Subject: bug#35915: Please provide an installer with non-free drivers

From: juh <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 May 2019 12:37:18 +0200

Dear developers of Guix,

I am very much in favour of Open Hardware and Free Software, and I
appreciate every effort to foster free software. That in advance.

Guix is not just another Linux distribution, but something new that
supports transactional upgrades and roll-backs, unprivileged package
management and declarative system configuration. This is really
exciting. If Guix were just another distro focusing on free software,
there would be no need for a nonfree installer iso. But in case of Guix
I think it is missing.

Please consider that using hardware that is supported by free drivers is
a privilege. Many people cannot afford a computer with supported
hardware, others are not able to look for the right components, and
compare long lists of supported hardware with the specs from computer
shops, and last but not least many people just got a computer from
others – as a gift maybe. They all have to stick with their hardware and
they should not be excluded from the exciting Guix approach.

I think that many of them would give Guix a try if it was installable in
a way like debian is installable with their firmware driver iso:
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/

I see that it is possible to make a custom kernel for Guix:
For eg. https://gist.github.com/TeMPOraL/306bbb7c627ab0d32fa84af831963563

It would be really nice to have at least an unofficial installer with
nonfree drivers. If there is a nonfree installer iso please make a note
on the webpage.

Thanks a lot
juh