guix on aramo (but avoid it if you can)

I recommend not to use guix on trisquel because:

1. updates are a pain
2. it is more difficult to get support for using guix on trisquel than for using trisquel packages
3. when you realise the two above issues, if you have a lot of data that require a later version of a package than the one in trisquel, you can't use the trisquel package anymore so you are trapped with guix

So my general advice:

• if you are not already using guix on trisquel, don't use it
• if you are missing a feature in a trisquel package, try to find a replacement with another trisquel package
• if you still decide using guix, install as few guix packages as possible

I have been using aramo on my desktop for several months, without guix, but recently I made a big mistake: I travelled with my laptop with nabia and guix and used darktable for countless hours on it, and when I try to import my data to darktable on the desktop, it does not work well because I am trying to use with darktable 3.8 things that were generated with darktable 4.0. So I decided to install guix on aramo and I really plan not to install anything else than darktable.

Then I looked at the guix manual and it is now suggesting to use the package in debian/ubuntu-based distros and indeed, aramo has a guix package. So I went:

$ sudo apt install guix

I followed the suggestions from the manual (I have nscd already installed):

$ guix install glibc-locales
$ export GUIX_LOCPATH=$HOME/.guix-profile/lib/locale
$ guix install fontconfig
$ fc-cache -rv

Then I ran the updates (takes a very long time):

$ sudo -i guix pull
$ sudo systemctl restart guix-daemon.service
$ guix pull
$ guix package update

Then I rebooted and the login failed, so I went to a terminal:

$ cat <<EOF >>~/.profile 
export XDG_DATA_DIRS="/usr/local/share:/usr/share/${XDG_DATA_DIRS:+:}$XDG_DATA_DIRS"
EOF

I tried the login again and it worked. I installed darktable and it seems to handle my photos fine, but I feel like I felt in a trap which I previously tried to avoid.