Devuan: Debian Without Systemd

[interested]

I feel sorry for SysVinit users

I think systemd is great, but I feel sorry for those who wants a long term stable sysvinit distro if this is what they get. The rather dubious persons running this projects seems to be some kind of bullshit artists making a living at the margins of the art and tech world. It doesn't look like any of them actually have had real world working experience in a company. They seem so full of smoke and mirrors, using grand words but with little to show. In this case they have made one pre-seed package, are calling it a fork, and are promtply begging for donations. There is no public group, no organisation that can provide any accountability for the donation money they get.

Look the website for "Denis Roio" AKA "Jaromil" 's so called acclaimed distro: http://www.dynebolic.org/
It seem to have been dead for years, but they still begs for donations, and on their rather stale mailing lists (5 mails per year) it looks like they tried getting EU funding for that monstrosity.

I would stay clear of that group.

If people wants a real, well funded sysvinit distro, they should get organised, make a proper foundation with trustworthy accountability for donated money, and then have a Kickstarter funding round.

[tuxd3v]

Can someone explain this systemd vs init?

You need to ask to the Gnome Desktop Environment guys that took Debian down...

Maybe they cold explain you whats happening better than I can...

The Debian OS, is now a Gnome OS project...in other words...Debian in the manner we knowed it...is dead :'( .

So the time urges drastic measures...Debian always was the biggest foundation for GNU/Linux OS,(Servers and embeddable devices), now they choose to be a Desktop Operating System..."the gnome OS"...

but ask to Debian guys maybe they could answer you better than I...

[computerquip]

Finally! A group of people who put their money where their mouth is.

[n3wu53r]

Can someone explain this systemd vs init?

I'll try my best. Disclaimer: I am pro systemd.

SysV init (aka the "old-way") is convoluted and frankly, shit.

Systemd is an alternative to SysV init but not just an init system, it is a collection of basic tools all developed together in one source repository. It is possible to only use a few of them. The idea that all these basic tools will become available across all linux distros making them much essentially standard. It is because of this fact that systemd's scope is beyond being an init system that people accuse it of bloat. Systemd also has new features that userland applications can optionally use, if userspace software uses systemd specific features and doesn't make that code optional, it effectively depends on systemd, (or at least the APIs it provides, which nobody else currently implements). Systemd is linux specific, no BSD support.

The thing is a lot of developers love the sanity systemd has brought compared to previous init systems and have moved to it. Nobody wants to maintain code for the old crap. Ubuntu plans to switch in the next release (if they do not delay), same for debian. After they have switched the only notable distros that won't be using systemd by default (excluding old releases of course) will be Gentoo (but you can still install it as an option) and Slackware.

It is for the above reason many people are bitching about "there is no more choice", "systemd is being pushed down our throats". No it's not. Nobody upstream wants to maintain the old crap. Look at this shit. If you don't like that then maintain and write the code yourself. It seems the devaun people are actually going to do this, so although I do not agree, unlike other critics they are being constructive and I wish them luck.

A common (and pointless) criticism of systemd is that the authors are assholes, along with various other personal attacks.

Also see systemd myths:

http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html

[Awesomeness]

Debian is not just about using the Linux kernel but also hopes to support the FreeBSD kernel (kFreeBSD) and even ...gasp... Hurd.

No ReactOS and Haiku kernels. Debian is against choice!!!

[darkfires]

I'm SO THRILLED so see this. I've been using Linux since 1994 and I have to say, I don't like systemd at all. Yes I've tried it, and frankly I don't believe it has enough benefits to justify itself. Debian is the only Linux distribution left that I can truly appreciate but I have to say having systemd forced down our throats is bullshit, what they SHOULD have done is enforced that every package has to work with more than one init system instead of causing the whole distribution to fall apart politically.... typical. It might have some tangible benefits on a desktop, but it's a seriously small percentage of Linux installs over the entire world that are a desktop vs a server.

To be honest I'm getting truly sick and tired of all this stupid drama in the Linux world, too many arrogant people think their way is the best way and it's their way or the highway. Stop forcing new junk down peoples throats when the previous version has worked good enough for decades. Systemd has had enough bugs in it, and the developers would rather try and force other packages (like submitting patches to the kernel) to work around systemd bugs instead of fixing them. I remember Linus seriously telling systemd devs off not long ago for this, and then we have people wanting to jump into the deep end with systemd.... This is such a huge development hindrance.

I believe the systemd guy even wanted to say devices shouldn't be files on unix anymore (his printer specifically)...

What a joke, and so many people praise this... I say those people should go live in the OSX camp. It's bad enough the Linux desktop experience has become so poor since ~2005, insanely buggy and fragmented... it use to be a joy to use, now it's a nightmare, and this just makes it worse.. let's add more bugs!

[ryao]

Writing this here might not get any attention, but I think the composition of the groups in the systemd camp and sysvinit camp and their points are worth some attention.

From my perspective, the systemd camp is mostly comprised of an end users who are vulnerable to hype and less experienced developers while the sysvinit camp is mostly compromised of system administrators and veteran developers. Consequently, the systemd camp is bigger by head count, but that is not necessarily the case when considering technical expertise. The email to the Debian mailing list includes a quote from Roger Leigh, who is a key Debian developer in charge of sysvinit/sysvrc maintenance. He makes some fairly good points about backward compatibility and pluggability. These are things that the systemd camp could easily implement while achieving their goals, but so far, refuse to implement. In addition, Ted T'so, another Debian developer and the Linux ext4 subsystem maintainer, made a fairly detailed blog post criticizing systemd's design from the aspect of debugging:

https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/4W6rrMMvhWU

These are all valid points that unfortunately are being ignored. More worrisome is that systemd proponents are typically end users or rookie developers who do not understand what they are discussing. The original method of booting Linux systems involved two components called sysvinit and sysvrc. The scripts exist solely in sysvrc and can be easily be replaced with alternatives, such as OpenRC. Similarly, sysvinit can be replaced with BSD init on both Gentoo FreeBSD and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. In systemd, there is no distinction. Proponents of systemd consistently prescribe weaknesses of sysvrc to sysvinit and consider systemd is the only way of solving them. Many of the "firsts" prescribed to systemd were solved by Gentoo's OpenRC before systemd existed. Some examples are fine grained dependencies, named run levels, the elimination of `sleep` and disabling services by default (a weakness of upstart where everything is started by default). Consequently, it is absurd to say that sysinit was the problem when replacing sysvrc with OpenRC solves these issues.

That said, systemd's socket-based activaton is a good idea that systemd had first. systemd's ability to capitalize on that is hamstrung by its inability to place nicely with others If the systemd developers were open to addressing issues such as pluggability, they would have *much* better success than they are having now and could compete on technical merit, rather than hype. Also, being open does not mean claiming to accept patches and then rejecting them when someone is foolish enough to believe them (as I once was), but actively pursuing it themselves. In addition, it is likely possible to implement socket-based activation in script-based init systems. If that and other ideas in systemd had been done in this manner, there would have likely been no controversy.

Lastly, the emphasis on unification by certain parties is so great that it is essentially bullying and this likely has lead to counter bullying. This is counter to the principles of free and open source software, where people are supposed to be able to take, modify and redistribute software for any purpose. Spreading the idea that they cannot be different is to convene the license terms. This is something done exclusively by systemd proponents. However, it would make sense to think that the systemd proponents feel similarly coerced by he idea that things be pluggable. The idea that everyone must use the same software is no different than the idea that everyone must wear the same clothes, eat the same food and have the same number of possessions. Not only must it stop, but from a standards perspective, it is also quite comical when you consider the following xkcd comic:

http://xkcd.com/927/

[MartinN]

Phoronix: Devuan: Debian Without Systemd

Last month we wrote about a group of administrations planning to fork Debian GNU/Linux over not liking its direction due to adopting systemd over Upstart or SysVInit. The Debian administrators have made good on their word and announced the Devuan fork of Debian...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTg1MDQ

This, like uselessd, will wither on the vine. Moreover, if anyone from the systemd devs is reading this, I urge you to feel no shame to actually heed, despite how much animosity you feel, any of the "constructive" criticism from your antagonists (e.g. uselessd, devuan, blahbity blah...) in a way you see it fit for systemd. They are after all, giving you their free ideas.

Systemd is real, it isn't perfect, but it runs great - I've been using it on Arch and on CentOS 7 as well as Fedora. For my use cases, I've yet to see any showstopping bugs or issues with it.

[ryao]

In a way this is the cyber equivalent of the Islamic State, it's a good thing, put all the backwards anti-progress asshats in one spot.

Except in Devuan's case the world doesn't need to nuke them, they will do it themselves.

This is a perfect example of something written by someone who does not believe in the principles of F/OSS. F/OSS licenses say that that people are able to obtain the sources, modify them and redistribute the result for any purpose. If those writing software do not want others to be able to do that, they should keep their work proprietary. Of course, most of the people with this attitude are not the ones who actually write the software and instead are people who only write their opinions. Consequently, the work is OSS and we end up with people like the one who wrote this posting caustic remarks that damage the ability of those who share their technical ideas to have meaningful dialog. Such remarks have no place in the F/OSS community.

[dungeon]

Minorities always want to made Debian derivatives, nothing wrong with that