almost at Gnome 50…

    • Baleine@jlai.lu
      15·
      2 days ago

      Hey, Guix contributor here. We actually already have Gnome 48 almost done. Keep in mind that Guix is a rolling release so there is no need to wait a year to get the updates. I think we’re on pretty good pace to catch up with upstream before next year. Still, it takes a lot of effort to package gnome, especially with the growing reliance on systemd!