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Debian Forked Over Systemd
jaromil writes: The so called "Veteran Unix Admin" collective has announced that the fork of Debian will proceed as a result of the recent systemd controversy. The reasons put forward are not just technical; included is a letter of endorsement by Debian Developer Roger Leigh mentioning that "people rely on Debian for their jobs and businesses, their research and their hobbies. It's not a playground for such radical experimentation." The fork is called "Devuan," pronounced "DevOne." The official website has more information.
Never let sysadmins name anything. They couldn't find one single marketing / PR person to test that name?
...a fork of Debian,
Such a thing is unheard of in Debian's 20-odd year history.
I wonder what the impact of this fork will be on Debian-proper.
Then just call it DevOne and be done with it. Stop with the words play and the phonetic cuteness, not everyone speaks english and spanish. If I read "Devuan" I'm going to pronounce "Dév-u-en" (french).
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
When this new distro no longer refers to *any* debian repos, maintaining and compiling their own deb packages entirely, then I'll recognize it as a fork. Until then it's just one of many distros that base themselves off of debian and its package base while changing parts they don't like.
I bet there is a high probability that Devuan will be based on uselessd. If so it will be interesting to watch the approach. Uselessd, if anything, validates the original ideas of systemd, just taking issue with the packaging, as near as I can tell.
I too wish them well, but I do not hold out much hope that they will go anywhere.
I'm an admin. I don't want to be excited about startup managers. If I get excited by init, it means something is broken.
That's actually dead simple to do. Most already have one that's been stable for years.
When your career depends on things working, an "exciting" startup manager (which is what I presume you meant) is the last thing you want.
In fact, you want things to be as un-exciting as possible.
This recreates the correct 800x600 experience for optimum viewing. We've had 800x600 for years and years and it's well-proven and stable. There's certainly no need for all these extra resolutions to complicate things!
Are you still using cash instead of the latest crypto-currency? That's soooo last century! When are people going to understand that keeping critical infrastructure running in a tried-and-true fashion is un-sexy and un-cool?! Plus, the people who invented it mock your concerns as antiquated, childish, and just plain dumb, so you know you should trust their plans and advice!
To the future!
Ahh, the usual misrepresentation of why we oppose systemd that always shows up. Calling us haters while trying to reframe the discussion away from the real issues isn't convincing - it just adds evidence that systemd gains position by propagand and politics instead of design and implementation quality. No, you are not going to scare us away form linux. Some may retreat to FreeBSD, which is fine (it's a good OS). The rest of us are going to stay with linux, even if it large parts of linux leave and become part of the systemd monoculture. We've been here before, after all, over a decade ago.
The varied technical issues with systemd are bad enough, but they have already been discussed, and are a central reason why the sysadmins ae forking Debian. Many systemd advocates try and steer discussions back to these technical issues - while denying that systemd doesn't actually work for everybody - to avoides talking about the fundamental design problems and philosophical changes that systemd forces on Linux. While it is currently popular to "move fast and break things", those of us with more experience understand the value in not breaking everything. None of this means that those that are better served by systemd shoudl stop using it! We're only angry about the attemts to force a monoculture by breaking compatability for political reasons, when there as no technical need. You know, like Microsoft does with their "not invented here" attitude.
Still, those are philosophical issues about the software itself. That is not the primary problem some of us have with systemd, which is not about technical problems, but is instead an attack on our prefered method of licencing. The systemd takeover is an attempt to separate Linux and many userspace tools from the GPL, so that software can be used under the LGPL terms instead.
What is the big difference between GPL and LGPL? Linkage. Linking to a GPL library requires you to follow certain requirements if you link against it, while the LGPL specifically allows taht usage. (k)dbus provides the workaround, by replacing what would be a normal function call into a library with a "IPC". It's slower, but so what, computers are way faster than needed. In the end, while you can still choose to release your code as GPL, if you have to use an IPC mechanism to do anything useful the license requirements that will actually apply ends up being being more like the LGPL. For a better explanation, see this post by stevel in the Gentoo forums.
Well, if I wanted to release under the LGPL, I would. What I'm not going to do is undermine my choice of license just because a bunch of embedded developers (and others) want to use what were traditionally GPL projects without having to be bound by the copyleft requirements. If this was proprietary software, you would call that kind of behavior "stealing" or "piracy".
So don't bother with claims about "faster desktops" or "easier programming". When your solution also bundles a forced monoculture ("unifying the difference betwen distributions") and contains a loophole around the licence some of us chose it is simply not an option for those of us that place "freedom" as the most important feature. /how much does JTRIG (or their equivalent) pay for these propaganda attempts, anyway? //It's a waste of money regardless, given how transparent these comments are ///some of this post is reused from a post I made on HN
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I merely pointed out it could be argue both way. The "old" vs "new" argument is as old as the world (which you're certainly gonna point out to be just another generalization fallacy). Finally, the whole systemd vs. sysv init is mostly an emotional one.
Systemd changes the way various start up and backgound processes are triggered.
The aim is to come up with something that can do more than the current init / cron et al processes in a more coherent way than at the moment, which dates back decades. Many approaches have been taken over the years, but generally try to keep the foundation of how it works the same, but make it "better". systemd throws out everything and starts over with a different approach.
The reasons why people don't like it are legion. Some because of change resistance - this manifests in many different ways. Some because of the "who" of it. They don't like source of the change. Some of the resistance has a technical foundation - the first process in the current init is very simple and everything spawns from it. With systemd, it is complex, and so the fear is that it has an increased probability of failure or instability. And linux is founded on a reputation of stability. Arguments are that it isn't very unixy - which is to have lots of small tight components that do one thing well all working together. Arguments are that having many processes spawn to do something relatively straight forward is unixy, but that doesn't automatically make it good. Arguments are that having one (main) process mediate all this stuff is better than having everything mediate itself and try to cooperate with everything else.
The difficulty with all of the arguments, is that a significant proportion of them are emotionally based, rather than technical, but all are couched in a technical setting, which makes it extremely hard to really get to grips with the real pros and cons.
I am happy to have systemd on some machines, and happy to not have it on others. With regards to this whole topic, the best bet when you see a discussion unfold is sit back with popcorn and watch either sides arguments dissolve into logical fallacy.
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From a Linux Journal article by Ian Murdock in 1994:
As the Debian developers create their pieces, they follow strict guidelines for constructing and maintaining these pieces, called packages. Because these guidelines are followed, each package can be dropped into the system independently without damaging or interfering with programs from other packages. By working with a set of consistent rules and with identical tools, the volunteers can and do create a truly modular system.
Nuff said.
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"the whole systemd vs. sysv init is mostly an emotional one."....uhhh..you wanna rethink that Hoss?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Meh Linux is buttfucked on the desktop anyway friend. I run a PC shop and am running the latest Windows 10 build on a 2011 AMD netbook, the weakest thing I have ATM. The verdict? Its faster than Windows 7 across the board and even with every driver running in compatibility mode this thing is WAAAAY faster than a fresh Ubuntu install on nicer hardware, and that isn't even a clean install but an upgrade! If the rumors are true, and I'm betting they are, that Nadella is gonna sell Windows 10 Home for $30 a pop just to get rid of the Win7/XP installs? Then give it up Chuck, only the hardcore GNUs are gonna care, everybody else will just spend the $30 and call it a day.
I spent nearly 5 years buying the bullshit and waiting for Linux to get better....never did. still had "update foo broke my drivers" still had hell trying to get Linux to do simple tasks like video acceleration that Windows has been doing since 2005, as a Linux server admin friend who went with a Macbook after Linux had fucked his install one time too many says "Linux never gets better, only different" and he's right and its guys like Pottering that are the cause. things getting stable, shit starting to work? Well fuck that we'll rip it out and start from scratch! KDE 4, Gnome 3, Pulse, every time shit actually starts getting solid it never fails, its time to rip everything out and go back to square 1. its like they say "ZOMFG we might have to sit around fixing bugs, fuck that! We'll start fresh and be all cool and shit!" and here they go, right back to square one.
Meanwhile I ran a Win2K workstation for 10 years without a crash, last I heard my XP X64 workstation is still purring with the guy that bought it, and my Win 7 has been running since Aug 09 without a single hiccup, despite me changing damned near every single piece out, all it needed was a single Internet activation when I swapped boards.
So let 'em fight over systemd I say, I'm out. I'm tired of the lies, the excuses, the alpha quality being handed off as RTM, its a bunch of buggy beta bullshit. They just better hope the rumor about Nadella doing to servers what he is doing to desktops, with single licenses at sane prices is bs, because if that is the case? yeah good luck Linux, I have a feeling the numbers will drop like a stone!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You have clearly developed no taste in system architecture. The closer to the top of the stack, the more acceptable dependencies are, though even then they shouldn't be piled on without thought.
I don't WANT init to do the things systemd does. I want other utilities that don't give a damn how they came to be running to do those things.
I would list the dependencies needed to build Apache
ldd /usr/sbin/apache2 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3 (0x00007f9742320000) /usr/lib/libaprutil-1.so.0 (0x00007f97420fb000) /usr/lib/libapr-1.so.0 (0x00007f9741ec9000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f9741cad000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f9741921000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007f974171b000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007f9741513000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypt.so.1 (0x00007f97412dc000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f97410d7000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 (0x00007f9740ead000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f9742801000)
linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007fff13dfc000)
libpcre.so.3 =>
libaprutil-1.so.0 =>
libapr-1.so.0 =>
libpthread.so.0 =>
libc.so.6 =>
libuuid.so.1 =>
librt.so.1 =>
libcrypt.so.1 =>
libdl.so.2 =>
libexpat.so.1 =>
That wasn't hard.
And again, apache runs on top of the environment created by init, it is acceptable for it to have more dependencies.
It;s one thing to build a house of cards on your dining room table. It's quite another to build your home on top of a house of cards.
Note how many systems have managed to support apache, samba, a GUI desktop and much much more on top of the simple but effective init.
Meanwhile, sysvinit can bring up a system with a degraded btrfs, systemd absolutely refuses and even Lennart can't seem to figure out what to do about it.