Debian Moves Closer To Voting On Proposals Over Init System Diversity

[starshipeleven]

Someone linked to the *BSD-originated nosh project in the last post on this subject.

A tarball on a website created in vi? What about mailing list, bug tracker and git server.

Might be great, but it looks like a hobby project of a single guy.

Don't take me wrong, I wouldn't mind seeing a distro built around it and taking it for a spin, but eeeh as it is it does not inspire much confidence as-is.

With nosh's ability to convert (some?) systemd files, it should be trivial to maintain a system with nosh taking on the bulk of the conversion work. In theory at least.

I don't understand what is hard to convert in systemd config/service files. It's plain text files that are standardized and easy to parse for anything.
I could whip together a script that can parse them and convert them into workable init scripts in a weekend or so. (But I don't really want to)

Nosh also has the interesting property that it is already tested on BSD. Thus, coalescing around nosh for the purposes of running Debian atop a FreeBSD kernel might be the sensible option.

More niche stuff none really cares about. I don't even know if it still ships the freeBSD kernel packages at all.

I also quite like the idea of the daemontools concept on which nosh is based and I hope that one of the (re-)implementations of that concept (i.e. nosh, s6, runit, daemontools-encore) rise to the top as a counterbalance to the impending systemd hegemony, because "competition improves the breed" as they say.

Scripts don't belong in proper application design, they are supposed to be and remain a hack to overcome limitations in the field and work around issues.
Anything that relies on scripting to function is bad design imho.

[Britoid]

I think it's almost too late to rip out systemd. The biggest problem with it is that it's a blob that's slowly eating all of the userspace facilities and system functionality.

That's my main gripe with it - that it defies the concept of modularity. They should've focused on standardizing a set of interfaces, so that different services could be swapped out for various duties. Instead, we're now forced with an all-or-nothing proposition. If given the freedom to choose the bits I want, I might even opt for many of systemd's components. But, that's what's missing - the freedom to choose.

I don't hate systemd. I even recognize it as progress. I just don't appreciate this attitude that any complaints about it are seen as anti-progress and that any issues with systemd are fundamentally irreconcilable, and therefore trivially written-off.

I should add that I've also been bitten by my share of systemd bugs and poor documentation - both things that might've been at least partly a consequence of too much ambition, on the part of the systemd team. If they'd focused on the userspace system architecture and not tried to implement everything themselves, maybe they would've been even more successful in their goals.

Unfortunately genuine conversations and criticsm of systemd have been made nearly impossible because of the amount of mud and lies that were spread and are still spread.

[Britoid]

No. Like someone said this is relevant diversity talk. What I liked the most in Linux systems in the beginning was that I had the choice, there was real diversity. In Windows I had very little choice when compared. I was locked down. It is widely accepted that consumers want choices and enjoy of choices. For example even car manufacturers offer choices inside the same model. It is factory customization, but some make choices even after that and mod their cars and computers and what not a lot. The age of T-Ford is long gone.

Also it seems Debian has forgot, among many other things, what their social contracts say.

4. Our priorities are our users and free software

https://www.debian.org/social_contract.en.html

That has been grossly forgotten.

Note that I am happy personally with systemd.

Slavery has been outlawed for quite some time now. It's impossible to please everyone and you shouldn't try.

[Antartica]

No they haven't forgotten it. First of all, systemd is free software and second, if the users *want* systemd, than everything is fine. On popcon they are only 45 people reporting using elogind, 44 for openrc, 520 for runit and 130 for s6. systemd on the other hand has 157516 reported users. So basically the amount of people using a systemd only system is around 99.5%, which is basically everyone.

You forgot the popcon for sysvinit-core (that is, regular sysvinit). Right now it says that it is 2293 (1.13%). For something that you have to manually enable and put on hold so that a random package install don't upgrade it to systemd, I think it is rather remarkable.

Anyway, the thing is that Debian has to make some decision. Any decision to a path forward is better that the current confusion.

Ironically, I don't mind much systemd for desktop usage, but I really don't stand it for [one-duty] server usage. Mind you, I'm mostly on embedded with an aim to kept at minimum the running processes and a systemd distro is a lot harder to prun.

[RealNC]

Heh, SJWs are using their own weapons against themselves. "Diversity". How could you possibly vote against that?

I love it.

[tuxd3v]

Let the religion begin on init methodology. 30+ posts on dogma alone. Meanwhile most desktop Linux users don't really care.

I think that you still haven't understood, that this question is not about the desktop( were debian as a small representation ), but instead in the Server...

[Terrablit]

Looks like it's time for another rant.

I was locked down. It is widely accepted that consumers want choices and enjoy of choices.

Actually, the end-user benefit of choice is a common fallacy. Consumers always claim to want choice, true. But it's been shown that consumers are actually less satisfied as the number of choices grows. They get subconsciously hung up on the opportunity cost, wondering if their choice is the "best" choice. They always feel like they're missing out on something. And when none of the choices matches exactly what they think they want, they get even less satisfied because it feels like all of the options are bad. This is economics 101. But, given how far removed most FOSS and linux enthusiasts are from even the idea of economics and having to pay for a lifestyle, it's not surprising that you don't seem to understand.

This is easily seen in the amount of time people spend tweaking and trying out new things in their distro (or different distros). At the beginning, it's fun and new. Then it takes a lot of resources and it's not fun. Most people who have a hobby of tweaking or optimizing eventually pare it down to a very limited category of things. Like rebuilding one car, renovating a house, or one application workflow.

After a while, it's a chore to evaluate all the options, so people just go with whatever they're comfortable with or whatever seems the best fit at the time. Later on, they avoid re-engaging in consumer selection. This can also be seen in tech circles. Administrators will choose the applications they know how to work with, even if they're not the best, simply because they don't want to evaluate again. Everybody kvetching about change and talking about the Unix philosophy fall into this category. It's been demonstrably proven that the Unix philosophy isn't the best user experience at all. It's arguable that it might have been back in the 1970s. But certainly not anymore. It's just flexible enough to not be the worst experience, since you can still get things done by duct taping a blow torch to your chainsaw when all else fails.

Similarly, developers will choose the libraries and APIs they know rather than the best ones. And they don't constantly look for new options. Instead, they settle into complacency based on the productivity trade-off of an arbitrary point in time.

Linux is about choice

So, no, Linux is not about choice. Life is not about choice. And please everyone fuck off with that silly idea. The only choices I want to make are choices that influence my personal happiness. Choices should be restricted to things that matter. There shouldn't be an available choice unless there's sufficient ROI for the cognitive load generated by having to make a decision. Imagine a visual novel where every click is a choice. Even banal ones like whether you say the plot dialogue line or not. That'd be the worst game ever. You'd have no time to engage the story.

The idea that everyone needs to have different options for basic operating system plumbing is the dumbest idea that ever shat itself out. Operating system plumbing should be as invisible as possible. Nobody needs to see and interact with every inch of the pipes in the bathroom. You only care about the sink, shower, and toilet. And you certainly don't want to manually push the shit through every inch of the pipes.

That's a major goal behind most distros moving to systemd. It's tackling *all* the problems, and it's reducing even maintainer exposure to init internals. There's hiccups, yes. Just like there were with the previous "solution". But eventually almost no one's going to need to dick around with this bullshit that's plagued us for 3 decades and we'll all be a lot happier.

[F.Ultra]

Looks like it's time for another rant.

Reminds me of a small anecdote. Some 2 or 3 years ago a guy walked in to one of the local pizzerias where I live while I was waiting for mine to be delivered. He spent 10+ minutes looking over the long long chart of the different pizzas (they have like 100+ variants) until he grew mad as hell, shouted his frustrations out loud and walked out the door again.

Also reminds me of Kitchen Nightmares and Hotel Hell where Gordon Ramsay very often reduces the original owners huge menus down to just a small list.

[F.Ultra]

I think Debian should only support systemd especially since we got projects such as Devuan. For me systemd solves more problems than it creates for both desktop and server use, and the biggest issue in my point of view is that the BSD world don't have a systemd equivalent and that is where the manpower should be spent instead of discussion whether to continue to support non-systemd use cases.

Getting something like systemd onto the BSD:s would be incredibly great. There are a few applications that I maintain where I have just held off porting it to FreeBSD due to not wanting to have to deal with their init.

[finalzone]

Ironically, I don't mind much systemd for desktop usage, but I really don't stand it for [one-duty] server usage. Mind you, I'm mostly on embedded with an aim to kept at minimum the running processes and a systemd distro is a lot harder to prun.

Take a look at https://embexus.com/2017/05/16/embed...ot-techniques/
Administrators running servers would tell how systemd made their life much easier with only the use of units. It turned out that major of issues related to systemd are mainly specific to distribution implementation, in this case Debian.