I’m planning to move over to Guix over NixOS, as soon as my current situation improves and possibly import a new libre respecting laptop (Star Labs is thankfully available in India). I do have a very old laptop with a Celeron processor and 4GB of RAM with Guix installed already, and what has come to my attention is that it uses shepherd.
I’m not actually against or for systemd, in fact, I am not really sure why I should even care - maybe it is because I’m still not on to the level of a power user. Since I’m starting to learn kernel basics to prepare for GNU/Hurd contributions in the nearest possible future and shepherd seems to be what the GNU folks will be using, is there any reason why I should even care about the freedom of init system?
Edit: I’m asking this because I came across this blog - What is systemd and Why Should I Care? and also because Guix uses shepherd, and I’m not sure how I’ll be affected.
They definitely don’t have freedom respecting parts. They use modern Intel which requires proprietary binaries to even boot and there wifi, graphics and thunderbolt connections all need there own proprietary firmware.
The only options these days are a old machine from 2008 or before or an ARM based system from a company like Pine64
Sigh. Is it time to open my own FOSS hardware now? Goodbye kernel hacking, time to learn computer architecture.
Good luck, the odds are stacked against you. I do think pine64 us the future of free hardware. They even have Risc-V boards for those who are feeling adventurous