Guix Essentials: From Curious to Crafter

It's 11 PM on a Sunday. You just ran a routine system update, and now your audio doesn't work. Two hours of searching forums, copying commands you don't fully understand, and hoping for the best. Sound works again, but you're not sure what fixed it.

What if your system never surprised you like that again?

Guix gives you a system you actually understand: one you've deliberately constructed and can reason about. Your entire configuration is readable code. Updates either succeed completely or don't happen at all. If something goes wrong, you roll back in seconds.

This course teaches you everything you need to use Guix as your daily operating system, from understanding the core concepts to installing, configuring, and maintaining your system with confidence!

Build a mental model of how Guix works before touching a single config file. You'll understand why Guix is different (the store, profiles, generations, packages, services, and channels), so that everything you do next makes sense.

A hands-on walkthrough of installing Guix System on real hardware, including using Nonguix for hardware compatibility. You'll go from bare metal to a working system.

Make the system yours. Learn to safely apply configuration changes, find and install packages, and configure system services, with best practices for keeping things clean.

The day-to-day skills that make Guix a joy to use: updating safely, managing generations, cleaning up old packages, troubleshooting common issues, and knowing where to get help.

This course is designed for:

• Linux users who want more control and deeper understanding of their system
• Developers who've heard about declarative, reproducible environments and want to apply the concept to their whole OS
• System administrators interested in declarative infrastructure
• Anyone frustrated with the complexity and fragility of traditional Linux system management

You should be comfortable using the command line and editing text files. No prior Scheme or functional programming experience is required: you'll learn exactly what you need.

The first 20 Crafters to join shape this course with me. Founding Crafters get:

• $99 price (save $50 off the $149 standard)
• Your name on the Founding Crafters page, alphabetical
• A credit slide in the course intro module, alphabetical
• Privacy opt-in at checkout if you'd rather not be credited publicly. You still get founder pricing.

The founding window closes when 20 Crafters join, or after 30 days, whichever comes first. After that, the course goes to its standard price of $149.

Join now as a Founding Crafter and get everything (including videos when they're ready) for $50 off the standard price, plus your name in the course credits.

1. What is Guix? (free preview)
   • The problem with traditional Linux systems
   • A different approach
   • Two key ideas
   • What "Guix" actually is
2. An Example Configuration (free preview)
   • A complete system configuration
   • Reading the configuration
   • What this configuration gives you
   • The pattern you'll see everywhere
3. 5-Minute Scheme Primer
   • The one rule: everything is a list
   • Calling functions, building lists, nested expressions
   • Variables, records, and modules
   • Enough Scheme to read and write configs
4. Understanding the Guix Model
   • How Guix thinks about your system
   • The store, profiles, and generations
   • Packages, services, and channels
   • How it all fits together

5. Preparing Installation Media
   • Choosing an installation image
   • Writing the image to USB
   • Pre-boot checklist
6. Installation Walkthrough
   • Booting the installer
   • Network setup and substitute servers
   • Disk partitioning
   • Adding Nonguix for proprietary drivers
   • First boot and saving your configuration
7. Testing Your New System
   • Basic system checks
   • Verifying hardware and networking
   • Your configuration file
   • What to do if something doesn't work

8. Applying Configuration Changes
   • The basic edit-test-apply workflow
   • Testing before you commit
   • When things go wrong
9. Finding and Adding Packages
   • Where should packages live?
   • Finding packages across channels
   • Adding packages to your system
   • The use-package-modules shortcut
   • Recommended packages for a daily driver
10. Finding and Configuring Services
    • Finding services
    • Adding and configuring services
    • Common services and how to use them
    • Modifying existing services
    • Checking service status

11. Updating Your System
    • guix pull and what it actually does
    • Rebuilding your system
    • Handling update problems
    • A full update cycle, hands-on
12. Managing Generations
    • Listing and switching between generations
    • Understanding what changed between them
    • Deleting old generations safely
    • Breaking and rolling back, hands-on
13. Garbage Collection
    • Why the store grows
    • The safe cleanup workflow
    • Controlling how much to collect
    • Automating garbage collection
14. Troubleshooting Common Issues
    • System won't boot
    • Package not found
    • Service won't start
    • Disk full
    • Network issues after reconfigure
15. Getting Help
    • The guix command help system
    • The Guix Manual
    • Mailing lists, IRC, and the System Crafters community
    • Searching for packages and services online
    • When to file a bug vs ask for help

Plus a Prologue (free preview) on why Guix is worth the investment, covering the philosophy and what you'll gain.

Guix Essentials is the first course in a planned series:

1. Guix Essentials (this course): understand and use Guix as your daily OS
2. Crafting Your Guix Environment (coming next): build a custom desktop with Guix Home, Wayland/Sway, and custom services
3. Guix for Servers (planned): deploy and manage production servers with Guix

Each course builds on the previous one. Start with the essentials and go as deep as you want!

System Crafters is a community of people who believe in understanding and crafting their own computing experience. Founded by David Wilson, the community has grown to over 38,000 YouTube subscribers and an active discussion forum.

David has been using Guix as his daily driver for years, creating guides, live streams, and tools that have helped thousands of people get started with Guix and other system crafting tools.

I used AI tools to help draft and refine parts of this course. The technical content is my own knowledge, verified against real Guix systems, and every example has been tested. AI assistance let me create this course in a timeframe that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. If that's a dealbreaker for you, I understand! This course probably isn't the right fit.

Ready to take control of your system?

Once you complete registration, you will receive an e-mail which gives you immediate access to the course and an invite to a private area on the System Crafters Forum where you can ask questions as you work through the material!