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Greybeard-built Debian fork bringing init freedom on track for early 2017 release
The self-proclaimed "Veteran Unix Admins" forking Debian in the name of init freedom have released Beta 2 of their "Devuan" Linux distribution.
Devuan came about after some users felt it had become too desktop-friendly. The change the greybeards objected to most was the decision to replace sysvinit init with systemd, a move felt to betray core Unix principles of user choice and keeping bloat to a bare minimum.
Supporters of init freedom also dispute assertions that systemd is in all ways superior to sysvinit init, arguing that Debian ignored viable alternatives like sinit, openrc, runit, s6 and shepherd. All are therefore included in Devuan.
-- submitted from IRC
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systemd Free Linux Distro Devuan Releases Second Beta
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:10PM
systemd is a full-on assault on the UNIX design philosophy. Devuan is in protest and opposition to that. I run non-systemd Linux on several systems. My parents run non-systemd Linux on all of their computers (ironically, this essentially eliminated my family tech support burden).
That sentence implies that Devuan is not desktop friendly, and/or that systemd is more so, both of which are entirely false.
Obligatory car analogy: If you want to fix something on your car, would you prefer to study specifically to replace the plugs or have to fully comprehend and replace the entire electrical system? Because the UNIX philosophy is the former, while systemd is the latter. systemd looks ever so slightly better on paper, except where it improves is largely in the realm of "nobody cares" (boot time? When was the last time you rebooted your Linux system?). Then, when anything goes wrong, you're fucked.
Bring on Devuan - on the desktop. Or at least mine.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:37PM
what if i am just a windows 7 user holding out until death? is this stuff easy to pick up on? be honest, i just expressed determination and perserverence despite all odds pointing against survival.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:52PM
Do yourself a favor and try Linux Mint. It's like a blazingly fast Windows 7 with an even better UI, updates, and no telemetry. Wine will run most common Windows applications at this point, Steam is there with a huge and growing gaming library. Not AAA titles but there's lifetimes of quality entertainment. Chrome is available and it'll play back your streaming service of choice.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday December 03 2016, @08:58PM
Will it run professional grade CADCAM?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Informative) by butthurt on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:20PM
People have run AutoCAD under Wine, with varying results.
https://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iAppId=86 [winehq.org]
https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-run-autocad-on-wine [techwalla.com]
http://www.architectafrica.com/bin0/news200411111_wine.html [architectafrica.com]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday December 06 2016, @12:17AM
"Varying degrees of success" is what I meant.
(Score: 2) by mmcmonster on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:34PM
Wine will do a lot of stuff pretty well, and wine-based offerings like Crossover will give you confidence that your application will work (if it's on their list).
Another option is running Linux Mint (or other Linux variant) as your OS and create a virtual machine running Windows 7 for those times you need a package that only runs under Windows.
The fact of the matter is, if you need a package that runs Windows, you should probably be running Windows or looking for alternative applications. If you don't want to bother looking for alternative apps, why look for an OS alternative?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday December 03 2016, @10:33PM
Agreed, sometimes you just run windows, even if it means running it in a virtual machine.
Wine is Crossover based, not the other way around.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:07AM
It's not a matter of "bother looking". In several years of looking I have found one professional grade CAM system that runs on something other than Windows and it would cost about $40k to switch over, discarding my current $20k software. 20 to 30 years ago most ran on Unix, but not so much any more. Many were acquired and discontinued.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by Appalbarry on Saturday December 03 2016, @10:08PM
Assuming you have your Windows install media, it's easy enough to install VirtualBox, and run pure Windows inside Linux.
On any recent hardware it'll work fine, and avoid the quirks of Wine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @12:56AM
If you have a valid key, you can download ISOs from Microsoft. That way the only spyware and viruses that come with it are from Microsoft.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Sunday December 04 2016, @07:06AM
Gee..I sure don't need anymore of those.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:09PM
You could experiment with Linux by installing it in a virtual machine, or by finding a distribution that runs off a DVD or thumb drive. Here's a link to a list of distributions that are suitable for beginners.
https://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Beginners [distrowatch.com]
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:39PM
Another option, if you have some older hardware lying around, is to use it to make that old Windows XP machine great again (Or at least usable). The wonderful thing about messing with old hardware like that is that there's no risk you'll ruin anything important, and you can learn a lot about how things work, or in more exciting cases how they don't work.
But yes, I highly recommend firing up Linux and trying it, because there's absolutely no obligations or costs other than time to doing so.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JNCF on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:28PM
Here's my argument for starting with Ubuntu: the sheer volume of tutorials directed at complete novices. If you go with Mint or Devuan you'll find less up-to-date information targeted at beginners than you will with Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a big community with a great newbie-helping culture. I view Ubuntu as a gateway Linux; you should start using Ubuntu because it's easy to find help when you hit a dumb wall like not knowing where a certain menu is, and you should stop using Ubuntu if and when you discover that Ubuntu has made something way more complex than it should be. There's a chance you never will make that discovery, in which case Ubuntu will have sufficiently insulated you from its underlying complexity and you won't have to worry about it; I don't know what you use your computer for.
I also think Ubuntu has a pretty decent default desktop environment with a nice starter set of keyboard shortcuts, which you can to view at any time by holding down the Windows/Meta/Super key. It's not my favorite, but I can unflinchingly say that I prefer it to Windows 7.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 03 2016, @10:09PM
If you go with Ubuntu, install then login to gnome-flashback session. It's more like WinXP user interface than the Unity crap they now use as default.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:17AM
I don't see anything factually wrong about your post, however WRT
tutorials directed at complete novices.
Very few novices write a custom initscript from scratch as their first experience with an OS. They won't know the difference.
apt-get install emacs is pretty much gonna do what it always did, etc.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Sunday December 04 2016, @05:54PM
That's totally fair, I was actually thinking more along the lines of GUI-related ignorance. I don't know GGP-AC's use cases, but he might be a point-and-clicker -- and they still get frustrated when switching user interfaces. There are a bunch of tutorials available for Ubuntu users who get stuck on really simple tasks, and I've seen this be really helpful.
I woke up this morning realising that I'd failed to mention Ubuntu's very real GUI-related security concerns. No, I don't want to tell Amazon every time I search for an application locally. That should be opt-in, not opt-out.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05 2016, @12:01AM
The Ubuntu Shopping Lens has been disabled by default since April. [google.com]
This has been covered here previously. [soylentnews.org]
You can stop your hand-waving about this issue.
.
As for your previous post regarding tutorials, folks have to be careful that what they find applies to the version they are using.
In that respect, it's not so different from Windoze tutorials.
A large volume of how-tos is nice--as long as those are all actually applicable.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by hash14 on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:40PM
Unfortunately, no distro can do everything. It's very difficult to balance user friendliness with other considerations, like security, stability, or freedom of choice. For example, you wouldn't want to use a distro with an emphasis on user friendliness on a mission critical server.
Traditionally, what has happened is that there are upstream distros which focus on building a solid technical foundation or platform that other distros can build off. Debian used to be a good example of this, and then derivatives like Ubuntu and Mint focused on making them more user friendly while trying to maintain the benefits of the solid foundation that they were built on. Of course, since they adopted systemd, Debian ceased to be a sound technical choice, but hopefully Devuan can fill that void. If the project picks up steam, then I would very much hope that a similar effort to make a downstream user friendly distro off of that would result.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:27PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igDsu5QWhpo&list=RDigDsu5QWhpo#t=141 [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday December 04 2016, @06:03PM
Um.. should I propose the name "22817 Shankar" for the next Devuan version??
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tisI on Saturday December 03 2016, @09:57PM
Yes.
With the onset of systemd infecting Debian, last Deb release I ran was Wheezy.
Went to FreeBSD as primary and Mint as alternate utility system for now.
FreeBSD has a very nice and clean filesystem structure. No systemd here. Just easy to read and configure .conf files.
Additionally it is much faster than any Linux I have run, ever, and all software are near bleeding edge releases. Uncommon with Debian.
Boot times are a null issue as this box runs 24/7 and doesn't choke down and gag to a halt requiring reboots.
Systemd was the wet dream of M$ admins in a Linux environment, Red Hat, and fucked up linux.
Oh the irony, Red Hat 9 gave me the jump off point from M$ products so many years ago and now Red Hat has driven me from Linux to FreeBSD.
Good job! What will they fuck up next?
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday December 04 2016, @01:14AM
A better car analogy would be something like you bring it in for a trailer hitch to be attached and some goofball insists that the 12V negative ground DC electrical system has to be replaced by 6.3 volt AC electrical system and then massive handwaving begins with "that's what tow trucks need in 2016" and "everything else can just change or go away"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @07:18PM
Yes please! For us tube folks a 6.3 VAC filament supply would be a godsend.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday December 04 2016, @04:39AM
except where it improves is largely in the realm of "nobody cares" (boot time? When was the last time you rebooted your Linux system?)
Except Devuan even wins on boot time. Installed on an older Thinkpad it goes from grub to the SlimDM login prompt faster than the external LCD can catch up to the mode switching, i.e. screen goes blank after Grub as the kernel switches to the graphical console framebuffer and before it settles and displays an image again, the login prompt is there. This desktop machine I am on right now running Fedora (obviously with systemd) takes much longer to boot.
The problems with Devuan having a formal release seem to mostly be in the installer. Upgrading from Debian has been reliable for some time. And netinstall seems to work too. This has probably delayed the release, not enough pain to motivate the effort to squash the bugs.