Debian Developers Take To Voting Over Init System Diversity

[tildearrow]

For an EDITOR?
Precisely my point: not much of a life, eh? You even have no idea when [sexual fetishism removed]
Thanks very much for the validation...which occurrence you probably have no idea or concept of.

Are you aware of the meaning of sarcasm?

Unbelievable that a poet cannot even comprehend the concept of sarcasm.

[Danielsan]

I still do not understand why this is so complicated for Debian. Political decisions seems to be the main focus judging from all these discussions. As an Arch Linux user I prefer simplicity, if it works it will be added and if it works better than it can become the standard. Systemd solved many long standing issues and it reduced the maintenance burden for the package maintainers, which is quite important from my point of view.

Because Debian is about community with a Social Contract not just technology like Arch, this is the reason why I don't use Arch; zero criticism toward technology is quite dangerous.

[Danielsan]

I think that we should always have alternatives, alternatives are resources. For a long time GNU & Linux where alternatives to M$ and Apple as well as Gimp is an alternative to Photosciop etc... The lacking of alternatives is way more dangerous than the current fragmentation.

[kgonzales]

I think that we should always have alternatives, alternatives are resources. For a long time GNU & Linux where alternatives to M$ and Apple as well as Gimp is an alternative to Photosciop etc... The lacking of alternatives is way more dangerous than the current fragmentation.

As long as people step up to create and maintain those alternatives, and not simply complain about their perceived lack of alternatives. Generally, what I see is a bunch of complaining and not enough people coding.

[oiaohm]

I think that we should always have alternatives, alternatives are resources. For a long time GNU & Linux where alternatives to M$ and Apple as well as Gimp is an alternative to Photosciop etc... The lacking of alternatives is way more dangerous than the current fragmentation.

There is not really fragmentation and that is the problem. The idea that we should always have alternatives is a horrible one when it done unbounded.

http://siag.nu/ Siag Office is technically an alternative to Microsoft Office. Has not seen a proper release since 2006 and is extremely feature poor compared to modern alternatives. Like really anyone attempting to sell Siag Office as a alternative to Microsoft Office would have to be extremely foolish. Serous Alternatives would be to Microsoft Office would be like libreoffice.

We need quality alternatives. Pushing linux sysvinit is really like pushing Siag Office. In the init/service management space. Please note I called it init/service management. Not just init.

https://github.com/Yelp/dumb-init

There as such thing like above that are pure init items with no service management these are used in containers running 1 service per container what is not your normal desktop or general server case.

This is not sysvinit or systemd or openrc or shepherd or runit.... as all these are init /service management.

Pushing sysvinit is very much in the class of if someone was pushing Saig Office as alternative to MS Office due to noting being properly maintained.

Openrc has cgroup support underway and is under regular maintenance and development from gentoo developers so a valid alternative.

GNU Shepherd has cgroup support and is under regular maintenance and development from developers around GNU particularly guix stuff. So another valid alternative.

So we have alternatives here.

Lets say you found your self in a location you could not install photoshop and gimp on the same computer because they conflict.

This is where we are with elogind and systemd logind also with eudev and systemd udev. These conflits interfere with installing openrc and systemd on the same system so preventing you switching between them on boot and comparing them.

This brings a problem are alternatives good when they are like elogind and systemd logind that conflict with each other. This comes about because elogind is a fork off the systemd logind done in a way that it cannot any longer integrate back into a systemd install. This also duplicates the security fixing of faults found in systemd logind as those also need to be fixed in elogind and due to the way elogind has been made systemd patches don't straight up transfer from systemd logind to elogind..

There is such thing as unnecessary duplication. Unnecessary duplication does not make a good alternative and creates security nightmares.

As long as people step up to create and maintain those alternatives, and not simply complain about their perceived lack of alternatives. Generally, what I see is a bunch of complaining and not enough people coding.

We are seeing a lot of complaining and pushing invalid alternatives. So I absolute agree with this perceived lack of alternatives.

There is a lack of proper alternatives that work correctly in foundation parts. This is udev/eudve and logind/elogind issues. This is not that systemd itself alone is bad the way the alternative to the shared interfaces are done in a bad way and that really does not help the problem.

Yelling about give us sysvinit back is just avoiding up facing the future problems.

[intelfx]

Because Debian is about community with a Social Contract not just technology like Arch, this is the reason why I don't use Arch; zero criticism toward technology is quite dangerous.

I don't see anything in that Social Contract that wouldn't apply to Arch.

What Debian has to codify on paper in form of various "Social Contracts", Arch simply understands as common sense.

[Danielsan]

There is not really fragmentation and that is the problem. The idea that we should always have alternatives is a horrible one when it done unbounded.

We should always have alternatives especially when the "standards" come from a corporation rather than a community.
While I am mostly agreed with you, let me say that today we don't have alternative, or at least the majority of the distros do not provide alternatives. Hard coding systemd in Gnome3 has been quite unfair. Before you were free to use Sysvinit or Upstart without issues, not today, I can't use whatever on Debian, I have to use another distro like Devuan. I don't want say we have to come back to sysvinit, but I would like to have the freedom to use OpenRC instead of systemd, or Shepherd on Debian. One of the coolest thing of GNU & Linux is also the modularity, and have the option the change a critical component with the one you think is better for your job is a great feature.

[Danielsan]

I don't see anything in that Social Contract that wouldn't apply to Arch.

What Debian has to codify on paper in form of various "Social Contracts", Arch simply understands as common sense.

I gently disagree.

[intelfx]

Hard coding systemd in Gnome3 has been quite unfair. Before you were free to use Sysvinit or Upstart without issues, not today

How about "hard coding" Gtk in GNOME 3? Do you feel that it's "unfair" that it's not possible to use GNOME 3 without Gtk?

It's software. Software has dependencies. That's the way it is.

One of the coolest thing of GNU & Linux is also the modularity

Nobody is taking away your modularity. It's just the choice of "modules" that you can connect to GNOME3 has a size of 1. Unfortunately, there is nobody willing to write an alternative "module" that would implement the interfaces GNOME3 wants to use.

But if someone was to write it, I assure you, it would plug into GNOME3 just fine.

[Danielsan]

I am the least person to say that but GTK are the libraries and the widgets you built Gnome with, which has been bonded with systemd components like udev and logind, and since the moment all the GTK Desktop Environment share a lot of Gnome libraries all of those are obligated to use systemd as well. Unless you use the forks eudev and elogind like as GuixSD and Gentoo. Gnome3 was designed as is but there wasn't a real necessity to do that.