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posted by janrinok on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the worth-a-look? dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Besides the fact that antiX 16.1 comes with all 173 bug fixes and security patches implemented by the Debian Project in the new Debian GNU/Linux 8.7 "Jessie" release, but without the systemd init system, the distribution is using the long-term supported Linux 4.4.10 kernel customized with a fbcondecor splash.

Additionally, the new antiX version includes two applications, namely live-usb-maker and live-kernel-updater, which allow users to create a Live USB disk of antiX that you can use to run the operating system without having to install it on your personal computer, and update the kernel without the need to reboot the PC.

Meh, I'll stick with Calculate Linux for now.

Source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/antix-16-1-linux-os-is-based-on-debian-gnu-linux-8-7-jessie-without-systemd-511933.shtml


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:13PM (#456159)

    Is this still going to be FAT32 so only have persistent storage of 4 gb? I was just recently making a linux usb and found this annoying, since I got a 30 gb stick for like $12.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:45PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:45PM (#456177)

      The maximum possible size for a file on a FAT32 volume is 4 GiB minus 1 byte or 4,294,967,295 (232 − 1) bytes. This limit is a consequence of the file length entry in the directory table and would also affect huge FAT16 partitions with a sufficient sector size.[1]

      I haven't installed to a USB thumb drive in awhile, so I'm not sure what the setup is...why couldn't you just install the OS normally to a single partition of the whole thumb drive, then store files normally on the partition? Why do you need a "persistent storage" file to begin with?

      Or is this some sort of frugal install that monkeypatches updates into the ISO, which you boot each time? The ISO itself shouldn't be more than 4-6 gigs so I have a hard time imagining what is filling up the remaining 20-22 GB.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:51PM (#456187)

        Why do you need a "persistent storage" file to begin with?

        To save all the packages and settings, and have a shorter path to any media.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:01PM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:01PM (#456191)

          To save all the packages and settings

          Doing that inside a single file, in addition to personal files, is why you're having a problem cramming it all into 4 GB. Why not just install to the drive like a normal device? Not sure how much extra space it would take up, but you might come out ahead.

          and have a shorter path to any media.

          Just put your files in /home/ and use ~.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @01:03AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @01:03AM (#456322)

            Home will be in the 4GB partition, so I am not sure what you mean. Also, how can I easily go from windows to installing linux like a normal device on a flash drive? I would love to do that to avoid setting up dual booting (with the associated risks), but all the tools I found do not like that.

            • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday January 20 2017, @03:02AM

              by tangomargarine (667) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:02AM (#456350)

              Home will be in the 4GB partition

              Is it a partition or a file? Those are two different things. There's nothing that limits a FAT32 *partition* to 4gb. And there's no reason you'd even need to format a partition for Linux as FAT32, flash drive or no. Heck, with the right driver you can format a flash stick as ext2 and use it with Windows.

              Also, how can I easily go from windows to installing linux like a normal device on a flash drive?

              Either burn a LiveCD (LiveDVD) of the distro, or use unetbootin with a second flash drive. Then just boot up the live distro and install to the USB device. You just need to find the dropdown that switches the install from your internal hard drive to the USB device, and it should put the bootloader and necessary files there. Probably best to google it first though.

              --
              "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
            • (Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Friday January 20 2017, @05:50AM

              by Bogsnoticus (3982) on Friday January 20 2017, @05:50AM (#456408)

              My solution to dual booting was fairly simple.
              Install SSD1, install linux
              Unplug SSD1, install SSD2, install Windows
              Reconnect SSD1, and use F2/F9/F12 or whatever your boot order hotkey at boot is to select which OS to boot into.

              --
              Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
              • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 20 2017, @03:40PM

                by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @03:40PM (#456566) Journal

                I hate to reboot my computer. Install Linux, install VirtualBox, install Windows inside it's own box, or however many boxes you deem suitable. There are reasons why this isn't the perfect solution for everybody, I guess, but it's perfect for me.

    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:09PM

      by Bot (3902) on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:09PM (#456231) Journal

      The antix usb I am using has the first partition FAT for mere data interchange, second partition with a standard linux install and a grub entry for live install, the Live USB folder keeps the persistent data on the second partition.

      --
      Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bart9h on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:14PM

    by bart9h (767) on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:14PM (#456160)

    Cool, another sans-systemd distro.

    I'm using Devuan since the first alpha release.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:39PM (#456172)

      I recently tried out Devuan but it was going to be too much of a pain to get setup as a desktop. The window manager kept defaulting to XFCE which was basically broken even though I selected KDE. Has anyone set up a full desktop dev environment with Devuan?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:45PM

        by jmorris (4844) on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:45PM (#456179)

        Install Mate. If you have a laptop you need to manually patch (one liner) one package and only rebuild another to get power management to work, Google will quickly point you to a page with detailed instructions. GNOME hard depends on systemd so it isn't ever going to work and apparently KDE is almost as bad and nobody has yet put in the work to disinfect it.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:01PM

          by RS3 (6367) on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:01PM (#456190)

          GNOME hard depends on systemd so it isn't ever going to work and apparently KDE is almost as bad and nobody has yet put in the work to disinfect it.

          On servers I'm running CentOS 6.x which does NOT have systemd (I've added several upgraded repositories which include kernel 4.9.4). I rarely run them in X mode, but they're running Gnome (ugh) 2.28, or my preference: xfce4, which seems to run KDE apps without systemd or all the bloat (UGH!) of the KDE environment.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:08PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:08PM (#456195)

            Thanks to both of you.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:00PM

            by jmorris (4844) on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:00PM (#456224)

            Mate is basically GNOME 2.x maintained and patched to rename everything that conflicts (by design) so it can be kept in a repo with GNOME3 without throwing up errors. Yes, I have Centos 6.x running on workstations here too, it is sane, it works and with some patching to keep Chrome working it is current enough for folks to get work done. But it is nearing end of life. So I'm working on finding all the pain points in switching a user from Gnome 2.x on Centos to Mate on Devuan.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @03:45AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @03:45AM (#456368)

        Go ahead and install Devuan with XFCE. Add one of the repositories from the MX and Mepis Community Repository (mxrepo.com). I'm using the one for MX-15 at present. This will upgrade you to XFCE 4.12 (which is much better), and provide the latest Pale Moon browser among other goodies. Personally, I create a apt Preferences file so that only certain packages will be upgraded via the MX repo, everything else comes through Devuan.

        Then, for the love of God, download and install a Clearlooks theme and the Elementary icon theme so that XFCE doesn't look like crap!

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:41PM

      by jmorris (4844) on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:41PM (#456173)

      Yup, I think it is time to ignore the fanboys who said we were a fringe of greybeards who wouldn't be able to muster the effort to resist. Who were just howling in the wilderness, who were obsolete, who refused to join the inevitable march of History.

      The truth is that we UNIX folk are a minority, always have been. When Open Source became a buzzword a lot of Windows people came in and set about remaking our world according to Windows customs and we were too overwhelmed with the huge influx to react properly. But now we are formalizing the split that must come.

      I wish RedHat and Co nothing but success in their efforts to assimilate the Windows people to an Open Source operating system designed to make them feel welcome. We will now learn whether the Windows mental model is actually defective or whether it was Microsoft and their closed development methods.

      We can borrow good ideas as we see them and as we deem them good, since they are in fact Open Source, exactly as they used our Open Source as the base to bootstrap from. But we will keep UNIX alive, including the variants built atop the Linux kernel and GNU tools.

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:43PM (#456211)

        I feel dirtier and dirtier every time I realize I'm part of a "we" in your "us" vs. "them" world.

        I will keep telling myself, "It's just code. This is free software working correctly. Even pedophiles and people who idolize the Antebellum South must have the freedom to use it in order for it to be free. The code must not be political."

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:52PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:52PM (#456297)

          Foreword: This is from an American perspective, insert appropriate political groups or ideologies to fit your region.

          Just like Democrats and Republicans have been for quite a while.

          Yes there is 'us vs them', but it has always been split amongst dozens or hundreds of issues, spanning multiple separate ideological groups per person.

          Lots of Ds and Rs are into open source, just like lots of Ds and Rs are into BDSM (and plenty on both sides aren't, with vehement reasons why not!) The point being you pick up banners according to the CURRENT ISSUES, not according to some 'team' you are foolishly supporting because your friends would hate you otherwise. Peer pressure has gotten so bad in the adult world (it was always bad, but in some ways had gotten worse this generation, maybe due to media influence and instant communication spreading to all corners of the country and world,) that people can't even go 'Y'know I don't agree with so and so on a lot, but dammit we're carrying a banner together on X!'

          Just something for you all to mull over as you're hating on someone whose day to day views you dislike.

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @04:45AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @04:45AM (#456392)

          I feel dirtier and dirtier every time I realize I'm part of a "we" in your "us" vs. "them" world.

          I feel dirtier every time, I realize, I am part of the "pee" in your "we" that was part of the "us vs. them world" of Donald Jeremiah Trump in the Moscow hotel with the hookers with the pee. Is this what you were really trying to say? If so, several news agencies want to pay you, so you will not feel so dirty. Fucking whore!

      • (Score: 4, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:59PM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:59PM (#456223) Journal

        Upmodded because you are correct. Though it makes my soul feel like it needs a shower to agree with you on anything. Well, truth is truth; even Stalin couldn't be wrong all the time.

        You know, I think I figured out what your issue is: you don't "get" humanity. You and Uzzard both seem to be competent sysadmin types but utterly pants at anything not involving computer hardware. You'd probably happier if you just stuck to what you're good at.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:55PM

          by Gaaark (41) on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:55PM (#456298) Journal

          And yet, the variety of opinions is one reason I come here: i suck socially and find far too many people (sheeple?) to be stupid beyond belief.

          My often said quote is "we ARE the most intelligent species on Earth, aren't we???" (usually said while shaking my head in disbelief). :)

          But what I find stupid, other people find brill, to my astonishment.

          Sometimes I find REAL insight from the most astonishing places, and from unlikely people (my son is in Special Olympics and I have learned a lot from his friends there(so many of them are more socially apt than I am!))

          But then......
          (Note to stupid people: if you see someone kneeling down, do NOT say "say one for me while your down there! Huh-huh!"). Just stupid!

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
          • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 20 2017, @12:40AM

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday January 20 2017, @12:40AM (#456314) Journal

            Not all opinions are equal. Going by the axiom (because, epistemologically-speaking, you can't PROVE this...) that there is an external reality leads directly to this as a consequence. Some opinions are more or less consonant with external reality, and by this we may rank them. Opinion is to fact as law is to moral.

            And J-Mo's opinions on most things ain't worth shit. They're actually of negative worth, for this reason.

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday January 20 2017, @03:10AM

          by tangomargarine (667) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:10AM (#456355)

          This entire post was pointless.

          You can't even agree with somebody without insulting them. Just take a chill pill and don't hit that 'post' button.

          --
          "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
          • (Score: 0, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 20 2017, @03:55AM

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:55AM (#456373) Journal

            Een old country ve haff sayink for zees: "Krai sum moar."

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 20 2017, @03:57PM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @03:57PM (#456574) Journal

            I pilfered the wife's purse, and all her chill pill bottles are empty.

  • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by randomerr on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:48PM

    by randomerr (6458) on Thursday January 19 2017, @07:48PM (#456181)

    I usually do small installs of Linux (Debian, Ubuntu, or Lubuntu depending on the age of the machine) for desktop setups or as print servers. Why wouldn't you use the systemd init system?

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:13PM (#456196)

      You are shifting the burden of proof. The correct question is not "Why shouldn't you implement systemd" it should be "why should you implement systemd?"

      If you are starting from scratch, as you claim you do often, then the argument is pretty much only personal choice. If instead you are upgrading systems that have been in use successfully for years/decades or systems that have integrations with outdated yet business critical legacy platforms then the argument is weighted towards "I'd rather not". The honest problem is that Debian decided to make that decision for us rather than constitute a path for utilization of what ever init system we desire.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:34PM (#456205)

        Instead of starting their own fork to demonstrate systemd works they decided to hijack the main branch and then when people complain about it tell them to GTFO and make their own fork so the traditional shit continues working.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @07:44AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @07:44AM (#456431)

          The deveolpers of these distros decided to implement systemd on their own volition.

          • (Score: 2) by Bot on Friday January 20 2017, @11:47AM

            by Bot (3902) on Friday January 20 2017, @11:47AM (#456478) Journal

            some distro had a constitution and a motto
            Debian's was THE UNIVERSAL OS

            Debian should have packaged systemd when it was ready.

            Debian made systemd the default init instead. Goodbye non linux kernels. Goodbye gigabytes of utilities and documentation made obsolete. Goodbye use cases not envisioned by devs with a questionable experience in sysadmin tasks.

            Devuan is the political reaction, antix and knoppix and slackware and alpine and gentoo are natural outcomes of people rejecting a system which has limited usefulness and unlimited risks.

            --
            Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by RS3 on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:18PM

      by RS3 (6367) on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:18PM (#456199)

      Why wouldn't you use the systemd init system?

      You'll have to do some research here on SN, on a certain green site (cough cough), and in general, and you'll read all of the horror stories.

      One of the (many) major reasons I got into Linux is that I dislike "wizards" and other processes which are out of my control. I'm OK with "wizards" and automation, IFF I can override them, turn them off, etc. In Windows I turn OFF any and all automatic updating. It doesn't work well anyway- go run Windows Update on a machine that has been set to automatically update for months and see how many updates did not automatically install, and I'm talking about _critical_ updates. (I'm sure somebody will dispute this but I did not make an exclusive statement, just that it has happened, so therefore you can _not_ rely 100% on Windows automatic updates.)

      One of the fundamental philosophies of x-nix is that _all_ configuration files are in plain text, and therefore all boot up and process control, with the (obvious) exception being kernel modules, compiled-in or auto modprobed.

      It's all about ME being in control of the computer, not me being occasionally allowed to make suggestions if/when the computer feels like listening. For how I use computers, I have no need for a layer of abstraction even if I can control it somewhat. I rarely boot machines, and what little boot time improvement systemd can provide is not at all worth the increased hassle and time to wrestle systemd into submission.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:31PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:31PM (#456204)

        I rarely boot machines, and what little boot time improvement systemd can provide is not at all worth the increased hassle and time to wrestle systemd into submission.

        Not to mention the people who say they found one day that their systemd machine no longer can figure out how to boot up because some components trying to start in parallel got into a slapfight and can't agree who goes first.

        The central reason systemd proponents give for adopting it seems to be boot time (well, that and "these other people did a horrible job; I can do it better from scratch myself"), but we're talking about reducing my boot time from 5 minutes to 3 once or twice a day, which is nowhere near enough justification to mangle various other parts of the system that are already working fine.

        I could *maybe* accept that there's merit to the approach if there were somebody other than Lennart Poettering in charge of it. Maybe.

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:56PM

          by Arik (4543) on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:56PM (#456255) Journal
          "we're talking about reducing my boot time from 5 minutes to 3 once or twice a day, which is nowhere near enough justification to mangle various other parts of the system that are already working fine."

          Holy moly batman! Why do you reboot so often?

          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
          • (Score: 2, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:58PM

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:58PM (#456276) Journal

            People attracted to systemd come from Windows and thus have an expectation of needing to reboot frequently.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday January 20 2017, @03:05AM

            by tangomargarine (667) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:05AM (#456352)

            I don't leave my desktop running at night just to waste electricity. Crazy, I know.

            --
            "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Friday January 20 2017, @03:16AM

              by Arik (4543) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:16AM (#456357) Journal
              Suspend-to-disk is not only for laptops.
              --
              If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
              • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday January 20 2017, @03:27AM

                by tangomargarine (667) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:27AM (#456361)

                And the point of using suspend on a desktop is...?

                I mean yeah, okay, it's a nice feature to have. But I don't really see any reason why I should alter my workflow to use it. It's not like when I boot up I sit there and stare at the screen the entire couple minutes (gasp!) it's booting.

                --
                "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
                • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday January 20 2017, @04:21AM

                  by Arik (4543) on Friday January 20 2017, @04:21AM (#456384) Journal
                  It doesn't just let you start up faster, it lets you come back to exactly the place you left it. Programs and context are preserved. It takes me a lot more time and thought to try to open everything up and arrange it so I can start using it than it does to boot the computer up anyway. With suspend and resume I can do both in less time than the quicker one would normally take.
                  --
                  If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
                  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 20 2017, @04:18PM

                    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @04:18PM (#456580) Journal

                    "it lets you come back to exactly the place you left it. Programs and context are preserved."

                    menu, system settings, session and startup on and xfce desktop. I remember making the same settings on Gnome 2.something or other, when I installed my first working Linux - a long time ago. I took a short journey into KDE land, and I'm sure I remember the same settings, long before KDE4. Enlightenment has similar settings available.

                    I'd be willing to make a small bet that if these settings were unavailabe, I could probably write a script to do the same thing. Note that I'm not even a coder, or even an accomplished script kiddie. But, it really can't be very difficult to recover a desktop session. Systemd didn't solve any problems in that area.

                    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday January 20 2017, @08:24PM

                      by Arik (4543) on Friday January 20 2017, @08:24PM (#456685) Journal
                      And if I'm not using any of the programs you mentioned? What if I'm not even running X at all at the moment? How would your 'solutions' (some of which I've used and found cumbersome and incomplete even with X) preserve my context when I have a dozen virtual terminals open and no X session?

                      --
                      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
              • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday January 20 2017, @11:26PM

                by jmorris (4844) on Friday January 20 2017, @11:26PM (#456772)

                Suspend-to-disk is not only for laptops.

                Never seen it actually work on a desktop. On my current desktop it ALMOST worked the last time I tried it. Sata 0-0 (SSD with /) and 0-1 came back but sata 1-0 didn't. There goes four hours of slowness to rebuild the RAID1 with $HOME and disable power management again. It is always been that way for me, it comes close to working on a desktop once in a while but never quite makes it. Much better luck with a Thinkpad, enough kernel devs use them that they get enough love to keep power management reliable.

                • (Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:26AM

                  by Arik (4543) on Saturday January 21 2017, @06:26AM (#456879) Journal
                  That's interesting as an anecdote. I wonder what distro you are using and how you set it up. I've been using it on desktops and laptops since the 90s and IIRC it's only failed to work on one machine which obviously had a hardware problem. Sometimes when I try a new distro it doesn't work but I've always just wiped and installed slack and then it did work, other than that one case.
                  --
                  If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
                  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:08AM

                    by jmorris (4844) on Saturday January 21 2017, @07:08AM (#456889)

                    Here are three example systems:

                    1. Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Motherboard with Radeon R7 250 Video. Centos 6 with all current patches. Power management in the GUI is disabled since I know it doesn't work and I don't want people messing with it. But if I type pm-suspend as root in a graphical terminal it just sits there and does nothing. From a console it suspends but while a keystroke will wake it the keyboard doesn't work. Dead.

                    2. Gigabyte GA-M61PM-S3 with Radeon X850 XT, cloned from same Centos 6 master image as above. In a graphical terminal pm-suspend leaves the screen on, keyboard running but kills the HDD and nothing gets things back short of reset. From a console it suspends but the keyboard won't wake it and pressing power starts the fans (at full speed) and nothing else happens. Cold restart required here.

                    3. ASRock N68C-GS FX + Nvidia GeForce 8400. Fedora 23 + all current patches. The effect I described earlier where the first pair of SATA ports come back and the second doesn't.

                    Multiple Thinkpads around here all work perfectly of course, have for years, work every time, under Fedora, Centos and Devuan. The Mrs. has a Toshiba laptop and it also has flawless power management under Centos. Had good luck with an EeePC. Laptop good, desktop bad.

                    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:02AM

                      by Arik (4543) on Saturday January 21 2017, @09:02AM (#456916) Journal
                      Ugly.

                      Without the hardware to test of course I could only guess at the problem, but it sounds like it very well might be the wrong drivers. Doesn't fedora try to autodetect everything? That can be very error prone.
                      --
                      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 20 2017, @04:11PM

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @04:11PM (#456575) Journal

              Here in America, we don't need to justify wasting electricity. It just comes natural. Drive through any city in the wee hours of the morning, and they've left tens of thousands of light bulbs burning for no reason.

              • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by tangomargarine on Friday January 20 2017, @04:46PM

                by tangomargarine (667) on Friday January 20 2017, @04:46PM (#456595)

                I would say the reason is probably to keep the crime rate down. It's much easier to mug/rape/kill/etc. peeps unnoticed when every street is a dark alley.

                --
                "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:50PM

          by jmorris (4844) on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:50PM (#456274)

          Then you get the punchline. The whole reason we HAD to adopt systemd, boottime, is bogus. Install devuan + slimdm on a (older, slower even) laptop and watch it boot. The time between POST / GRUB and a login screen is so short an external monitor can't lock down a signal between GRUB and lightdm. If you use the internal panel you can kinda see some intermediate activity but it happens so fast you can't really see what is happening.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:56PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:56PM (#456300)

            On a normal system with a normal hard disk, it will take up to 15-30 seconds to boot. 2 or 3 minutes off a USB2 hard disk (mostly loading the initrd and going through module probes)

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:58PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:58PM (#456301)

            Debian with "old" scripts boots rather fast too. The secret? It's parallel booting. And the order is selected when you change something, so reboots will use the same order until you touch something again. But bah, using old tech to figure the order, makefile deps... so it has to be baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

            Best change was HDD to SDD. That really speeds up things.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Friday January 20 2017, @12:20AM

            by Arik (4543) on Friday January 20 2017, @12:20AM (#456306) Journal
            It's silly to reboot a laptop outside of kernel upgrades anyway.

            Suspend-to-disk. Use it.
            --
            If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @07:47AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @07:47AM (#456432)

          The central reason systemd proponents give for adopting it seems to be boot time

          No, the central reason systemd proponents give is that it makes the maintainer's job a lot easier.

        • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday January 20 2017, @03:44PM

          by Thexalon (636) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:44PM (#456567)

          Not to mention the people who say they found one day that their systemd machine no longer can figure out how to boot up because some components trying to start in parallel got into a slapfight and can't agree who goes first.

          Another thing that can happen: If there's a component not connected that systemd is expecting, it hangs until it finds that component again. For instance, unplugging a PS/2 mouse because I was replacing it with a USB mouse rendered a systemd-based box I was running unbootable.

          I could *maybe* accept that there's merit to the approach if there were somebody other than Lennart Poettering in charge of it. Maybe.

          I know! We can put Kay Sievers [lkml.org] in charge instead, and it will be much much better.

          --
          The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:29PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:29PM (#456242)

        What horror stories? The only horror stories I hear about systemd are whiners whining about something that isn't going to affect 99.5% of the rest of the users. Get over it... systemd and Trump are here to stay.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:03PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:03PM (#456257)

          ..Get over it... systemd and Trump are here to stay.

          Ah, I see what you did there, have an +1 AC mod point for raising a chuckle on a particularly unfunny night (I'm about to disassemble a fscked laptop..just finished imaging the disk from the bugger)..

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:18PM

          by aristarchus (2645) on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:18PM (#456288) Journal

          Aaaeeeiiii! The Two Signs Certain of the Apocalypse!!

          . systemd and Trump are here to stay.

          "And then the Angel opened the Seventh Seal . . . "

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by TheGratefulNet on Friday January 20 2017, @01:55AM

          by TheGratefulNet (659) on Friday January 20 2017, @01:55AM (#456332)

          cheeto-d ???

          oh no.

          but - there's a patch for it

          ln -s /dev/null /dev/trump

          --
          "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:11PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:11PM (#456281)

        the fundamental philosophies of x-nix

        ...then there is the antithesis: Windoze
        Specifically: Try to cram as much as you possibly can into a single piece of software.

        Complexity kills

        Ray Ozzie, 2010:

        Complexity kills. Complexity sucks the life out of users, developers, and IT. Complexity makes products difficult to plan, build, test, and use. Complexity introduces security challenges. Complexity causes administrator frustration [archive.org]

        A favorite topic of blogger and Linux advocate Robert Pogson is needless complexity. [google.com]

        In contrast:
        Do one thing; do it well; make it easy to interoperate with that.
        The Unix Philosophy [wikipedia.org]

        systemd has chosen the Windoze way.
        Folks who want The Windoze Way have Windoze installed.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Arik on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:41PM

      by Arik (4543) on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:41PM (#456209) Journal
      There are many good answers to this, and you already have a few.

      Systemd is not simply an init system. It aims to replace a wide variety of critical system software, by wedging itself in as the init then changing the way everything else works. That in and of itself should raise some questions I would think. Why would you want to do that? Aside from the promise that more and more unrelated software will eventually become incompatible with the old way, there doesn't seem to be much of a case for it for most people. It may result in faster boot times. Who cares about boot times? And people that do already had other options that remain available.

      IMOP Redhat is trying to pull one out of the MicroSoft playbook here and the fact that anyone has gone along with them is a sad indicator of just how anemic the community has become.

      And on a more practical level, simply the fact that it doesn't log to text files should exclude it out the gate. This is so blindingly obvious to anyone that's ever actually had to recover a system that I have honestly never even considered systemd qualified to be considered for inclusion on my system. An init system has one job. Systemd has never done that one job properly, yet it's constantly taking jobs away from other components.

      Btw, to anyone that agrees but doesn't find AntiX to their taste, http://www.slackware.com/ you'll thank me later.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 20 2017, @03:59AM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday January 20 2017, @03:59AM (#456375) Journal

        Slackware 3 Arch has a way of doing things the OpenRC way too IIRC. There's always Gentoo, but no way in hell am I compiling world on a mobile Core 2 Duo anymore.

        FreeBSD is surprisingly mature, too. It's different from Linux, harder to set up, but I really like how it feels. Honestly, if I could have gotten antialiased fonts working properly I'd probably have permanently switched a few days ago.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday January 20 2017, @04:28AM

          by Arik (4543) on Friday January 20 2017, @04:28AM (#456388) Journal
          I tried FreeBSD a couple times, didn't repel me but didn't impress too much either, pretty much what I expected. OpenBSD is one I'd like to try some day when I have a lot of time. Gentoo also. The configurability promise is tantalizing. I wonder if you couldn't get make world to execute in a reasonable time on that hardware after disabling everything systemd, gtk, gnome, or kde. Presumably it still offers the ability to do that, and it should drastically shorten compile times while producing a much more pleasant and usable workstation (for me at least.)
          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by UncleSlacky on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:41PM

    by UncleSlacky (2859) on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:41PM (#456208)

    Those with more powerful machines (newer than ~10 years old or so) might prefer MX-16 by the same author (anticapitalista) which has a rather nice XFCE front end and is similarly devoid of systemd.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:33PM (#456246)

      Yeah. (Rejected submission follows)

      from the middleweight-companion-to-a-versatile-favorite dept.

      antiX releases are codenamed after human rights activists.
      (The antiX help forum has a Greek Cafe corner where the topics tend to be freedom and civil liberties.)
      Berta Cáceres, after whom this release was named, was an activist working for indigenous rights and environmental defense.
      She was murdered in March of 2016, apparently by individuals affiliated with a proposed hydroelectric dam project.
      The Reactionary Honduran government, which was required to protect her, failed to do that.

      The bootable antiX ISO has traditionally been able to fit on a 700MB CD.
      They once tried a bigger ISO and some elements of the community reacted negatively.
      The developers returned to the original size with the next release.

      antiX will run on near-nothing hardware [google.com] and goes like a 427 AC Cobra on a muscular machine.

      The default antiX UI is a window manager (and it ships with several of those).
      If you want a more-fleshed-out-by-default distro with an actual desktop environment as the default, there is DVD-sized MX Linux, which is a related project that comes configured with Xfce; no systemd there either.

      antiX grew out of the MEPIS distro in an effort to make a lightweight version of that.
      Warren Woodford stopped developing MEPIS some time back.
      To fill that void, anticapitalista and the antiX crew started developing MX(15); M for MEPIS and X for antiX.

      MX 16 was recently released. [softpedia.com]
      antiX/MX Team Member dolphin_oracle was recently interviewed by Dedoimedo. [dedoimedo.com]

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by NewNic on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:07PM

      by NewNic (6420) on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:07PM (#456280) Journal

      It is also possible to set up a Gentoo machine with OpenRC and MATE (or, presumably KDE, XFCE) and almost no systemd (udev seems to have a small systemd infection).

      --
      lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory