List the new version of the GNU Guix 1.1 package manager

Recently se announced the release of the new version of the GNU Guix 1.1 package manager and the GNU / Linux distribution built on this foundation. The distribution pallows installation as a standalone operating system in virtualization systems, in containers and in ordinary equipment, as well as the launch in GNU / Linux distributions already installed, acting as a platform to implement applications.

The user has features such as dependency accounting, rootless work, rollback to versions above in case of problems, configuration management, environment cloning (creating an exact copy of the software environment on other computers), etc.

While the GNU Guix package manager builds on the achievements of the Nix project and in addition to the typical package management functions, supports features such as performing transactional updates, the ability to roll back updates, work without obtaining superuser privileges, support profiles linked to individual users, the ability to simultaneously install multiple versions of one programs, garbage collection means (identification and removal of unused versions of packages).

In addition, it is proposed to use a specialized high-level language oriented to Guile Scheme API components and topics to determine application assembly scenarios and package formation rules. These components allow you to perform all package management operations in the functional programming language schema.

What's new in GNU Guix 1.1?

This version corresponds to 14.078 commitments made over 11 months by 201 people. It includes many new features, user interface and performance, improvements, as well as many bug fixes.

Among the main novelties that stand out, we can find that Added a framework for automated graphical installer testing. The installer is now assembled on a continuous integration system and tested in different configurations (regular and encrypted root partition, installation with desktops, etc.).

Two new commands have been added, one of them is "Guix System describes«, Which makes it possible, when implemented, to evaluate the changes between two different instances of the system, the other command that was added is"Guix deploy" which is designed to implement the filling of several computers at the same time, for example, new environments in VPS or remote systems accessible through SSH.

We can also find the new system services added: auditd, fontconfig-file-system, getmail, gnome-keyring, kernel-module-loader, knot-resolver, mumi, nfs, nftables, nix, pagekite, pam-mount, patchwork, polkit-wheel, provenance, pulseaudio, sane, singularity, usb-modeswitch.

Also updated software versions in 3368 packages, 3514 new packages were added, including updated versions of xfce 4.14.0, gnome 3.32.2, mate 1.24.0, xorg-server 1.20.7, bash 5.0.7, binutils 2.32, cups 2.3.1, emacs 26.3, illumination 0.23.1, gcc 9.3 .0, gimp 2.10.18 .2.29, glibc 2.2.20, gnupg 1.13.9, go 2.2.7, guile 68.7.0, icecat 0-guix1-preview3.7.0, icedtea 6.4.2.2, libreoffice 5.4, linux-libre 31. 12.33, openjdk 5.30.0, perl 3.7.4, python 1.39.0, and oxide XNUMX.

Of the other changes that stand out of this new version are:

  • Imaging support for Singularity and Docker has been added to the guix pack command.
  • The "guix time-machine" command has been added, allowing you to roll back to any version of a package saved in the Software Heritage archive.
  • The "–target" option has been added to the "guix system", providing partial support for cross compilation;
  • Guix is ​​implemented using Guile 3, which has a positive effect on performance.
  • The package dependency graph is limited to a reduced set of binary source components of the assembly (seed), which is a big step towards fully verifiable bootstrap implementation.
  • Build systems for Node.js, Julia, and Qt have been added to simplify writing packages for applications related to these projects.
  • In addition, third-party package repository authors have tools to write news messages that the user can read by executing the command "guix pull –news".

Download Guix 1.1

Finally for those who are interested in testing the package manager or distribution, you can check the details installation and / or find the images for download, In the following link.

The images for installation in USB Flash (241 Mb) or its use in virtualization systems (479 Mb), are available for the i686, x86_64, armv7 and aarch64 architectures.


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