# Guix system services on foreign distro

**URL:** <https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/guix-system-services-on-foreign-distro/1693>\
**Category:** Guix\
**Created:** [July 2, 2025, 12:28pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/guix-system-services-on-foreign-distro/1693 "2025-07-02T12:28:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![teddd](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/teddd/32/1017_2.png) [@teddd](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/teddd)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2025, 12:28pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/guix-system-services-on-foreign-distro/1693/1 "2025-07-02T12:28:30Z")

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Is it possible to use a subset of guix services on a foreign distro ? I am fairly happy with guix home in general, but sometimes I need to add some file in `/etc/` or `/usr/share/` and I would like to use things like a `special-file-service-type`. Is this even possible ?

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**Author:** ![dgr](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/dgr/32/394_2.png) [@dgr](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/dgr)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2025, 1:29pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/guix-system-services-on-foreign-distro/1693/2 "2025-07-02T13:29:56Z")

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I don’t think so. Even if possible it would be a problem to have multiple package managers fighting for config files and such problems.

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**Author:** ![teddd](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/teddd/32/1017_2.png) [@teddd](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/teddd)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2025, 1:49pm UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/guix-system-services-on-foreign-distro/1693/3 "2025-07-02T13:49:12Z")

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Well, in a sense guix-home also has the same limitation. It can always happen that a program overwrites a config file say in `.config/...`. So this is not per se a new problem.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dgr](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/forum.systemcrafters.net/dgr/32/394_2.png) [@dgr](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/u/dgr)\
**Post date:** [July 3, 2025, 7:18am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/guix-system-services-on-foreign-distro/1693/4 "2025-07-03T07:18:24Z")

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> Well, in a sense guix-home also has the same limitation.

Yes, once on Ubuntu Studio I could no longer login into KDE Plasma with my user because of Guix home.

At some point the question is, why are you keeping the non Guix base system if you replaced halve of the stuff. Also, how would you “chain load” shepherd from systemd?

What’s your use case and workflow?