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posted by mrpg on Friday May 26 2017, @06:59AM   Printer-friendly
from the good-luck dept.

Devuan just released their LTS stable Jessie system:

Devuan GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd. The latest 1.0.0 Jessie release (LTS) marks an important milestone towards the sustainability and the continuation of Devuan as a universal base distribution. Since the Exodus declaration in 2014, infrastructure has been put in place to support Devuan's mission to offer users control over their system. Devuan Jessie provides continuity as a safe upgrade path from Debian 7 (Wheezy) and a flawless switch from Debian 8 (Jessie) that ensures the right to Init Freedom and avoids entanglement.

And if getting it has to be a secret, check out http://devuanzuwu3xoqwp.onion

-- hendrik

[See also the Devuan 1.0.0 stable release (LTS) announcement for more information on how to install/upgrade, the support services that are available (bug tracking/reporting, user forums, etc.) --martyb]


Original Submission

Related Stories

Review of Devuan 1.0.0 60 comments

Jesse Smith reports via DistroWatch

Conclusions

On the whole, the Devuan project appears to have achieved its goals. The distribution offers users an operating system virtually identical to Debian 8, but with systemd replaced with SysV init. The project provides existing Debian users a clean and easy migration path to Devuan that has only a minimal amount of side effects. Taken on its own, Devuan is a lightweight operating system with a fairly minimal (and responsive) desktop environment.

While Devuan has reached its goals, I had two significant concerns about the distribution. The first concern was the system installer. While it worked, I'm curious as to why Devuan appears to have discarded the reliable Debian installer in favour of a less feature rich and less polished installation process. Other Debian-friendly installers, such as the one which ships with Linux Mint Debian Edition, are available if a more streamlined approach is wanted.

My other concern is that Devuan 1.0.0 is about two years behind Debian. A fork of Debian without systemd seemed promising and interesting in 2015 when Debian 8 was released. But now, two years later, with Debian 9 on the horizon, Devuan 1 feels outdated. The software, such as the office suite and kernel, are about three years old at this point and unlikely to appeal to any except the most conservative users. The distribution may hold more appeal on servers where change often happens more slowly, but even there some of the Devuan packages are starting to show their age.

At this point I suspect Devuan 1 will only appeal to the more enthusiastic members of the anti-systemd crowd. If Devuan 2 can be launched shortly after Debian 9 comes out later this year then I could see the project gaining a stronger user base, but at the moment Devuan feels like an interesting idea that took too long to get off the ground.

Previous: Devuan Stable Release -- at Last!

[Editors Note: Debian 9 has been released. We ran a story on it a few hours ago.]


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by MadTinfoilHatter on Friday May 26 2017, @07:03AM (7 children)

    by MadTinfoilHatter (4635) on Friday May 26 2017, @07:03AM (#515867)

    The systemd developers have already released an official statement. [youtube.com]

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday May 26 2017, @07:23AM (4 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday May 26 2017, @07:23AM (#515875) Homepage
      Which conference was that recorded at? He does seem a little miffed - it's nice to see something vaguely honest from him after all this time.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 1) by petecox on Friday May 26 2017, @08:59AM (3 children)

        by petecox (3228) on Friday May 26 2017, @08:59AM (#515893)

        Seems upset that people are still haven't universally adopted Pulseaudio either.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by FatPhil on Friday May 26 2017, @10:57AM (1 child)

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday May 26 2017, @10:57AM (#515913) Homepage
          My laugh out loud moment came milliseconds after the ALSA line!
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
          • (Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Friday May 26 2017, @12:37PM

            by coolgopher (1157) on Friday May 26 2017, @12:37PM (#515929)

            Were you playing your laugh through Pulse rather than Alsa perhaps?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @11:11AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @11:11AM (#515917)

          It has gotten better now that lennart has dropped it and went onto something else, leaving real coders to clean it up. I was a pure alsa supporter till steam came to linux.
          The niche pulseaudio scratches was sorely needed the only problem was it was first made by a wannabe coder.

    • (Score: 2) by epitaxial on Friday May 26 2017, @02:12PM (1 child)

      by epitaxial (3165) on Friday May 26 2017, @02:12PM (#515962)

      Oh my god I loved that.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:10AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:10AM (#516206)

        Lennart is such a Drama Queen.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Friday May 26 2017, @07:44AM (11 children)

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday May 26 2017, @07:44AM (#515878) Homepage
    I'm a bit of a fascist when it comes to what I will allow on my computers, and systemd (or even LP himself) is quite literally the nexus of undesirability. So Debian's jump to compulsory systemd meant I did an Ian Jackson (et al.). So I dabbled with Slackware for half a day (they seem to actually revel in making things unfriendly, which is a great way of keeping idiots shunned, but hardly something that should be aspired to), Gentoo for about a week (to be honest I could live with migrating to it, and the forums were the singularly most helpful group I've ever encountered, so if you have any prejudices against gentoo users you should reevaluate), and then realised deep down I didn't want to have to relearn 15 years of Debian use, so put Devuan on my first replacement machine (OK, I put Debian on it, and instantly upgraded, as there was no working install image back in those days). And it's been running just great since then. Security patches arrive swiftly, and I've not encountered any WTFs. So the next machine I set up (I need to replace one of my servers) will be devuan too, as will the next...
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @08:34AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @08:34AM (#515890)

      Hopefully soon we will see ubuntean, mintean, etc as the good user distros based on debian are ported across.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by MadTinfoilHatter on Friday May 26 2017, @09:06AM (4 children)

        by MadTinfoilHatter (4635) on Friday May 26 2017, @09:06AM (#515896)

        As nice as that would be, I doubt it will happen any time soon. Those distros (especially Mint) are too focused on Linux on the desktop - and desktop users tend to simply not care about the init system used. Ubuntu has been making inroads into the server market, but IMHO Shuttleworth has never quite been able to grasp what the community actually wants. If he had, he would have noticed the golden opportunity of eating Red Hat's lunch back in 2014 by becoming "Devuan". I.e. by being the single mainstream distribution unpolluted by systemd. He missed the opportunity, because he didn't get it. I'm not sure whether I blame him for that, because it seems most people didn't, and many still don't.

        The "VUA"-part of Devuan, comes from "Veteran Unix Admins", and that's not a coincidence. While almost everyone else have either not understood what the fuzz was all about, or just not cared, in my experience system administrators have almost unanimously grabbed their pitchforks and torches when faced with systemd.

        TL;DR: The mainstream distros are either too focused on making money, or too focused on (desktop) user experience to care about this*. The closest thing to a mainstream distro sans systemd that you're likely to see for a long time is Devuan. If you're planning to rid yourself of systemd, there is no point in waiting for anyone else.

        *) Or if they care, they care in a perverted way - they see the depencency hell created by systemd as a way to stifle freedom, reduce choice, and ultimately squeeze more money out of free software.

        • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Friday May 26 2017, @11:51AM (1 child)

          by fritsd (4586) on Friday May 26 2017, @11:51AM (#515922) Journal

          I don't think that there is any *reason* why all the main desktop systems can't work on a Devuan base.
          Please, explain the reason, if there is any.

          I've heard second-hand (but I could be wrong) that Gnome 3 had an explicit dependency on systemd, because the Gnome developers wanted it that way. There's nothing anyone can do about that (except fork).

          At the moment it's only XFCE and LXDE I think because the project is pushed as far into "user-friendly desktop" territory, as is sufficient for the needs of the people running the Devuan project :-)
          But if the base system is strong, other people can build their distros on top of it, just like the multitudinous offspring of Debian.

          I have not been paying attention, so I don't know which desktops are supported today. There was one distro (but I forgot its name, sorry! maybe EXE or Refracta) that was going for Devuan base + re-animated KDE 3; the Trinity [trinitydesktop.org] project.
          Personally, I found KDE 3 fantastically user-friendly; and I regret the upgrade to KDE 4 just to exchange the working KMail for something complicated and arcane involving a cashew nut glued to the upper right corner of the screen.

          I once tried to study consolekit and logind, for shits and giggles, but I found it quite difficult to understand how these projects were the minimum dependency-poor solution to the problem of users at a Linux workstation, and the special system access rights a logged-in user needs (such as stick in a DVD or a USB stick, shutdown, etc). Before you know it, dbus and udev are pulled in, and then the avalance starts.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by coolgopher on Friday May 26 2017, @12:41PM

            by coolgopher (1157) on Friday May 26 2017, @12:41PM (#515930)

            Two words: systemd dependencies.

            Actually, add a third word: time.

            Unravelling and evicting systemd's tendrils takes effort.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @07:22PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @07:22PM (#516088)

          > The closest thing to a mainstream distro sans systemd that you're likely to see for a long time is Devuan

          Check out AntiX, void, and LMDE...

          • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:02PM

            by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:02PM (#516482) Homepage Journal

            I'm sure there has been a lot of code-sharing between these distros. Not to mention that there are now Devuan derivatives, such as Gnuinos, Refracta, heads (a cross between Devuan and tails), and more [devuan.org] (about 40% down the page).

            Have fun.

            -- hendrik

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday May 26 2017, @11:03AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday May 26 2017, @11:03AM (#515915) Homepage
        Uanbuntu, pronounced "1-buntu" would make a good name, I think. But like the other reply I appreciate that devuan is more for people who run headless (i.e. no kbd/screen, not the chicken version of headless). Of the 5 personal linux computers I most often make use of, only 2 have UI I/O (home "desktop" machine, and Nokia N900 phone; the other machines being my services server, my file server, and a RPi that does nothing but run IRC bots)
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @03:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @03:58PM (#516004)

      Security patches arrive swiftly, because the repository is backed with debian packages.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @07:28AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @07:28AM (#516332)

      So Debian's jump to compulsory systemd meant I did an Ian Jackson (et al.)

      That means you just continued using Debian after throwing a tantrum?

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:05PM (1 child)

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:05PM (#516410) Homepage
        I still have 4 debian machines, yes. Debian pre- compulsory systemd, that is. Exactly what Ian's running I don't know, I'll ask my g/f to sniff around on his machine as she has an account there, I do know he's hand-built some of the packages in order to not have all of the systemd cruft. init is /usr/local/bin/init, for example...
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @08:04AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @08:04AM (#517058)

          init is /usr/local/bin/init, for example...

          So you mean even the sysvinit maintainer (Ian wanted to adopt the package) no longer uses it?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Friday May 26 2017, @09:00AM (7 children)

    by KritonK (465) on Friday May 26 2017, @09:00AM (#515894)

    I tried devuan when it was still in an alpha state, and it didn't seem particularly complete.

    Regarding systemd, devuan was not completely free of it: it used an emasculated version of systemd, to use the functionality that systemd has subsumed and is not available elsewhere. Some of this functionality was in the process of being reimplemented. For example, udev was supposed to be replaced by vdev [github.com]. However, although vdev is in a state where it can be used by someone who knows what he's doing, it has been abandoned by its author, due to a lack of time, so I wonder if parts of systemd are still present in devuan.

    Commonly used software, like gnome and sddm did not work back then, while KDE was still at version 4. (Devuan testing did come with KDE 5, but I didn't manage to get it to work.) I just started installing 1.0, and I see that neither Gnome nor KDE are available as installation options, the only desktops offered by the installer being "Devuan desktop environment" (what's that?), Xfce, MATE, and LXDE.

    I suppose that Devuan 1.0 is usable, especially as a server OS, where one doesn't care about desktop environments, but is it a complete, modern distribution or is it a distribution of what software can (still) run without systemd?

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by canopic jug on Friday May 26 2017, @09:08AM

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 26 2017, @09:08AM (#515897) Journal

      GNOME is tightly dependent on systemd. Let it go. GNOME is gone.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by MadTinfoilHatter on Friday May 26 2017, @09:24AM (3 children)

      by MadTinfoilHatter (4635) on Friday May 26 2017, @09:24AM (#515898)

      I tried devuan when it was still in an alpha state, and it didn't seem particularly complete.

      Then do yourself a favor and try it again. You're quite right - the alpha version was quite immature. That shouldn't be a huge surprise for alpha-quality software. Ever since the beta-phase, it's been entirely usable, and right now it's as stable as they come.

      I see that neither Gnome nor KDE are available as installation options, the only desktops offered by the installer being "Devuan desktop environment" (what's that?), Xfce, MATE, and LXDE.

      From the Devuan RC2 release notes:

      - Removed GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon as DE options in tasksel. These three DEs are still (mostly) installable after the installation is complete, but they are known to suffer from some glitches due to the lack of systemd

      See this [dyne.org] for details.

      is it a complete, modern distribution or is it a distribution of what software can (still) run without systemd?

      The definition of "complete" could naturally be a matter of debate, but in my opinion it's quite complete. I might be trying out KDE later, because I still prefer it to Xfce (even though they seem to do their best to completely f*** up KDE at every major release and take a long time to bring it back to usability).

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Friday May 26 2017, @10:23AM (1 child)

        by KritonK (465) on Friday May 26 2017, @10:23AM (#515907)

        Just finished booting devuan 1.0.

        A quick look at the installed packages shows that there is a libsystemd0 package, containing libsystemd.so.0, so to answer my first question, there do seem to be some systemd dependencies left. Process 1 is init, however, so devuan's only got a bit of systemd in it.

        Regarding "complete" distributions, I would define them as distributions that support all linux software, either out of the box for major software (which would include all major desktop environments) or via third party repositories.

        I had forgotten that bit about glitches with gnome and KDE, which they'd mentioned in the beta release. Unfortunately, having tried all sorts of desktops, I keep returning to KDE, even though, as you say, they keep trying to ruin it. This means that I need it to be as stable as possible, so I wouldn't go with a distribution where it is known that KDE is glitchy. (I dumped Fedora, which I'd been using for years, because of this, as KDE 5 kept crashing left and right there.)

        KDE 4 seemed rock solid in devuan alpha, and much much faster than KDE 5 in Fedora on a similar VM, so I'm surprised that they stopped offering it.

        Anyway, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on devuan, especially to see if there will be any rpm-based distributions based on their work, as I come from that side of the force.

        • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:17PM

          by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 27 2017, @06:17PM (#516492) Homepage Journal

          As I understand it, libsystemd0 is a library of stubs that report, using the proper mechanisms, that the requested systemd feature is not available. It therefore provides just as much interface as is necessary for packages that check at run time whether they are going to do things the systemd way or the traditional way.

          It's a convenience to upstream developers to make it easy to let their software be used on both systemd and nonsystemd systems.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bart9h on Friday May 26 2017, @06:49PM

        by bart9h (767) on Friday May 26 2017, @06:49PM (#516076)

        I've been using it on my desktop since Alpha 1, and never had a problem.

        Then again, my desktop environment of choice is MATE.

    • (Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Friday May 26 2017, @03:10PM

      by DarkMorph (674) on Friday May 26 2017, @03:10PM (#515985)

      distribution of what software can (still) run without systemd?

      This list [without-systemd.org] enumerates many distributions that either do not use or offer to not use systemd. As a Gentoo user I can assure you the entire OS platform is mature and complete as though systemd had never been invented. I have a normal init, and OpenRC with standard initd scripts, and udev, and ALSA without PA (even with the latest Firefox with working sound via ALSA-only as it always had been prior, but how long that remains viable is a different story altogether.) Granted that list of low-level components is not exhaustive, but it should illustrate the point nonetheless.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @11:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @11:29PM (#516191)

      I tried devuan when it was still in an alpha state, and it didn't seem particularly complete.

      I understood that to be a working definition of "alpha".

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by J_Darnley on Friday May 26 2017, @11:35AM (2 children)

    by J_Darnley (5679) on Friday May 26 2017, @11:35AM (#515919)

    > debian
    > stable

    In other words it is full of ancient software. Is it just a clone of debian from before the systemd age?

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by fritsd on Friday May 26 2017, @05:25PM

      by fritsd (4586) on Friday May 26 2017, @05:25PM (#516039) Journal

      Devuan Jessie is basically a clone of Debian Jessie. You can upgrade from Debian Wheezy.

      I don't know what you mean by "ancient software". MVS/TSO? VM/CMS?

      If by "ancient software" you mean "software from before 2016", then yes, it is full to the brim of that :-)

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @08:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @08:37AM (#516681)

      Just remember that the blood on the bleeding edge is of the users.

  • (Score: 2, Disagree) by Lester on Friday May 26 2017, @03:25PM (3 children)

    by Lester (6231) on Friday May 26 2017, @03:25PM (#515992) Journal

    I'm going to repeat what I posted sometime ago [soylentnews.org]

    For good or bad, systemd is in debian (and linux) to stay. In the middle and long term, software sticking on non-systemd will eventually become unmantained, no matter what Devuan or others do.

    By the way, I don't like systemd.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @03:41PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @03:41PM (#515997)

      There's the question of what userland software would even care about the init system. I guess that would be Windoze/Mac skins for the graphical desktop, which I use on only one of my machines.

      I'm fine with running fvwm on that machine.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @08:40AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @08:40AM (#516682)

        systemd is not an init system. It's so much more and metastasizing at an alarming rate.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Bot on Friday May 26 2017, @07:44PM

      by Bot (3902) on Friday May 26 2017, @07:44PM (#516093) Journal

      You forgot the flip side? the guys behind the adoption of systemd will never release the definitive systemd. It would be pointless to do so. It will always remain in a state of flux, as declared (see Lennart's homepage) and so you will have the wonderful world of windows back, with incompatibilities and forced obsolescence. That will make hardware makers happy and redhat happy. All the other distros will be redhat clones always coming late because they will not have the same level of documentation of RH, and the small software and sysadmins will be always trying to decode whatever the last iteration of systemd came up with.

      TLDR a systemd that works as advertised makes no sense and it will never happen.

      --
      Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @04:51PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @04:51PM (#516023)

    To cover many of the myths about systemd: http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html [0pointer.de] . It is extremely damaging to the Linux ecosystem for people to continue to spout lies about systemd that are not true. Most people when confronted with the facts about systemd and the benefits it offers and the fact it takes nothing away, you are free to have sysv style shell scripts to your hearts content because systemd is fully backward compatable with the old init system, and is actually MORE modular and decentralized than the old system, agree that it is a benefit to Linux.

    Please, stop spreading lies about systemd.

    Ubuntu has had systemd type init for years because of Upstart, so with systemd, we are simply seeing standardization with what the other distros are doing. So, this kind of init model is nothing new to Ubuntu.

    The opposition to systemd is nonsensical. Because you can continue to use SysV init because it supports that, the additional functionality is additive, it adds onto what was there before. Because SysV is still there, and you can start your services that way, you have nothing to complain about and there is no reason to oppose systemd.

    One big benefit is the service files which are shorter, simpler and easier to read than shell script and actually make starting services easier. You can still write shell scripts to your hearts content, but for most people service files are easier because of the declarative format.

    systemd is actually more decentralized than the old system and is more configurable. This is because of the D-BUS based design. That is, you can write a D-BUS daemon that monitors the system bus for whatever events you are interested in and write your own custom code to decide when to start a process. This allows you to trigger something when multiple other events happen and allow you to do so cleanly and easily because you are watching a standardized protocol over DBUS. It would be much much harder to do this without a standardized loosely coupled design of DBUS. Events can include kernel events and events generated by other processes, including other processes starting. Your daemon can also generate its own event messages when it starts or stops a process. The reason Gnome uses some features associated with systemd is that Gnome for instance wants UI notifications for different system events for the user being able to monitor the system via a user interface.

    Some utilities have had a D-BUS backend added, for instance, su. This is to allow users to have a process started when a user logins in. It is a lie to say that su has become built into one big massive monolithic systemd process. This is not the case at all. All that was added to some utilities is a small amount of d-bus code;. They are still completely seperate binaries and are not a part of a monolithic systemd process because the utilities are still completely seperate, in fact it keeps the utilties seperate because the whole point of d-bus as a loosely coupled architecture is to allow applications to communicate without these applications having to be directly linked or even know who each other are.

    Systemd in this way is far more modularized than the old init system was.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @05:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @05:01PM (#516028)

      That's all fine except when it takes away choice and the ability to administer/run a system the way you want to. Open, free software is about choice and freedom. Systemd could shit gold bars and I wouldn't want it because...I DON"T WANT IT.

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday May 26 2017, @07:28PM (5 children)

      by darkfeline (1030) on Friday May 26 2017, @07:28PM (#516089) Homepage

      Uh, how is this spam? Has SN fallen so low as to Spam-mod anything that goes against the echo chamber?

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @09:32PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @09:32PM (#516142)

        Ha, wake up if you haven't realized this for, like, FOREVER! I'm one with a few "crazy" thoughts around here, like that maybe Snowden's shit actually does stink a little, or the vast overwhelming number of police officers are decent people who are trying to serve the public well, so I guess I've been seeing this for a long time now. Nice to see that you've swallowed the blue pill (or is it the red pill; shit I can never remember which one it is supposed to be).

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday May 26 2017, @10:07PM (1 child)

        by jmorris (4844) on Friday May 26 2017, @10:07PM (#516157)

        Probably because it looks so cut/paste from a pro RedHat OS blog instead of actual original content?

        The objection is not just to systemd, it is the preference to stay on the UNIX side of the fork. RedHat and Pottering are building an entirely new OS atop the Linux kernel that differs from UNIX as much as, if not more than, Android. It's ideas are mostly derived from Windows thought processes. Now I have no problem with Open Source exploring any problem space developers care about or are paid to write code for. What I, and almost everyone on the Devuan side of the fork, object to is RedHat using their control of several critical Open Source codebases to drive out the UNIX side and force adoption of RedHat OS. They also apparently are using direct financial and political power. All of these forces were used to hammer Debian into abandoning previous principles to adopt systemd/Redhat OS. It is explicitly Linux only, something Debian had invested considerable resources into not being, aiming to the the "Universal Operating System", with BSD and HURD support, any arch enough volunteers could be found to maintain, etc.

        Systemd is not the end goal, it was merely the base enabling tech Red Hat required to build the rest of it atop. Although lately it appears their new trick is to simply suck everything else into the vortex of systemd. NTP and DHCP really needed to be reimplemented inside the systemd morass? Really? Then all of networking itself? We suffered a decade from the failings of NetworkManager (also a curse inflicted by Red Hat) and when it was finally approaching a working state it was tossed for an all new rewrite?

        It makes perfect sense when one remembers Red Hat's business model is support services. If it requires a full time dedication to simply keep current on where everything is configured this month, it makes a lot of sense to simply outsource admin to Red Hat. Reliable is always good, but stable breaks Red Hat's revenue model.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by srobert on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:04AM

          by srobert (4803) on Saturday May 27 2017, @12:04AM (#516204)

          "If it requires a full time dedication to simply keep current on where everything is configured this month, it makes a lot of sense to simply outsource admin to Red Hat."

          Over 2 decades I've distro-hopped with about 25 different desktop linux distributions. Slackware, Suse, Fedora, Archlinux, LFS, Manjaro, Gentoo, Debian, etc. Spent quite a bit of time learning how each of them does things. About 5 or 6 years ago, I installed FreeBSD on a laptop that was well equipped for it. FreeBSD is by far my favorite desktop O.S. largely because it doesn't have the problem you just mentioned there. Mostly things are configured where they always were, unless there is a compelling reason to change it. I suspect FreeBSD's /etc folder will look largely the same after systemd is in the dustbin of Linux history.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @07:09AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @07:09AM (#520127)

        Because the opening link is to Poettering's blog, where he misrepresents and deflects criticism against systemd. Yet his faithful followers parade that blog posting out again and again as the definitive proof that the systemd critics are just "trolls" and "haters".

      • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Sunday June 18 2017, @06:30AM

        by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Sunday June 18 2017, @06:30AM (#527377) Homepage Journal

        While it's not spam, I do think it's inaccurate at best, and does everything possible to ignore systemd's flaws. Systemd is *not* drop in compatible with sysv scripts, and frequently tends to break them in difficult to debug ways. Let me debunk this:

        Myth: systemd is monolithic.

        This is only true in the literal sense. As the article points out, a full systemd build spits out 69 binaries (which likely has gone up). What it doesn't tell you is those binaries are interconnected with each other and can't be used independently. Want to use systemctl but not have binary logging?

        Sorry.

        Want to use logind (for GNOME), but not the rest of the stack. Sorry. systemd is as modular as Windows is; you take the whole thing, and have to use all the parts together or it won't work.

        Myth: systemd is about speed.

        This one is actually true, but misleading. systemd specifically gets boot time improvements by doing things different than sysvinit. I worked at Canonical when systemd was born and we had upstart to tackle the speed problem. Red Hat did ship upstart in Red Hat 6.5, but replaced it with systemd later. While I have no definitive answer on why RH replaced upstart w/ systemd, much of my gut suggests it was the same political reasons that allowed systemd into Debian stable.

        Myth: systemd's fast boot-up is irrelevant for servers

        Actually it is. Faster server startup time only matters in cases where you don't have an HA system. Due various issues with Linode, and Ubuntu, we have a 10-15 minute system restart time at SoylentNews, but the main site is HA. Much of our slow boot time is waiting for network services to fully come up, and for MySQL Cluster to successfully synchronize and come fully online. There is an argument to be had about when you're spinning up new VMs in mass for testing or scale up, but even then that's a relatively small bit of the pie. Under most loads, sysvinit startup time for a heavy server was 1-2 minutes, while systemd might be half that.

        The funny thing is OpenRC, upstart, and ruint (and many others) have managed to get similar speed boots without being a pile of crap.

        Myth: Myth: systemd is incompatible with shell scripts.

        Having a unit file point at a shell script misses the entire point. Yes, its technically possible to get systemd to play with sysvinit style boot scripts (Debian uses it). Good look debugging it when it goes wrong. I just had that experience trying to get stunnel4 working, and eventually scrapped its init script for a unit file because I couldn't figure out why it won't work.

        Myth: systemd is difficult.

        True as far as writing unit files. False as far as determining what the hell went wrong when a unit file fails to load, or claims it started but no daemon is running, etc. SYstemd is damn near impossible to debug when it goes wrong, and how to debug it is poorly documented.

        Myth: systemd is not modular.

        Already addressed

        Myth: systemd is only for desktops.

        Also already addressed. I'll also note that systemd is very much a thing you DON'T want on embedded devices because it requires a stupid amount of kernel dependencies, dbus, and code bloat.

        Myth: systemd was created as result of the NIH syndrome.

        Honestly, I don't know if this one is true or false. I know Red Hat ran with upstart for awhile, and changed it out.

        ---

        At this point, I've already gone 30 minutes writing this comment so I'm calling it here, but if you want to get modded up, post something that isn't pro-systemd propaganda. A good way to tell if something is propaganda is if it doesn't point out the negatives in a solution.

        --
        Still always moving
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by tibman on Friday May 26 2017, @09:23PM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 26 2017, @09:23PM (#516137)

      Making programs dependent on a specific init system doesn't make the OS more modular. Exactly the opposite. Now you can't replace the init system of your OS without replacing all those other programs that depend on it. Linux typically has very loosely coupled components so that any single part can be swapped out with a different implementation. Systemd breaks that.

      Systemd is dependent on linux (can't run any other OS kernel). So programs that depend on systemd now also become unportable. As-in they can't be used by a BSD or other unix. That's just stupid.

      --
      SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Friday May 26 2017, @10:09PM

      by digitalaudiorock (688) on Friday May 26 2017, @10:09PM (#516158) Journal

      Oh ffs! That same tired "biggest myths" link that the pro-systemd trolls have been posting since it was written four year ago. There's NOTHING in that piece of flaming bullshit that hasn't been debunked 1000 times over. Give it a rest.

      Good to hear about Devuan. Happily still using Gentoo here.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @07:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 04 2017, @07:21AM (#520131)

      Upstart was a init, yes, systemd is much much more (how about a dns "client" that again and again is found to have flaws fixed in the likes of Bind for a decade already).

      And systemd supports sysv rc files, as long as they are simple ones. Try anything complicated and you can be sure it barfs itself.

      service files are only "simple" when compared to sysv rc files, but that is because sysv rc files are required to have all the boilerplate internally. BSD init for example put that into a source-able script file instead, massively reducing the size of the individual rc files. Never mind that systemd keeps growing new keywords, and combinations of keywords on near every release to cover "corner cases" that could instead be handled on a case by case basis using scripts. Expect services files to be Turing complete soon.

      Except that d-bus was never designed to be system critical, and have massive performance overhead. After all, they did try to push a variant (kdbus) of it into the Linux kernel a year or two back and got rebuffed by Torvalds, even when the likes of GregKH was backing it.

      And su having a dbus backend, what the fuck?! If that was the case, why did Poettering call it fundamentally broken and systemd produce their own tool for the same job?!

      Put the pipe down and back away, whatever you are smoking is not healthy for you what so ever.

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