Debian To Seek A General Resolution Over Their Init System Policy

[F.Ultra]

I know this is a very lame way to respond to something, but me and many others have explained exactly what we take issue with so many times over and over again that I just don't have the energy go into any detail. It's the same thing with 9/11 truthers as nobody really has the energy to go into any kind of detail to explain for the n:th time that you don't need to literally melt metals to significantly weaken them and thus the "Jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt steel so it had to be a controlled demolition"-argument is long since debunked.

The basic gist of what people take issue with in systemD is that is's a functionally monolithic rat's nest of unstable internal APIs with a massive case of feature creep and a plainly managed by people whose attitude to user feedback and even bug reports can only be described as toxic. There's numerous cases of them trying to brush off legitimate bug reports as "harassment" and just plain refusing to accept a bug report because it doesn't crash or break anything in the use case the reporter discovered it.

So ad hominem, opinion, and confusing user feedback and bug report replies with "the implementation". In other words the same old same old.

[andyprough]

@skeevy - "Regardless of ones' distribution of choice, there's an inherent level of trust we have to have with those who maintain our distributions. When those we have to trust joke about things we have no choice but to trust them with, they lose that credibility and trust"

Oh please. So I take it you are paranoid about the gopher holes then? Think they might just suck the life right out of your favorite distro, like some kind of a wormhole in space or something? I detect a bit of concern trolling at this point.

[Ipkh]

Out come the crazy folks who prefer static /dev directories and OG Unix utilities.
We keep having this debate and modern systems win out. The end user shouldn't care about the init system. The distribution needs to take care of the growing pains a new system brings. But you shouldn't stall progress by retreating to the good old days of a massive /dev where every device possible existed. The old system became untenable on modern systems and was replaced. Get over it.

[Karl Napf]

You are completely mischaracterizing the timeline of events described in that LWN article. The downtime was not in any way a direct result of the prank. It was due to a later reboot of an already misbehaving build server that decided not to come back up.

So rebooting a build server did kill the entire jenkins setup? Sounds reasonable.

Assuming you are correct and the downtime and the prank are unrelated: It is nice that Devuan has their priorities straight. Fighting now, fix infrastructure later.

[Karl Napf]

Depending on your installation, there are only a few hundred services with init scripts to manage, and those files are *mostly* static, so repackaging those services would probably be sustainable if someone decided to create an appropriate way to repackage and rebuild for those known packages if/when those services only ship systemd unit files.

So how do you package a couple hundred init files? One deb with all of them? Not very user-friendly...

The real issue is likely the other dependencies on systemd (only) that will continue to be added over time to packages, resulting in an ever increasing effort by the devuans to maintain their stated goal.

I doubt that this is much of a problem now: Devuan already accepts dependencies on libsystemd0 in its packages. All the effort to remove those dependencies for their 1.0 release were reverted for 2.0.

Devuan also ships with elogind (which nowadays provides the implementation for libsystemd0 for them, too). So they ship all the interesting bits of systemd already. If some other part of systemd will become widely needed, Devuan will probably just add that as well. Systemd-code is obviously fine for them, as long as it is hosted in some non-systemd repository and poorly maintained they are perfectly fine with it:-) Seriously: If you want a non-systemd system, go check out void.

As long as the devuans faith is strong enough, they will find a way.

I don't think this is a matter of faith, but of being able to put in the effort.

[starshipeleven]

Depending on your installation, there are only a few hundred services with init scripts to manage, and those files are *mostly* static, so repackaging those services would probably be sustainable

it all depends from how competent you think they are.
So far they have fluffed around for years to learn what anyone with basic understanding of Debian could do in a few weekends (i.e. make a custom Debian respin with their own custom package selection).

Does not fill me with confidence about what they will do next.

Really, there are serious distros that don't use systemd already.

The real issue is likely the other dependencies on systemd (only)

This is relevant only for a handfew of high-profile things like GNOME, flatpak and other complex software that actually needs systemd ecosystem to function at all (without extensive retrofit, that is).

[andyprough]

it all depends from how competent you think they are.
So far they have fluffed around for years to learn what anyone with basic understanding of Debian could do in a few weekends (i.e. make a custom Debian respin with their own custom package selection).

Does not fill me with confidence about what they will do next.

Really, there are serious distros that don't use systemd already.

I tried Devuan Beowulf (similar to Buster) for a couple of weeks recently and was very impressed. Ran better than Debian for me, and was perfectly up-to-date with Buster, every single package was the exact same version number on the same day. I'm sure this means they are simply grabbing materials directly off the Debian assembly line and running their own scripts on them quickly, but when you consider that they are supporting a large number of architectures and you consider the size of the Debian project, it's a commendable effort. It probably sounds easy in theory, but in practice I haven't seen anyone else handle that kind of volume of packages with no delay to speak of. Not without a large workforce like Canonical.

[Karl Napf]

I tried Devuan Beowulf (similar to Buster) for a couple of weeks recently and was very impressed. Ran better than Debian for me, and was perfectly up-to-date with Buster, every single package was the exact same version number on the same day. I'm sure this means they are simply grabbing materials directly off the Debian assembly line and running their own scripts on them quickly, but when you consider that they are supporting a large number of architectures and you consider the size of the Debian project, it's a commendable effort. It probably sounds easy in theory, but in practice I haven't seen anyone else handle that kind of volume of packages with no delay to speak of. Not without a large workforce like Canonical.

Devuan has only a couple of packages (<100). These are not yet updated to Buster, as nobody has worked on Beowulf in earnest yet: They wanted to get a point release of Devuan 2 out first. That is mostly done by now, so work on Beowulf will probably pick up in a while.

All packages but those 90 or so are bit for bit identical with Debian packages: There is no rebuilding involved, no script, nothing. In fact the Devuan servers redirect clients to Debian servers for the actual downloads. There is one more difference: Some packages are blocked on Devuan, e.g. systemd or file-rc. So you get a two init systems less with Devuan than you get with the init-freedom-hating Debian.

[Artemis3]

Well i don't care what you think, i don't want systemd. I don't care if it is the best thing ever, superior to Linux or what not, i don't want it, and i don't want any distro that forces its use. Same thing with Gnome, Emacs, or whatever, its MY freedom of choice NOT to use it. Is Wayland wonderful? But i like X11, it works, period. I don't care, do not want.

I don't mind if the OPTION is there, what i mind is when this is no longer an option. This is why i left Debian and any distro that forces people to use systemd. I went with Devuan, Artix, Void, Slackware, Gentoo among many others that still give people CHOICE.

So much has been said about package maintainers doing "extra" work to support other choices, and yet you see the aforementioned "small" distros doing it. Artix is like 1 or 2 people, Devuan a small group of ex-debian, and they have done what the mainstream distros with their legions of volunteers (and even employees) don't bother doing: Restore CHOICE. Some of those distros don't bother repairing systemd once removed, and i don't mind, You can always use one of those systemd only distros if you want it.

MX Linux is interesting, but its not much more than Debian set to use sysv, it is unknown for how long you will be able to run Debian that way. They should move to Devuan to avoid any nasty surprises. Debian has long expressed their disdain about losing non systemd init support, which is the very reason Devuan exists.

[starshipeleven]

I'm sure this means they are simply grabbing materials directly off the Debian assembly line

Did I say they are basically just making a Debian custom ISO? Yes I did. They aren't maintaining shit, their own download servers have the few custom packages they ship, most of the stuff comes from Debian repos directly.