Devuan 1.0 RC2 Released: Systemd-Free Debian

[L_A_G]

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So why are things like logind and udev then not included here? Are they both dependent on SystemD? I can't see any valid reason to not have them other than that. Because if they are, then that's a pretty worrying direct dependency chain from straight from DE to init system. Are we going to see Linux become some form of dependency hell in the future when you already have dependency chains across the system like this. It's almost like nobody thought about dependencies and the potential hazards when they become chains like this.

Or am I just getting ahead of myself here?

Whatever gets linux desktop out of stone age - more of that please.

Care to explain how the linux desktop is in a stone age and how a dependency chain going straight from the DE to the bootloader does anything to solve this?

[Kendji]

Can someone give me an elevator pitch for why this is an important distro?

[Karl Napf]

Oh, please. If what you say was true, they wouldn't be making a big stink about procps linking to libsystemd so that top can show some additional info if systemd is PID1 but works just fine with other inits (minus the additional info of course, I think it's about showing which cgroup a process belongs to). But they are making a big stink out of it and any other instance of linking to libsystemd for optional additional functionality. Because libsystemd has cooties, so it must be purged from the system, even though it does pretty much nothing if systemd isn't PID1. All this does is increase the maintenance burden, because they're busy recompiling all these packages without libsystemd, instead of simply importing them from Debian.

They do have a lot against packages with "systemd" in their name, but they seem fine with using systemd technology. If that was not the case, then they would just remove all packages that are built from systemd sources. That information is readily available after all. Or do you think Venerable Unix Admins are too stupid to figure that out?

You only need to skim their mailing list to see such stuff. They only begrudgingly tolerate udev because there's no alternative. vdev looked promising, but its dev is busy with real life(tm) stuff, so there hasn't been development activity lately.

There are quite a few udev implementations out there that already have seen use in production environment (see e.g. eudev that Gentoo ships with by default).

[Karl Napf]

Can someone give me an elevator pitch for why this is an important distro?

Devuan is a nice test case for the init-system independence that Debian ships with and a testimony for Linux being fully usable without systemd.

[Gusar]

Can someone give me an elevator pitch for why this is an important distro?

It's Debian for anti-systemd people, despite people like Karl Napf here trying to claim otherwise.

Whether that makes Devuan important is up to you to decide. I say it has it's place, let the anti-systemd folks have a shot at creating a distro based on their views, I see nothing wrong with that. The only thing that makes me eyeroll is the "init freedom" fluff.

[Gusar]

They do have a lot against packages with "systemd" in their name, but they seem fine with using systemd technology. If that was not the case, then they would just remove all packages that are built from systemd sources. That information is readily available after all. Or do you think Venerable Unix Admins are too stupid to figure that out?

They're trying to remove all packages related to systemd. That they're not there yet is just a matter of time and/or lack of alternatives.

There are quite a few udev implementations out there that already have seen use in production environment (see e.g. eudev that Gentoo ships with by default).

eudev closely follows upstream udev in order to remain compatible with it. This is good, as that makes it a drop-in replacement. But it's also bad because it makes eudev too infected with systemd cooties, so eek.

Beyond eudev, there's no alternatives, stuff like mdev/smdev only takes care of the /dev management portion of udev, but not the userspace notification portion (provided by libudev and used by, for example, Xorg for input hotplugging). Only vdev attempted a libudev-compat library.

[Adarion]

Gentoo to the rescue. Gentoo where it's all about choice and you can choose to use SystemD or not.
Runnig several computers all with openRC and no trace of SystemD, with XFCE4, KDE4, KDE5, mate, X-less and whatnot.
(Overhauling all that init might be a nice idea, but I still haven't worked out what binary logs that might need a proprietary reader software, can be good for. Or why (even modular) something has to be a jack-of-all-trades-OS-in-an-OS. I remember the time when they killed HAL: "it's a large unmaintainable mess". Maybe SystemD is modular enough so people can still keep things under control.)

[starshipeleven]

So why are things like logind and udev then not included here?

Because logind is calling core systemd functionality to work, afaik they use udev.

If you read the readme of elogind (logind fork to make it standalone) https://github.com/elogind/elogind you can see that it's not terribly complex to fork logind and make it standalone (by integrating some stuff that systemd does).

I don't see any good reason to not use elogind, btw.

Also, there is eudev that is a udev fork that lacks systemd dependencies at all.

Because if they are, then that's a pretty worrying direct dependency chain from straight from DE to init system.

It's not a dependency for the sake of it. That init system is providing security features, process and user isolation, and various other stuff they want/need/use.

Care to explain how the linux desktop is in a stone age and how a dependency chain going straight from the DE to the bootloader does anything to solve this?

Because it lacks modern security, user/process isolation features and system management facilities that systemd provides.

And if you want to use such features, then of course you must depend on it.

[starshipeleven]

Or do you think Venerable Unix Admins are too stupid to figure that out?

It's "Veteran", not "Venerable".

[starshipeleven]

(Overhauling all that init might be a nice idea, but I still haven't worked out what binary logs that might need a proprietary reader software, can be good for.

Binary logs allow to log stuff happening in early boot when system isn't initialized enough to write to files, and allow far faster searching especially useful since systemd logs EVEYTHING.
Since the journald is opensource, I don't see how you can realistically even think you could be needing a proprietary reader, so please pull the head out of your ass.

Or why (even modular) something has to be a jack-of-all-trades-OS-in-an-OS.

This is your hallucination. Systemd project replaces userspace parts, it's not an OS in an OS.