Devuan 4.0 Alpha Builds Begin For Debian 11 Without Systemd

[Danielsan]

I use it daily on my main machine as testing and it works better than my other Debian testing machine, I don't know if the problem is the poor implementation of systemd in Debian but a lot of issues I have with Debian mostly depend by systemd. For instance Debian Stable/Testing has this annoying issue with redshift-gtk that runs twice while Devuan doesn't, it depends by systemd running the instance twice. I am still waiting for a fix but with Devuan those stuff do not happen, basically because Devuan does less; I use OpenRC and it runs by default all the very minimum services to make the computer working, while systemd uses the same approaches of Windows a tons of services already enables by default.

For me the biggest issues in using distros with alternative init is total lack of documentation...

[ezekrb5]

Glad to see them do well, in the FOSS world one can do as pleased, no need to use what someone else told you to use.
I use both computers with systemd and some others with Runit on a daily basis. Both have pros and cons, and I love the fact I'm allowed to pick and choose as I see fit.

[dreich]

When I was looking at s6 my first thought was devuan. Unfortunately they (still) don't have the full suite of s6 packages (most importantly s6-linux-init and s6-rc) so I went with alpine instead. Alpine has the entire s6 suite available which makes setup much easier.

[dragon321]

Because KDE actually tries to work with other toolkits to make them look good in their environment. GNOME doesn't. GNOME doesn't even offer its own theme controls let alone QT theme settings.

But GTK3+ (CSD) programs don't behave the same as other programs...their window management isn't the same as QT5 or EFL programs. It is what it is. Those SSD/CSD differences that the GNOME/GTK3 teams don't want to play ball with others on. People have tried over the years; gtk3-mushrooms for example. It just seems like all the effort everyone else does to cater to GNOME/GTK3 isn't reciprocated by the GNOME/GT3K team to everyone else.

How is that GTK responsibility? The fact GNOME developers don't care about consistency with other toolkits is not related to GTK. Yes, GNOME developers don't seem to care about consistency with other toolkits but community do. There is Adwaita for Qt. There are many themes that works on both GTK and Qt. Why would you limit yourself to the things created by GNOME developers?

Because their developers decided to use CSD. Again why would you blame GTK for that? As I said there is no requirement in GTK to make your application look like GNOME application. You can still design your application in traditional way (that's what MATE and Cinnamon are doing) and totally ignore GNOME HIG. GTK even supports KDE server side decoration on Wayland despite the fact GNOME Wayland has no SSD support at all. Also libadwaita was created to avoid putting GNOME-centric things directly in GTK. So how GTK "don't want to play ball with others on"?

Are we talking about GTK or GNOME here?

[oztmorf]

I'm very happy that they keep along and I think their cause of providing a Debian without systemd + makes it quiet easy to choose openrc, runit etc. is reassuring when almost every other distro adapts systemd for it's shine rather than if it is actually the best alternative for them. With "shine" I'm refering to all the functions systemd provides that is very hard to grasp why or how they even has a place in a init-system in the first place.

However, for Devuan to stay relevant I belive that they have to rebrand them self as "Debian with any choice if initsystem for the user and with good support" instead of focusing on just removal of systemd. Though their list of packages they replace with non-systemd ones, is worrying big last time I checked..

[You-]

"KDE puts in a lot of effort to play nice..." should mean Gnome/Fedora/RedHat have put in a lot of effort to allow that to happen

Those things work well on gnome due to things like qgnomeplatform and adwaita-qt. AFAIK They were not developed by KDE but by those using the KDE tools within gnome environments.

The opposite hasnt happened - KDE has not developed tools to play nice with Gnome.

It is similar to systemd alternatives not doing the work to provide features and then users complaining the projects/app depend on features only provided by systemd. You cant expect the systemd developers to write the same tools twice - once with how they want to use them and once for everyone else.

[Siuoq]

Because KDE actually tries to work with other toolkits to make them look good in their environment. GNOME doesn't. GNOME doesn't even offer its own theme controls let alone QT theme settings.

But GTK3+ (CSD) programs don't behave the same as other programs...their window management isn't the same as QT5 or EFL programs. It is what it is. Those SSD/CSD differences that the GNOME/GTK3 teams don't want to play ball with others on. People have tried over the years; gtk3-mushrooms for example. It just seems like all the effort everyone else does to cater to GNOME/GTK3 isn't reciprocated by the GNOME/GT3K team to everyone else.

I wish GNOME/GTK were at least as hated as they should be. Just like systemd has Devuan, GNOME could have people too who make their things usable

[jacob]

I also dont like the idea of every desktop being beholden to one init system, when that was never the case prior.

It wasn't the case before because the old style init systems didn't provide the features modern desktops need. That's why they had to reinvent the wheel with their own session managers, their own timer managers etc. It was NOT a good thing.

[jacob]

That new, clean, lean system is already here - s6. Runs so fast it will make your head spin. I run it on the antiX distro, but it works best right now on Artix and Obarun.

It's not. S6 is not cleaner or leaner, it's a morass of ductape scripts that makes sysvinit look elegant. It also does not use cgroups, namespaces or capabilities and instead tries to implement service supervision using the meagre POSIX features alone, which has many known shortcomings.

But the main issue is not even that. S6 and 66 are an alternative to sysvinit, runit etc., not to systemd. It does not provide APIs to manage services, timers and other types of units programmatically. It does not create an integrated, tightly coupled environment like systemd does, which is the reason of its success (and not some imaginary red hat/IBM conspiracy).

[Alexmitter]

[✓] Muh freedom
[✓] Redhat Conspiracy
[✓] IBM Hat
[✓] systemd is bloated
[✓] systemd is not unix'y
[✓] Gnome, GTK and friends bad
[✓] s6 is much better and not just a disgustingly ugly set of ductape scripts on top of grandpa init

To be honest, there is absolutely nothing unexpected in that thread.