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Debian Dropping Linux Standard Base (lwn.net)
basscomm writes: For years (as seen on Slashdot) the Linux Standard Base has been developed as an attempt to reduce the differences between Linux distributions in an effort significant effort. However, Debian Linux has announced that they are dropping support for the Linux Standard Base due to a lack of interest.
From the article: "If [Raboud's] initial comments about lack of interest in LSB were not evidence enough, a full three months then went by with no one offering any support for maintaining the LSB-compliance packages and two terse votes in favor of dropping them. Consequently, on September 17, Raboud announced that he had gutted the src:lsb package (leaving just lsb-base and lsb-release as described) and uploaded it to the "unstable" archive. That minimalist set of tools will allow an interested user to start up the next Debian release and query whether or not it is LSB-compliant—and the answer will be 'no.'"
From the article: "If [Raboud's] initial comments about lack of interest in LSB were not evidence enough, a full three months then went by with no one offering any support for maintaining the LSB-compliance packages and two terse votes in favor of dropping them. Consequently, on September 17, Raboud announced that he had gutted the src:lsb package (leaving just lsb-base and lsb-release as described) and uploaded it to the "unstable" archive. That minimalist set of tools will allow an interested user to start up the next Debian release and query whether or not it is LSB-compliant—and the answer will be 'no.'"
Maybe we should look at creating some standards for editing and submitting articles, too.
The anti systemd sentiment is getting a bit old? The sky certainly hasn't been falling with systemd already running on a lot of systems. That being said though, their biggest problem seems to be that Debian is losing marketshare
It seems like Debian has decided to live up to its logo, the spiral. In adopting systemd and abandoning LSB, Debian has begun its death spiral.
Identify the actual problem you are claiming is a problem. Random comments that XYZ is bad are unhelpful and not particularly nerdly.
Debian is behind Ubuntu and Linux mint. That accounts for most desktop Linux installs doesn't it?
I think keeping certain level of things similar is a good thing because people have to keep things consistent for their stuffs to work.
The debian folks think they are popular enough that they should have their own ways of doing everything in Linux. This was a mistake Redhat made long time ago between their own versions of Linux. They learnt the lesson quickly enough to not become a disaster.
I really think Debian is screwing with linux admins who are primary customers of their flavor... Let me remind them that Debian owns an extremely small percentage of production installations worldwide... doing this now will turn their OS into a consumer grade product... which will make them very unimportant.
The anti systemd sentiment is getting a bit old? The sky certainly hasn't been falling with systemd already running on a lot of systems
"You know that thing that you tried like hell to keep from happening, and later, when it happened over your continual vociferous objections, you swore you wouldn't ever stop fighting to undo it to your last breath? Yeah, well, we, the winners, can't understand why you, the losers, are still angry about that."
I personally don't have a dog in this fight, and I don't know enough about what systemd does or doesn't do to judge, but trying to dismiss the significance of what is clearly a raw and throbbing emotional wound for these people by saying it's "getting a bit old" still seems a little tone-deaf to me.
it's "getting a bit old" still seems a little tone-deaf to me.
I think it amounts to "your arguments have been heard, logged, rejected, but you have the right to scream I told you so later", which is really where the incessant whining needs to end. I'm not convinced Wayland is famine, nor that systemd is pestilence. Unity certainly rode the pale horse, but the beauty of Linux is that we just fork around the offending software and carry on. Unlike when Microsoft or Apple do something reprehensible and we just have to suffer through it, with Linux we can just lob it off and replace it with something else.
When Ubuntu gets rid of Unity, I'll use Ubuntu again, until then there are plenty of good options. If systemd or Wayland make me cry, I'll do away with them. It's magic. Best, the people who like that sort of thing can keep having it, and not bother me in the slightest.
systemd is the Linux version of the Windows Service Control Manager (scm.exe).
If you get emotional about a system service controller, you're an unstable twit that needs to go cold turkey. Either stop interacting with other people entirely to spare them the annoyance of having to put up with you, or stop interacting with anything other than people and learn how to deal with them. You can maybe go back to doing both sometime in the future, once your balls have dropped. (How's that for raw and throbbing?)
it happened over your continual vociferous objections
That's exactly the problem.
I have a dog in this fight. I'm a sysadmin, who often gets involved in engineering Linux-based systems. My top priority is that everything works reliably when I need it. I don't really care what style of startup scripts we use. If it's something I already know, that makes life easier in some ways, but I'm not so arrogant as to assume that a better way isn't possible. If that new system's better just because I know that somebody's reviewed their assumptions in the last decade, that alone is worth a bit.
Then there's Slashdot. While most rational discussions about systemd tend to discuss pros and cons, Slashdot's hivemind seems to have decided that systemd is simply evil, with no clear reason why. I understand that we're all traditionalists, but this often goes beyond common sense. As you've noted, the arguments are loud, repetitive, and vehement, and they've been going on for longer than I care to remember. There are no suggestions for improvement, other than to fork huge projects and insist that nothing can ever change.
Frankly, the objections are a bit old. They're often just reiterating rumors and outdated information, and contribute nothing to the conversation. I expect the developers have heard the objections, and either resolved the complaints or chosen intentionally to take a different path. As a community, can we please now move on to the next topic of discussion?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
You don't have to use Unity.
Sure, but some of us have had Just Plain Bad experiences with systemd, regardless of startup scripts.
/etc/fstab for an external USB disk that was occasionally used. One time after upgrading, systemd decided that, because the disk wasn't plugged in, it would just hang there because it couldn't mount an fstab entry.
A server (running Debian Stable) I was rebooting for a kernel upgrade wouldn't reboot -- it just hung at "Reached target Shutdown" (similar, I believe, to this bug). Of course, it had already stopped sshd, so I had no idea what was going on until I dug out a monitor and plugged it in.
Another server had an entry in
Another time I go to turn off my computer and...it just hangs there, telling me the system is powered off (I had to physically turn off the power, though of course everything was cleanly unmounted so not a problem).
Yes, some -- or maybe even all -- of these problems can in part be blamed on me. The first one could be fixed with "systemctl reboot," the second one with "noauto" in fstab, and the third with "poweroff" instead of "halt." But that's not the point. The point is, when my *completely working system* decides to stop working on numerous occasions, and it can all be traced to one source, it just Isn't A Good Thing in my opinion. To each his own, though.