I really appreciate this post and how it highlights the power of becoming involved in occupation. I use that term in the context of the fact that my spouse is an Occupational Therapist by trade. In that field, the term occupation refers to a collection of activities of daily living, not a "job" per se. Rather than seeing patients through a framework of diagnosis or disability, they look at activities and people's ability to perform them, and intervene where there is lack. In practice that may involve helping an amputee learn how to put on socks, or helping an autistic child participate in education. More broadly, a central philosophy of their field is that meaningful occupation is a powerful motivator that has cascading effects across the many component activities in somebody's daily life. OP's post described how becoming involved as a Guix contributor effectively organized and motivated other areas of their life as well. The fact that we all are here hanging out on a VC's forum tends to color our idea of what value means. I think this post inspires that there is value to not only the community but also the individual as well in just "doing cool stuff".
I'm not a developer but I totally relate to this. Most of my creative pursuits are weird, niche, sometimes avant-garde. If I didn't make my artifacts, nobody else would, and it is so intrinsically rewarding to see my visions instantiated, even if they pale in comparison to my first imagining of what they might be. Because I have fringe-y interests, most people don't necessarily "get" it. (Probably true of everyone else on HN as well.) But the people who do get it, I found them on the internet, and I thank God for that.
<a href="https://guix.gnu.org/en/about/" rel="nofollow">https://guix.gnu.org/en/about/</a><p>> Guix is an advanced distribution of the GNU operating system developed by the GNU Project—which respects the freedom of computer users.<p>For anyone looking for more context. I did not know anything about the what and why and who of this post.<p>Having read it, I like the author's point of view. Working on it is good for his well-being. That's more than enough reason to pursue it.
Nice! Bravo for your contributions!<p>After using and contributing NixOS for 3 years, I appreciated that I understood far more how Guix worked after just one 1-2 weeks of using it.<p>Guix introduces abstractions, such as operating-system that has defined fields that make it clearer what structures are being built. NixOS, on the other hand, does not have such abstractions (or perhaps just not as well documented/discoverable).<p>Alas, I found Guix a bit slow and a bit difficult to contribute to (mailing list workflow, and fewer reviewers), and don't have the capacity to help improve that, and so I'm back to NixOS.<p>Guix is tackling multiple fronts: a blob-free kernel, a non systemd init, mailing list development, bootstrapability, no non-free software, high standards for commit messages.<p>If they reduced the number of fronts they were tackling, they might increase contributions, but the current contributors seem to value their existing fronts. That's fair.
And let's all be honest here: There is nothing else to do in Norway unless you're a active sportsman during the 9 winter months.<p>There are few parades
Few social gatherings
Little social cohesion
No reason to seek up a public place to randomly meet people, because people shun random social contact
There is only binge drinking and a social walking alone in the cities<p>Same with Sweden and Finland.<p>As opposed to living in sunny country a south of the equator.<p>Living in Norway is a blessing and a curse.
Guix has been the only distro I run on my PC and Laptop for some time now, and will be what I depoy on my home server when I eventually get it back up and running (really looking forward to learning services and containerization inside and out). The ease of access to the source tree, the freedom and hackability, all come together to enable my habit of getting in over my head. I've got some patches languishing that I've been meaning to come back to, and this post reassures and inspires me. Thanks for putting your thoughts out there.
Guix has been utterly transformative for my scientific work.<p>It lets me maintain a lab notebook (my shell history) with perfect description of what software versions commands I ran used.<p>I don't upstream much. It's just packages I maintain in my own channel that support this.<p>On a multi user HPC server environment, it's simply ideal. Every user can have their own system setup. Love it.
Thank you to Marius Bakke for this post. I can relate, this is exactly why I've been doing my own project since 2016 even when not many know about it or use it or even supported it. I've learned so much from doing this project from scratch and made some very good friends since day one.<p>And @behnamoh "Does it bother you if people don't discover your work and don't use it?" If I may... I personally don't care if people use my project(s), as long as I do =) It's what makes you personally happy that matters ^_^ I'm actually working actively on v2.0 of the project without much support at all, just because I use it daily myself =)<p>Edit: I think that the best project(s) you can do in life is the ones you use yourself the most. When you are both creator and user of your project(s) you have unique perspective. Thanks to all for reading my comment.
I'd love to know how the authors financials work. It sounds like a dream to work on something just because it's fun and fulfilling. I have mouths to feed and that dominates much of my career choices. I'm in a small town in a small country so earning a FAANG salary is not an option. I can't save up and go work on a dream project.
I liked the article, I wish there were more of these. I've always wondered "who" are the developers who contribute to the open-source projects that I use without much hassle? Why do they do it? How does their life look like? And most importantly, are they OK?
Read together, some comments seem to reveal the poles of a moral
landscape in the hacker community:<p>> Guix saved my life... finally feeling some stability in life; and a
desire to explore other creative outlets such as blogging (hi!),
cooking, growing sustainable foods; and healthy activities like
climbing and skiing. None of this would be possible without Guix,<p>> If Guix ever becomes mainstream, it will be in spite of their
efforts.<p>What's behind resentment of the sacrifices made by others on a journey
to modest personal success and happiness? I think that many of us are
deeply unhappy with our jobs. For moral reasons. The high salaries
aren't enough. But there isn't the courage to take a plunge into
something crazy, risky - the spiritual transformation so deeply craved
for. If you have "mouths to feed", and think that is stopping you, try
<i>talking</i> to your partner and dependents. You may be surprised that
they love you, want you to be happy, and support your projects.
Finding that "intrinsic motivation" to work on a hobby is something that really helps to keep you going. Often we're extrinsically motivated by others praise, social media likes ete. While praise is no bad thing, it doesn't always happen or you can be knocked off course by negative feedback.<p>I'm often amazed by the intrinsic motivation and long track records of people working on open source.
(Part of) my path out of depression was committing to something bigger than myself. Giving more than I received to a community. In the end, it not only helped me climb out of my black hole, it also rewarded me in ways I never expected.
Thank you for making Guix -- it's the only one os-as-code that I've tried and intend to use.<p>I don't think DSLs are the right answer (a la Nix) -- and the fact that Guix is written in an infinitely malleable fully featured programming language is awesome IMO.
Great post. It reminded me a bit of this one from the creator of SerenityOS: <a href="https://awesomekling.github.io/I-quit-my-job-to-focus-on-SerenityOS-full-time/" rel="nofollow">https://awesomekling.github.io/I-quit-my-job-to-focus-on-Ser...</a>
Good on ya. I wish you luck.<p>Personally, I don't have a use for the OS, but that is no reflection on its quality or usefulness. I just play on a different jungle gym.<p>Writing an OS is not for the faint of heart. Lots of moving parts. I've done it (on a much, <i>much</i> smaller scale -embedded assembly). Great way to learn the ins and outs of pretty much any software pattern out there.<p>I see the usual smattering of "it's not a <i>real</i> software project because ... <i><insert metric here></i>," and understand where that comes from.<p>But I've been writing full production-Quality open-source "hobby" projects for over a decade. The polish, documentation, testing, and maintenance are part of the "fun" for me. I absolutely couldn't care any less, if no one uses my software; in fact, I prefer it that way, as I don't need to worry about moving anyone's cheese, if I decide to make changes. I use my software in my own work.
I can confirm, that some of the free software projects and mailing lists and IRC channels are really good learning environments. Since I have started being sometimes active on the Guile and a bit rarer the Guix mailing list, I have learned a ton of stuff. People are usually helpful and it helps discovering gaps in ones knowledge or things one got wrong. Also good for learning about many cool tools.
Wow. These reasons match exactly why I've built open source software in the past (now running on your iPhone).<p>Fun. Rewarding. Feels important. Pure.<p>Maybe didn't save my life, but given a different start, definitely plausible.
Just reading "The Little Book Of Ikigai" - this post reads like a rewording of the most important aspects of Ikigai :)
Sounds all quite familiar to me..
Feels good seeing so many people feel the same way. I've been working on an algorithmic trading project for a few years now and at times there have been speedbumps where I ask myself what I'm doing when I could be getting a lot more sleep or doing other hobbies like fishing, golfing, riding MTB, etc...<p>I would add that little wins here and there are extremely motivating to keep pushing. For example, I recently started digging back into trigonometry after many years of being away. It's been extremely satisfying re-learning basic trig functions for an actual purpose, rather than simply solving a math problem.
Once you find the things that anchor you physically, it makes it much easier to sail where you want to sail and stay when you want to stay. No matter what passes around me or what happens in life, having these anchors about myself lifts the good times to be more enjoyable and the bad that much more surmountable.<p>I'm happy for you.
There's a point, or should be one, where you realize your hobby is actually your vocation - because you love being excellent at your craft. Loving what you're building is worth more than all the money in the world.
Very off topic but I am curious about Guix:<p>> It's reassuring to know that all packages are bootstrapped and not just some random binary blobs.<p>Surely there must be some binary blobs, no?
I like the blog post and I'm happy for the author, truly. But Guix doesn't sit well with me, and I rarely see this discussed:<p>The Guix zealotry will be their undoing, and frankly this is where Nix shines. I can use Nix at work, at home, with family, with vendors, with binary blobs, on macOS. The community tries very hard to help.<p>With Guix, sure, there's stuff like nonguix, but take a gander at this from the nonguix readme:<p>> Please do NOT promote this repository on any official Guix communication channels, such as their mailing lists or IRC channel, even in response to support requests! This is to show respect for the Guix project’s strict policy against recommending nonfree software, and to avoid any unnecessary hostility.<p>Guix has truly noble goals (in classic GNU fashion) but they're ultimately misguided. Yes sure it's great that it's pure and reproducible and whatever else but if I can't get stuff done with it it's useless. Actually useless.<p>The standard encouraged response to "Hi I'm a new Guix user and I was wondering how I can run steam?" is roughly equivalent to "Go fuck yourself" and I'm just amazed by that.<p>If Guix ever becomes mainstream, it will be <i>in spite</i> of their efforts.<p>In the meantime, I'm betting on Nix.
Article prompted me to take Guix for a test-drive (as a user, not yet as a package-writer), but I'm running into some peculiar behavior.<p>Installing Python with "guix install python" tells me:<p><pre><code> The following package will be installed:
python 3.8.2
</code></pre>
But then it starts downloading<p><pre><code> tcl-8.6.10
tk-8.6.10
python-3.8.2-tk
</code></pre>
I find this strange, because Python is most often used without Tk (or Tcl) and I don't want to waste disk space.<p>Also, it installs pip3. But you can't use pip3 because you will get:<p><pre><code> ERROR: Could not install packages due to an EnvironmentError: [Errno 30] Read-only file system: '/gnu/store/...'
</code></pre>
I guess Python packages should be installed using Guix too.
(EDIT: yes, you have to install them like "guix install python-numpy" etc.)<p>Imho, this is a pity because it means one package manager (Guix) is circumventing another (pip), and thus wasting the effort that went into building and supporting it.