Devuan 2.0 As Debian Without Systemd Hits Release Candidate Stage

[makam]

Yea but what is the point of life if I won't be able to set custom compile flags on Firefox when installing it to my Gentoo box? Just kidding.

[cen1]

Why is your freedom to avoid systemd more important than the Debian devs freedom to choose systemd?

Dayuuum! Smackdown

[Guest]

What freedom do I even have if I can't avoid systemd or flatpak?

Because you don't have that kind of freedom since it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense, for example, to tell GIMP developers you want the freedom to use Qt instead of GTK+ with GIMP even though their code uses GTK+.
The only freedom you have is to modify sources to fit your personal requirements. There is no documentation that claims you have the freedom to assume your favorite software will work on someone's implementation and still maintain binary compatibility.

[nanonyme]

Because you don't have that kind of freedom since it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense, for example, to tell GIMP developers you want the freedom to use Qt instead of GTK+ with GIMP even though their code uses GTK+.
The only freedom you have is to modify sources to fit your personal requirements. There is no documentation that claims you have the freedom to assume your favorite software will work on someone's implementation and still maintain binary compatibility.

Then again, what Devuan did is also fundamentally about using your freedom of choice the right way: you fork and sink your time in the project no matter whether it makes sense or not

[kaprikawn]

Because you don't have that kind of freedom since it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense, for example, to tell GIMP developers you want the freedom to use Qt instead of GTK+ with GIMP even though their code uses GTK+.
The only freedom you have is to modify sources to fit your personal requirements. There is no documentation that claims you have the freedom to assume your favorite software will work on someone's implementation and still maintain binary compatibility.

Precisely this.

LFS is the ultimate freedom.

[Grinch]

tl;dr should have been just a simple init script. And nothing else.

But that's not the aim of systemd, the project attempts to create a standard for low level components necessary to create a base OS together with the Linux kernel, these low level components include a init system (which, together with journald are the only non-optional ones IIRC).

You may argue as to why you don't want such a project, or that the implementation is poor, but saying it's an init system with feature creep is just not true.

Also, AFAIK Debian only defaults to systemd but still support other init systems, has this changed ?

[Guest]

Then again, what Devuan did is also fundamentally about using your freedom of choice the right way: you fork and sink your time in the project no matter whether it makes sense or not

"Their" own freedom (the developers) to fork. The Debian open source license probably allows them to fork and modify sources.
For example https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-lic...difiedVersions
In other words, they are free to make modifications and publish them.

The end-user's freedom of choice is limited by software and software feature availability unless they are willing and able to modify source code and change things.

GPL license even states

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

It means we can't even hold developers responsible if the software doesn't work as expected.

[kaprikawn]

Once Flatpaks show up as the default way getting GUI applications on your linux system, the entire discussion about systemd will look like hot air from history.

Flatpak doesn't impact the ability of package maintainers to maintain packages the way they've always done. How does the existence of Flatpak stop someone on Arch writing a PKGBUILD file for example? Flatpak doesn't suddenly mean that the source is no longer available and can't be compiled by the user or a package maintainer.

[rtfazeberdee]

What freedom do I even have if I can't avoid systemd or flatpak?

Freedom to build your own from scratch and maintain it? Does Devuan practice what they preach with "init freedom" and allow anyone to use systemd with devuan if they wish?

[starshipeleven]

The entire mess will start over in 2-3 years, when Flatpaks marches inside of Debian. Becoming THE packaging default for many Desktop and GUI related programs. One day they find out that the entire source code of Gimp, LibreOffice, Gnome Desktop Apps, etc. are only available for Flatpaks (and suited only for the Flatpak eco-system). Right now this is just an add on where no one cares. But soon they will.

sorry what?

How can opensource applications have their source restricted like that?

The only way for a distro to not have anymore a certain package is when their own maintainers drop it, upstream can't stop them even if they wanted.