Devuan 3.0 "Beowulf" Reaches Beta For Debian 10 Without Systemd

[Antartica]

Ah, no doubt this will all get blamed on systemd of course.

Well, virt-manager broke because policykit-1 was not available without systemd (had to pull it from devuan), and consolekit was not in buster (had to recompile the one in stretch, with that I've virt-manager working again).

So it's not that systemd is not working, but that the dependencies on systemd break unrelated software even though that software works without systemd. The blame should be on the current debian packaging dependencies. It's not anymore "the universal operating system", as the embedded or single-purpose scenarios of yore doesn't work now in this systemd future.

[Britoid]

Well, virt-manager broke because policykit-1 was not available without systemd (had to pull it from devuan), and consolekit was not in buster (had to recompile the one in stretch, with that I've virt-manager working again).

So it's not that systemd is not working, but that the dependencies on systemd break unrelated software even though that software works without systemd. The blame should be on the current debian packaging dependencies. It's not anymore "the universal operating system", as the embedded or single-purpose scenarios of yore doesn't work now in this systemd future.

polkit in its default configuration requires logind, thus requires systemd. This can be changed at compile time, so of course the Debian package isn't going to work.

[Antartica]

polkit in its default configuration requires logind, thus requires systemd. This can be changed at compile time, so of course the Debian package isn't going to work.

So the solution would be as simple as having policykit-1 (depending on logind) and policykit-1-consolekit (depending on consolekit), both providing policykit-1. Clearly a packaging problem.

[Gusar]

polkit in its default configuration requires logind, thus requires systemd.

elogind exists as an alternative to systemd-logind.

[k1e0x]

Does this work with everything?
GNOME works? KDE works?
Apache, lighttpd, nginx, MariaDB, PostgreSQL works?

I don't use Devuan but I do use Gentoo without systemd and FreeBSD that also has no systemd. All of these work just fine without it. Gnome has a dependency on logind but there are work abounds. An init system makes no difference on these types of applications and all those projects realize there are systems out there other than Linux/SystemD. (with the exception of Gnome)

Not to be confused with Beowulf clusters I suppose.... On the other hand I tend to like systemd more and more... Even the homed thing that I hate does not sound as bad one I learned what it was all about

Eh, homed looks really clunky to me personally. Specifically the static loopback LUKS file and fixed storage size. What are you going to do keep extending it over the years? Yuck. ZFS does all of this and does not have those limitations if it's available to you I guess. I wonder what Ubuntu is going to do here as they have ZFS..

On Devuan itself, more choice is good. Even if you don't use it it's nice to have it for people that want it. I do know people that like this so that is a good thing it exists. I really don't understand people that hate on this. Seems petty.. it can exist if people like it and want to do the work and it makes them happy.. and it seems to, so that is a good thing.

[dragon321]

Didn't realise Debian didn't allow you to uninstall systemd...


oh wait.

What about package dependencies?

Does this work with everything?
GNOME works? KDE works?
Apache, lighttpd, nginx, MariaDB, PostgreSQL works?

I think there is elogind so systemd-logind depend desktops should work. Mostly GNOME because I think there are patches to make KDE work with ConsoleKit. No idea about others.

About Devuan - I was wondering how long Buster based Devuan will be released after Debian.

[NotMine999]

Does this work with everything?
GNOME works? KDE works?
Apache, lighttpd, nginx, MariaDB, PostgreSQL works?

Short answer: yes

Slightly longer answer: There are 'packages' to install Gnome and KDE desktops.

task-kde-desktop
task-gnome-desktop

I have not checked the other items that you are wondering about, but I would say the answer to them is also "Yes".

[k1e0x]

If it makes you feel any better.. All those apps (pretty much) Run on Windows, and Windows is a non-systemd OS also.

[oiaohm]

Eh, homed looks really clunky to me personally. Specifically the static loopback LUKS file and fixed storage size. What are you going to do keep extending it over the years? Yuck. ZFS does all of this and does not have those limitations if it's available to you I guess. I wonder what Ubuntu is going to do here as they have ZFS..

Yes LUKS is extendable its not homed only option.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd-homed#Storage_mechanism

homed in fact supports storage backend in it design some are made already.

Unencrytpted
1) a directory
2) btrfs subvolume.

Encrypted
1) fscrypt directory in supported file systems that is current ext4 and f2fs. There is work to bring this to btrfs as well. Can you show me progress on fscrypt support on ZFS integrated with mainline kernel. That right because you cannot because ZFS is not working on mainlining.
2) LUKS. This one is interesting and way more complex. It contains a GPT partition table and as noted for now it should only contain a single partition. Please note the for now. Future plans include per user encrypted swap inside the LUKS with the home directory. So this is a different level of protection to what ZFS is designed to provide. Please note any encryption worth salt need to be properly peer reviewed.

So there are currently 4 backend plugins into homed. Homed is in fact designed to take more.

Ubuntu has a few options
1) Ignore homed limitations and say anyone wanting to use it encrypted just cannot use ZFS the simplest solution.
2) Add and maintain their own extra backend to homed for ZFS for encrypted. The non encrypted using the directory method will already work.
3) Convince some how ZFS developers to work on the upstream linux kernel to get fscrypt and support by mainline systemd developers on homed.

Those outcomes are in the order of likelihood.

Basically this is one of the areas where ZFS not being mainline inside the Linux kernel properly is causing hell by causing fragmentation and disputes. Like it or not ZFS is a second class file system on Linux and it will stay that way while its not mainlined in the Linux kernel.

[lowflyer]

Michael, how about a test of the performance of Devuan compared to other distributions? Also the system boot time would be interesting.