Systemd-Free Debian "Devuan" Planning Their First Developer Gathering This Spring

[r08z]

God bless Devuan developers. They are on the right side of history along with Slackware and Void in the resistance against this maniacal disgusting pile of horse crap that is systemD™

[L_A_G]

You know, it's kind of funny how the people who complain about those who don't like SystemD are way louder than those who just don't like it. This is particularly visible in Devuan-related discussions. It's almost like they're genuinely threatened by the idea that someone would actually make a SystemD-free distro and use it.

I wonder if it's the same thing as with Bexit supporters who get really angry when you point out that they were sold a bag of lies and that it's inevitably going to be a disaster. Because you do see the same kind of fervor when you point to real issues like the unstable APIs, how it's appropriating features like the Master Control Program from the original Tron and how the developers treat bug reports like it's all hatemail.

[r08z]

You know, it's kind of funny how the people who complain about those who don't like SystemD are way louder than those who just don't like it. This is particularly visible in Devuan-related discussions. It's almost like they're genuinely threatened by the idea that someone would actually make a SystemD-free distro and use it.

Exactly, and watch how this thread will turn completely toxic with people who use systemD doing just that. Bashing, insulting and cursing out people who want init-freedom.

[malkavian]

Isn't Debian init-system-independent already since you can use it without systemd (without having to use Devuan)

Devuan maintainers are not logical, pulseaudio is a bigger bomb than systemd.

It WAS. Systemd is very invasive. I was using Debian Testing in this computer with Jack audio server and OpenRC and without Pulseaudio (I don't like it and it is buggy) and Systemd. There is some dependency library of pulseaudio but it just that. But there was some packages from systemd that I cannot uninstall and I have problems with some things. I had to downgrade some systemd packages to solve problems and put them on hold to avoid them. The other option to solve the problems was installing complete systemd.

I managed to migrate it to Devuan testing which was already working well in my new laptop, and I am happier now. I hope Debian goes back or Devuan users/developers increase.If you want to use Systemd, good luck and remember to update frequently for solving the very frequent bugs.

[cybertraveler]

[microcode]

It's exactly as good as we thought it would be, boys.

By the way PulseAudio and NetworkManager are great, they solve real problems by people who want to spend more time listening to and capturing audio, and sending and receiving packets, than meticulously configuring audio and network subsystems every time they add or remove a device.

If your hobby is structuring fine ifconfig stanzas in piles of shell scripts, or desperately searching for an ALSA device which has a hardware mixer so you can hear the notification sound when your bestiality porn torrent completes while you're listening to Björk, though, don't let me get in your way.

[skeevy420]

Exactly, and watch how this thread will turn completely toxic with people who use systemD doing just that. Bashing, insulting and cursing out people who want init-freedom.

In my experiences, the anti-systemd people are the worst of the init freedom crowd. I personally don't care one way or the other on the topic, but I lean towards systemd because it's easy to use and both modular and a blob....like KWin and KDE....sometimes you need just the WM, sometimes you need the full suite.

I view systemd and init systems like I view desktops. Init freedom people are like the i3, awesomeWM, minimal environment people who add panels, file managers, etc as necessary and systemd people are like KDE, Gnome, or Mate users that want a more integrated system. There are pros and cons with either method.

[Terrablit]

I'm sure there's a few people with a religious looking mindset against systemd, but we can just ignore them like their immediate surroundings already do, I'm sure.

You know, it's kind of funny how the people who complain about those who don't like SystemD are way louder than those who just don't like it. This is particularly visible in Devuan-related discussions. It's almost like they're genuinely threatened by the idea that someone would actually make a SystemD-free distro and use it.

Yeah, everybody tried ignoring the nonsense and FUD at the beginning. We thought that people are rational, and surely they'll rationally evaluate all the information before making a conclusion. But instead that just emboldened the demagogues with an ax to grind. And those were the first people out in the comments enticing new users to join the club. The most knowledgeable are rarely the loudest.

It turns out that the end-user side of FOSS in practice is more similar to a cult than a scientific discipline. Especially given the political underpinnings of the movement that are so attractive to the conspiracy-minded. Years later, these people are still spouting the same nonsense and inundating newcomers with endless wrong information. They don't only waste their own time, they waste other people's time and energy to join the Don Quixote reenactment. It's not a victimless crime.

I don't care that Devuan exists. But I do care about the attitude prevalent in the people that think that Devuan's solving a systemic problem as opposed to just making a different distro-default choice that some people prefer.

FOSS brings in a lot of people that want to believe that there's a constant war going on against free software and that every move is a disguised attempt at undermining it. In reality it's just a bunch of mostly unrelated people making unfortunate decisions based on practicality and profitability. There's no secret Bond villain directing things from a submarine out in the ocean. Thinking or acting that way isn't healthy. You can fight for free software without being paranoid.

We should always remember that ignoring ignorance doesn't make it go away. We have to publicly combat it or else FOSS will end up an anti-vaxxer essential oil and nutritional superfood peddling MLM cesspool like every other venue that doesn't actively discourage superstitious nonsense. People want to feel special, and that desire is an easy target for people peddling the idea that a vast conspiracy is oppressing the one amazing secret that fixes everything.

In reality, none of us are special. None of us know any secret knowledge that's remotely important. And hand-rolling init scripts for thousands of packages to be used by dozens of init systems across hundreds of distros was always a terrible idea. That was true even before we had the current scaling problem that made it obvious. We always needed standardization, but we were too impressed by our ability to fix things that never should have broken in the first place to do anything about it. The reason why the systemd team "won" isn't because they were a better system than every competitor. It's because they went out of their way to solve the problems needed to standardize everything. They did all the legwork.

People who want to drown themselves onanistically in freedom of useless choice will always be able to rebuild packages and kernels. The rest of us who have a life outside of Linux/BSD just want things to work by default and be easy to manage.

So, yeah, it's not kind. But I don't feel remotely bad about making fun of people who waste everyone's time fighting an unimportant battle to make things run worse because "that's how it's always been" or "some old dudes said something several years ago about a then-new discipline that we're going to conveniently misinterpret". The internet needs to be made well aware that it's an embarrassing flame war being necroposted again and again by people who spend far more time complaining about how things change than it would take to actually adjust to the changes.

[johanb]

It's exactly as good as we thought it would be, boys.
By the way PulseAudio and NetworkManager are great, they solve real problems by people who want to spend more time listening to and capturing audio, and sending and receiving packets, than meticulously configuring audio and network subsystems every time they add or remove a device.

If your hobby is structuring fine ifconfig stanzas in piles of shell scripts, or desperately searching for an ALSA device which has a hardware mixer so you can hear the notification sound when your bestiality porn torrent completes while you're listening to Björk, though, don't let me get in your way.

I use both PulseAudio and NetworkManager, but that doesn't mean that I like it.
Pulse is the only option for managing multiple sound sources properly (jack doesn't count, needs to much maintenance).
NetworkManager I use on one of my machines because it works and integrates well with GNOME, on my other machines I don't use it because it did not work and everything was a clusterfuck to configure from the CLI and the GUI didn't have the options I needed so I switched to netctl+netctl-auto which works very well. Wicd is alright, but netctl was much easier to set up if you prefer using the terminal.

I am looking forward for the day PulseAudio and NetworkManager gets replaced with something else. They are options which (mostly) works and fulfills my requirements, but that there exists people who actually think they are well designed projects just boggles my mind.

[starshipeleven]

What I don't understand about Devuan is how dare they forcing people to use a filesystem. I insist that my Choice (tm) is to use punch cards.

And talking about filesystems, I hope that at least they use a block-based, non-CoW, non-journaling one like ext2. Anything else is against the Unix Philosophy.

Yeah, why use a journaling filesystem when you can implement journaling with shell scripting, amirite?