Re: [H-source-users] [PATCH 6/6] Add Guix system with GNU/Hurd to the distro list

[bill-auger]

On Sun, 26 Jun 2022 07:09:38 -0400 bill-auger wrote:

> eg: how to programatically distinguish a "guix+linux-libre"
> system, from a "guix+hurd" system 

also how to determine which module is used by the device? -
surely that is possible; but i would need to investigate how to
do it - ie: does it have the same parse-able lspci and lsusb? -
if not, then o/c some documentation would need to be added to
the website to explain to users how to determine that for the
manual web form

i tried not to go on too long about this issue; but there is one
counter-point i could make off-hand

if it is reasonable to distinguish guix+linux-libre from
guix+hurd, then surely debian+hurd should be added along with it

granted that kernels are not white-listed (eg: how do we know
that the user was running linux-libre 5.11 and not linux 5.11?)
and that the kernel modules are not white-listed (i am working
toward that for the h-client), that makes debian+linux especially
problematic (prone to false positives and fibs) becuase it's
libre kernel allows non-free modules to be loaded - hurd
probably is the least problematic kernel in that regard; because
i assume that all hardware modules for hurd are libre -
regardless of the distro, most likely no non-free modules exist
anywhere for hurd

that aside, still i would make the point that debian+linux,
debian+hurd, and debian+kfreebsd are all the same distro,
semantically - we should try to capture that significant
difference deterministically in the kernel and module columns,
instead of the distro column