# Speeding up downloads: Faster or alternative download sources for installation (and pull)

**URL:** <https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/speeding-up-downloads-faster-or-alternative-download-sources-for-installation-and-pull/1774>\
**Category:** Guix\
**Tags:** guix\
**Created:** [August 25, 2025, 3:58am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/speeding-up-downloads-faster-or-alternative-download-sources-for-installation-and-pull/1774 "2025-08-25T03:58:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 17

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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:** [September 10, 2025, 7:21am UTC](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/speeding-up-downloads-faster-or-alternative-download-sources-for-installation-and-pull/1774/17 "2025-09-10T07:21:21Z")

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> [@ANoobyBird](#):
>
> It has been hard, at least for me until now, to conceive of teaching oneself EE. To step outside the comfort of the mere conceptual, to use one’s own hands to actually interact with the raw components and materials, and to take the risks of breaking something, to bring about real-world consequences, it takes such courage, and seeing him in these videos faced with uncertainties but without in the slightest altering his adventurous attitude, it is admirable, and inspiring.

It’s a lot easier to lean to use a multi meter to check currents and resistances on an existing board - especially if you have the documentations shown in his videos. This is also why they fight to get them form the manufacturer.

Next you need to learn to solder. I can recommend to build your own keyboard from a kit.  
As an Emacs user I prefer split keyboards like the ergo dox, Lily58, Corne, with thumb clusters to, so I can put CTRL, ALT, from my pinkies to my thumbs.

You will also learn to program the controller with firmware and can dabble with that as you need to burn the layouts on your new board.

Lastly you can start to design and build your own bards - which is still low complexity EE and thus a good entry point.

> [@ANoobyBird](#):
>
> So I turned to creating an image myself, and I believe I did find the right way to build the proper bootable installation image using `guix system image` roughly following the instruction in the nonguix link, having made sure that the nonguix channel was pulled from before invoking `guix system image`, and there isn’t complaint about any errors in the `install.scm`, but the process kept dying at random points when trying to download stuff so currently no image has been emitted, I suspect that it is a network issue on my part, and for this I will try to find faster mirrors.

Check out [GitHub - SystemCrafters/guix-installer: A GNU Guix installer image with the full Linux kernel!](https://github.com/SystemCrafters/guix-installer) but you need to build the fresh iso yourself as the pipeline dies because the build got to big.

> [@Where is the guix system crafters iso?](https://forum.systemcrafters.net/t/where-is-the-guix-system-crafters-iso/1655/3):
>
> This problem is covered in one issue discussion on GH, the .iso file grew larger than 2GB and thus does not fit within GitHub asset limits anymore. You can checkout the repo, and with local guix (package manager version fine) can rebuild the .iso yourself. Takes quite a bit of time though.

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