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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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If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @12:03AM
Really, systemd is optional in Debian? Then there is no reason to have Devuan.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Aiwendil on Sunday December 04 2016, @09:14AM
It is - just requires that you blacklist systemd (or append "systemd-" to any and all upgrade, install, remove et.c operations) and that will case apt to find alternate solutions.
(Do anyone know if there is a way to make sure apt enforces a certain package is alwsys installed?)
Of course it probably will land you in depenncy hell (in part due to some solutions will prevent systemd-shim [helper to reduce the systemd-mess on systemd-free systems] from being installed, and in part due to some packages requiring systemd without offering alternatives [knowing how to alter and rebuild deb-packages is very helpful])
Heck, the official debian way to run a systemd-free debian [debian.org] is to just install a conflicting init (which will cause apt to kick out systemd and all that depends on it with no other requirement-ruote)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fritsd on Sunday December 04 2016, @03:13PM
I'm a long-term Debian user.
When I upgraded from Debian Wheezy to Debian Jessie, it installed systemd.
Without asking, without even a mention in debconf, that I can recall.
Then my system was fucked up.
Then it took me more than a week to try to extricate all the packages that depended on packages that depended on packages that suddenly depended on systemd, but never did before.
You are right: it landed me in dependency hell.
Maybe it's me, but I found that it was really *extremely difficult* to remove systemd; even with 20 years experience with Unix, Linux, Debian, even as an amateur dpkg package builder, it was extremely difficult.
Then I became a Devuan volunteer and shared my experiences modifying packages to remove the dependencies! So it all ended OK ;-)
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Sunday December 04 2016, @10:46PM
Ahh, I avoided systemd by doing a crapload of apt-get install systemd- foo bar baz (and apt-get --dry-run dist-upgrade to get a list of what was needed) until I got a clean enough apt-get upgrade
(I'm in the habit of doing it that way since I've gotten my system hosed by bad libc [static linked dpkg and lynx are in my toolbox], conflicting perl-packages [always intersting to upgrade perl-base] and gotten gnome accidently installed once (took a while to get my system back to "login at console" after that one) over the years - so I distrust anything I havn't check by checking the output of apt-get --dry-run $command first)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @09:41AM
The entire point of devuan was that the leadership of debian voted down attempts to keep systemd optional and provide alternatives to systemd because 'too many other packages rely on it.'
As a result of that schism a number of dissenters were forced out/quit and spun off devuan instead.
Personally I think it was a good thing. Deb+Ian have been dead for years, Ian himself has been dead for a year. The Debian distribution has been dying for a long time, and this is just finally an opportunity to put another nail in its coffin as it slowly fades into irrelevancy (well outside its basis as the foundation of Ubuntu.)
Having said that: Adding support for systemd to devuan shouldn't be too hard. The biggest issue is finding a way to include optional systemd configuration packages for devuan packages that no longer contain them (most distros and a number of source packages install them by default whether you wanted systemd config files or not, cluttering up your filesystem, esp given most of them install to /usr/lib/systemd or elsewhere rather than /etc like config files are supposed to. Xorg isn't helping with that nowadays either, putting its default config files in /usr/lib and having /etc/X11 only being overrides. But then again they think dbus is a spectacularly good idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 04 2016, @10:40AM
As a result of that schism a number of dissenters were forced out/quit and spun off devuan instead.
That is false as none of the people involved in Devuan have been part of the Debian project before.
They are people who haven't worked on a real Linux distribution (i.e. not just a live image) before and are slowly starting to try and figure out how this works. There is a reason they can't do any estimates on how long something would take.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday December 04 2016, @06:06PM
I was never a DD; don't know about the others. I'm not sure you can generalize.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 09 2016, @09:47AM
I'm not sure you can generalize.
It's a fact that none of the Devuan developers were members of the Debian project.
Unlike your feelings it could be proven wrong (if it were not true).
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday December 05 2016, @10:45PM
In fact Jaromil worked at dyne:bolic which is a live image.
This is not a matter of experience. Given the real reasons for pushing systemd, I expect that it will be tears and blood for those wanting to remove it, or on the other hand master it, no matter their experience. Systemd is complicated and, according to the creator, always a moving target, Android style. It does not matter if the doors are unlocked if you have to open 343349 of those to go for one room to another.
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