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Removing Libsystemd0 From a Live-running Debian System
lkcl writes The introduction of systemd has unilaterally created a polarization of the GNU/Linux community that is remarkably similar to the monopolistic power position wielded by Microsoft in the late 1990s. Choices were stark: use Windows (with SMB/CIFS Services), or use UNIX (with NFS and NIS). Only the introduction of fully-compatible reverse-engineered NT Domains services corrected the situation. Instructions on how to remove systemd include dire warnings that "all dependent packages will be removed", rendering a normal Debian Desktop system flat-out impossible to achieve. It was therefore necessary to demonstrate that it is actually possible to run a Debian Desktop GUI system (albeit an unusual one: fvwm) with libsystemd0 removed. The reason for doing so: it doesn't matter how good systemd is believed to be or in fact actually is: the reason for removing it is, apart from the alarm at how extensive systemd is becoming (including interfering with firewall rules), it's the way that it's been introduced in a blatantly cavalier fashion as a polarized all-or-nothing option, forcing people to consider abandoning the GNU/Linux of their choice and to seriously consider using FreeBSD or any other distro that properly respects the Software Freedom principle of the right to choose what software to run. We aren't all "good at coding", or paid to work on Software Libre: that means that those people who are need to be much more responsible, and to start — finally — to listen to what people are saying. Developing a thick skin is a good way to abdicate responsibility and, as a result, place people into untenable positions.
I actually use Linux at work occasionally (Cadence software, yuck), and manage a few FreeBSD servers for hobby purposes. So I am very much familiar with the subject. But I disagree with your assessment. Based on my personal experience many of the scientific applications you speak of do actually run on clusters these days. And pretty much all the clusters I've encountered so far have very different needs from mainstream Linux distributions anyway.
The other software tends to run locally on Windows machines, because lets face it: you're a company and you want market share, you are going to target Windows. With the exception of a few tools I can't state much reasons to run Linux on desktop these days, and even when its necessary the software is usually unpolished, difficult to use, badly documented, and targeted at a very niche market. Half the problems are due to the very fractured system currently used by many linux distros. If you can simply tie down the sort of software you can expect you greatly reduce the difficulties in making things work. Like in the electronics industry we often run into crapware from Cadence and Mentor Graphics which is down right torture to use if you don't use the exact same software setup as the developers used.
And if it takes you days to figure out how to do something on windows you're either doing parallellisation over network, which Windows is indeed terrible at. Or you've never written software for Windows before, which does take some getting used to. But at least you don't have to recompile the executable 20 times for every different flavour and you don't have to mess with GNU Make or GCC, which I consider bonus points
Flexibility is all nice, until you actually want to get something done. You either standardize a series of interfaces, which has NOT been done, or you force something on everyone. But unless you do either of those you're always going to have a system that's half way in limbo for practical applications. I can't say I particularly love linux for any specific thing: for desktops Windows works best, for servers FreeBSD seems to do the job nicely, and for embedded systems we either write something up ourselves or go for NetBSD. The only place where Linux seems to be loved is clusters and super computers, and there you usually have a bunch of admins doing their best to hide the nasty things behind a whole series of customized scripts and tools.
So to summarize it, while I certainly don't mind you using a system for hobby purposes. The rest of us sort of need to get our job done and don't have the time to spend 2 days looking for a solution to something that just works on another operating system. If I have 2 days of spare time there are a million other things I'd love to get finished, forcing a linux distro to work isn't one of them. So please fork a distro for your own purposes or stop whining about systemd.
cold day in hell. To be honest, while I would like linux to be accepted. I'm not getting rid of Stallman, because if we start getting rid of people like him, the GNU/Linux community will just become more like the people we joined this community to get away from.
I suggest if there is ever an event nearby where he speaks that you talk to him for half a minute, lets see how much of your view of said person is left standing. He's an annoying jerk who lives in the eighties who didn't yet get the memo that not everyone is spying on him or is strictly interested in what he thinks. But lets not get into detail about this one.
He inspires confedence as a voice I can trust to be consistant and ethical, even when no one else is, and doesn't bow to pressure, or sell out core principles.
You don't need a person like that to stand up for your principles, if you must find somebody to stand up for them I'd say go for Linus. He might be a jerk, but he's not an obnoxious paranoid unreasonable person.
Also, Free software survives on community effort. Bringing in a bunch of hipsters, will simply bring in hoardes of people who do not contribute, but make demands, sometimes unreasonable, and might try and cause divisions, making work harder. Again, you'll talk about kicking contributers out, to make room for non-contributors.
I'm fairly confident that your community runs more on folks like me (engineers who use this sort of software during their working hours and patch stuff up the moment they run into a major issue) than you realise. Though I've realised long ago Linux is pointless to invest time in, hence my preference for FreeBSD. The key difference is that in the FreeBSD community people don't complain constantly. If they run into an issue they fix it instead of whining about it on Slashdot for half a year.
OK, now you're trolling, linux has had better driver availability than basicly anyone else for the last 5 years. Your simply repeating problems people had pre-kernel 3, which are virtually unheard of.
I started running Linux because all my drivers just worked, as opposed to running XP at the time, where finding the right drivers was a fucking pain. Also, installing extra drivers on Ubuntu is easy, installing them on windows is hard, and installing them on Macs doesn't happen, at all.
Oh yeah, and all the codecs "just worked" too, I just clicked a box saying I didn't give fuck all about licensing. Now try doing that in windows, or even mac.
I have yet to see evidence of this statement. Every computer I install linux on, I must point out this is on recent hardware and often laptops, I usually end up having to fiddle with the driver settings because some person somewhere decided that having the default settings automatically loaded into configuration files was a bad idea. Keep in mind the Windows driver figures out these things by itself, mostly because it doesn't have to take into account 50000 different possible locations for said configuration file. Also: Register! But that's a whole other debate. On the other hand, Windows 7 pretty much automatically installed everything by itself the moment it had network connectivity. And I haven't run into a codec issue in years, because quite frankly nobody still uses Windows Mediaplayer.
Or mabey that Ubuntu was the first desktop that had an App store on the desktop, even before apple. Oh, and it worked.
Or try installing windows on box vs mint/ubuntu/trisquel. Tell me what is easier.
And even that is false.
Are your initials ESR?
Pretty sure they aren't.
This is not even about systemd, it's a about libsystemd which is just a library for interfacing with systemd. You can have libsystemd installed and still don't have systemd itself installed. Debian has built some of their packages so that they depend on libsystemd, so installing them will bring libsystemd with them. Not a problem if you don't want to run systemd, but if you for some reason can't live with dpkg-query -l | grep systemd printing even a single line then this is apparently a problem.
a *fraction* of the extent of the problem is actually illustrated here:
http://anfo.slavino.sk/libsyst...
those packages that i recompiled (policykit-1, d-bus, pulseaudio and util-linux) have a huge range of dependencies that cover something like 98% of the most commonly used software in the linux world. cups-daemon, the gimp, vlc, mplayer, and others too numerous to mention: all come under the fascist rule of libsystemd thanks to the unilateral decision making of a handful of people.
and i'll repeat it again because it seems not to be getting through: the problem is that there *is no alternative*. it's their way or fuck off: you are not permitted to argue your case even reasonably (because it will be ignored). and that's just... wholly unacceptable. *i don't care* who is techically right or wrong: i care that this is a situation that has become like the Microsoft Monopoly: dominate, dominate, dominate.
so that's the deadlock that i seek to break, by demonstrating that you *can* have a working desktop system without having a single part of the code written by people who do not listen and who act in such highly irresponsible ways.