Systemd-Free Devuan Linux Announces A Second Release Candidate (devuan.org)

An anonymous reader quotes The Register: Devuan Linux has released its second release candidate... A 1.0.0 release candidate emerged just under a fortnight ago and today the developers announced Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 RC2. New in this cut of the code is a systemd-free version of network-manager, new versions of reportbug, desktop-base and xfce4-panel. GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon have been removed from tasksel, but can still be installed although they "are known to suffer from some glitches due to the lack of systemd."
The Devuan web site says this series of release candidates "marks an important milestone towards the sustainability and the continuation of Devuan as a universal base distribution." And their announcement describes Devuan as "the Debian that was and could have been. Our goal is to provide a viable and sustainable alternative...a new path, nurtured with your help and support."

Comments

systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

Graybeards yelling at clouds

Like... I understand not wanting all the cruft that comes with systemd, but as an init system it's absolutely fabulous! I know Debian tends to be the bastion of never change anything ever and I'm hardly surprised that "Debian makes decision to change something" was met with hostility. Regardless I think this whole thing is a bit ridiculous. Rather than forking ALL OF DEBIAN so you can keep sysvinit, why not fork systemd to use only the init? Hell, you could even have it use the horrible sysvinit script system if you like!

Re:systemd

[dreamchaser]

Sometimes people have valid reasons to not like change or anything different than their favorite [fill in the blank], and sometimes it's just akin to religious zealotry. Mac vs PC vs Linux is another good example. I find it all to be vaguely amusing.

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, I think they might be on to something.

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/16/10/01/2155209/multiple-linux-distributions-affected-by-crippling-bug-in-systemd

SystemD ties in to everything. Init scripts were more compartmentalized last I read. Seems like tying so much in to one magic black box isn't as smart a move as people might think it is.

Re:systemd

[yeupou]

And sometimes people using GNU/Linux since 20 years and know what they want and are not up to some change that decreased their productivity for benefits that does not matter to deal.

What is even a Mac vs PC vs Linux since all these are PC-based nowadays? I find bad choice of words vaguely amusing.

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

If SystemD continues to to capture those migrating from windows (both the users and the programmers) and produces a single large attack vector it bodes well for the security of distros that can still take a different path.

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

IF systemd was ONLY an alternate choice for an init system them it would probably be ok.... but it isn't, it has become an insidious cancer that threatens to envelop the entire system it sits on. It really should be marketed as a closed OS (like that MS crap) rather than an init system because that is what it wants to be.

sysvinit is open and plain text... when problems come up it can be troubleshot and fixed with nothing more than your favorite editor and a functioning brain cell or two.

sysvinit is "old" and stable and requires that you be able to think a bit, that seems to be why the kids today hate it so much. They haven't met a piece of software that works well that they can't improve until it doesn't.

When I look for a distro, one of the first elements I check for is the lack of systemd, if it ain't there then life is good.

Re:systemd

[TWX]

I have had to fix a couple of rackmount servers over the years with nothing more than my laptop, minicom, and a null modem cable to get into the TTY. I know I can manually edit init scripts and it's also very easy to back up or replace the init scripts, they're just scripts!

Re:systemd

[TWX]

This is where I'm at, my first Slackware box would be old enough to drink at this point.

On top of the issue of experience, I've got actual dead-tree books describing UNIX SystemV and BSD inits, which Linux's inits were derived from or outright copied from. In other words, documentation. I can actually RTFM if I need to, as I have the "FM" on my shelf.

Re: systemd

[Entrope]

Think of it as a Single Point Of Fixing.

Re: systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

system =====D~~ ~

bend over, here it comes again!

Re:systemd

[drinkypoo]

This is where I'm at, my first Slackware box would be old enough to drink at this point.

#metoo. Slackware 2.0 on a 386DX25 with 8MB/120MB. A, N, D, and most of the X set would fit with room left over for 8MB of swap. And it was plenty :) I just bumped my carputer up from 2GB to 8GB because 2GB was too little...

Re:systemd

[gweihir]

An all of what you just said is complete bullshit when looking at some actual facts. Pathetic.

Re:systemd

[gweihir]

Same here. Same as I do not need or want, say, a TV attached to my pencil, I do not want a complex replacement for the init-system that works well for me. In particular, if that complex replacement is made by a project by two bad developers with known bad personalities that push very hard to put it in everywhere and do not care in the least what they break.

One of the very core engineering wisdoms is "if it is not broken, do not fix it". Another one is KISS. I do not mind if people want to have bad engineering on their machines (and the Windows-crowd is proof enough that many do indeed want that), but I do mind if there is pressure on me to do so too. Of course, the systemd fanatics/liars will now claim there is no such pressure and similar nonsense.

Re:systemd

[TWX]

Mine was a Cyrix clone, a 40MHz 486 with math coprocessor and 8MB RAM, a partition on a 420MB hard disk shared with DOS and Windows. The motherboard was unusual, it had sockets for both 386 pinout and 486 pinout processors; and if I'm remembering right the Cyrix processor went into the 386 socket and there was a placeholder chip in the 486 socket.

For several years my normal process was to upgrade the Linux box with the old Windows box's hardware when I'd build a brand new Windows box. So the Linux box became a Pentium 133 when the Pentium 200 was built. The Pentium 200 became the Linux box when the AMD K6-2 350MHz was bought, etc.

Now I mostly shop at the college surplus. Current desktop is a Dell Precision T7400 dual-quad Xeon box with 32GB RAM, and while older is rock-solid, and cost about $300 three years ago when I bought it.

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome, again, Lennart! You're always on top of commenting on anything systemd. That's awesome! I'm glad you're getting the feedback from us here in the trenches. It's amazing how many products, physical and software, are made and shipped after being devised in Ivory Towers. I'm glad you're not "that guy".

Now, my only question for you is, why don't you take all of that MicroSoft-type wizard thinking and go work for them? Oh, you're actually a MS plant in the Linux world? Very clever of them. You'll find we're actually collectively smarter than MS and MS-types.

But keep trying! Your attempts at blurring the lines between the MS world and the Linux world are keeping us sharp, honest, and on track. And giving us confidence that we're doing the right things. You know, "best practices" and all.

Systemd acceptance is a great way to weed out the MS admins who dabble in Linux, versus the true hardcore Linux admins and devops who want reliable machines that do what we want them to do, when we want it.

Systemd: the AI of tiny minds.

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes people have valid reasons to not like change or anything different than their favorite [fill in the blank], and sometimes it's just akin to religious zealotry. Mac vs PC vs Linux is another good example. I find it all to be vaguely amusing.

On our several PCs and Laptops, all running Xubuntu 16.04, about one quarter occasionally fail to shutdown. The reason is NFS, as there is a job running to unmount a drive after the network has shut down. If a system in that one quarter has recently accessed a file over NFS, then NFS will hang on shutdown. The same is not true of the remaining three quarters.

All updates and patches have been installed on all machines. I suspect it has something to do with the sequence of events due to device drivers (which differ), as the same software is installed on all of them. The users have no privileges beyond what is required.

Re:systemd

[LVSlushdat]

Those were the daze... I started with Slackware in 1994, on a 486DX2-66 with 8Mb of ram, Hercules mono video and an amber monitor. After I got the scads of floppies made and got the basic OS installed using the Herc mono video, I scrounged up a EGA monitor and if I remember correctly a Tseng Labs EGA card, and *tried* to get XFree86 configured correctly and get a GUI up and running.. What Fun!! I'll admit I managed to "release the magic smoke" on the first monitor trying to get the modelines set right.. After getting some info on irc, I managed to get X going and as I recall, fluxbox...

Re:systemd

[LVSlushdat]

Unfortuantly, its getting harder and harder to *find* a distro that isn't using systemd.. Obviously the BSD's don't (and never will --- thank goodness) and Slackware.. As I recall even the "build-you-own" distros, like Arch and Gentoo are sucking systemd's crank....

Re: systemd

[Type44Q]

This is where I'm at, my first Slackware box would be old enough to drink at this point

Nicely aged perhaps but likely still rather undrinkable...

Re:systemd

[dreamchaser]

You have a valid reason and aren't acting like a zealot. I've been using Slackware since the 90s as well, though I have a Macbook and . Windows gaming rig as well.

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

> it's also very easy to back up or replace the init scripts, they're just scripts!

As far as I can tell, this flavor of Not Invented Here includes a generation of programmers who studied C++ as part of their CS degree but not shell scripting. Thus they look at Bourne and see something that looks like Perl, and decide to rewrite the whole thing in compiled C++ because to them it is easier to understand.

I've seen an absurd number of pro-systemd posts taking about how "old" or hard to maintain the shell script init files are. WTF?

Re:systemd

[buchner.johannes]

Gentoo has openrc by default, you can switch over to systemd if you want.

BSDs are developing systemd-bsd for a dependency-tree based init system.

Re:systemd

[Aighearach]

I think it is pretty funny. I love systemd, but I really hate NetworkManager. If it is a laptop or something that is stuck on wifi then it is OK, but if I have a real network I can't imagine wanting that nonsense bouncing my connections.

Even on Fedora you can run SysVinit if you want. People get their neckbeards all twisted up over the mere dependency that the packaging system has. I mean, they're so exclusive, they can't tolerate that the unused default software might have a few bits installed. As if any of it was really that exclusive and royal to begin with! And as if the default [everything else] isn't also installed?! It makes sense in a lot of cases to just install the default, and if you want to use something else, you also install that. It isn't always going to be a full replacement, because that's just extra packages to manage.

Embedded systems are separate distros, so I know it isn't the 128k of disk space.

Re: systemd

[Aighearach]

You haven't seen those new vacuum blenders, have you?

Re:systemd

[Aighearach]

No it isn't.

Just use Fedora, and choose sysvinit.

Duh.

It is like a holy war straight out of Monty Python. Everybody told them that they could choose which to run, but they just couldn't comprehend it. Were they supposed to say some sort of incantation afterwards? "You can use whichever you want, hontou ni hontou! Jingjing!"

Re:systemd

[SirCowMan]

I'm not sure it's absolutely fabulous. All init systems basically work the same, when they work - when and how they fail is where they are measured. Sysv, openrc, I've had 0 problems with these over the last 20 years, something might not start up without a little intervention - but the system would, and it could be fixed. Systemd, on the other hand, currently running on maybe half my servers, generally works - but not all the time, and that's the big difference to my mind. For example, I had a netbook that I couldn't get a systemd distro on, as it go into a loop - start up bluetooth, bluetooth would fail for some obscure driver reason, I imagine it was some sort of dependency as systemd would try to start it again, over and over - leaving the system essentially hung. That's the sort of way systemd fails, and why my primary laptop runs gentoo without it.

Re:systemd

[Vlijmen Fileer]

Your comment is now valued at "Score:-1, Flamebait".
I'd say that is indicative for the hysterical zeal with which systemd followers hammer down on anything and anybody who points out the fundamental and dangerous failures in it.

Re:systemd

[Tenebrousedge]

I've written a small book about bash. Tell me what about it you think is an improvement on any other scripting language.

Bash as a shell is mediocre. Bash as a programming language is shit. The language of Unix is C, and the Bash fanatics are the ones that cut their teeth on Unix in the mid-1990s and haven't learned anything since. There's a whole generation of programmers who didn't bother to learn anything about cgroups or why systemd exists in the first place.

Re:systemd

[Barsteward]

quite right too as its full of nonsense as usual. if there were "fundamental and dangerous failures in it" then i doubt redhat et al would be giving it to their customers - hence the flamebait indication.

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

complete bullshit

Anything factual to contribute?

Or not, as that would require some sort of knowledge?

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo's primary, default init is OpenRC. It has a systemd USE flag, systemd profiles, and systemd unit files, but you can USE="-systemd", select the correct profile, and if you're that picky, add INSTALL_MASK="/usr/lib/systemd /etc/systemd" to /etc/make.conf to prevent systemd from ever hitting your Gentoo machine.

Even if someone makes a systemd-powered live installer, there's no way systemd makes its way to the default stage3. The uproar would be ridiculous and thanks to Slackware, Devuan and friends, an exodus to another Gentoo flavor or another distro type altogether would happen. Gentoo is politically not in its best shape, and can't afford to make drastic changes like changing init without pissing off a lot of people who are ready to fork or leave at the first sign of bullshit.

Re: systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

But systemd really is bad. I had a server fail during an apt upgrade, thanks to systemd. 1.9 years of uptime. Then dbus died from library mismatch.

No biggie, I can restart any dbus-dependant service - except that pid 1 is now one of them! That one is only restartable by reboot under these circumstances.

But I did not want a reboot, it involves resetting all the bios settings this old board no longer remembers. As well as figuring out the names of the boot and root filesystems - last reboot was a hassle and is long forgotten. Grub and linux names not being the same, several disks including sw raid.

I got the mail service going by running systemd in a debug mode. Didn't work properly, but at least I could kludge-start services.

Systemvinit never did this to me. I may have been forced to restart a single service now and then - or edit an init script which is plain shellscript. It never gave me a dysfunctional pid 1 that everything else needed to communicate with.

Re: systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

I program in C. I still use bash scripts for automating simple tasks. No compiling, and works on any architecture.

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

quite right too as its full of nonsense as usual. if there were "fundamental and dangerous failures in it" then i doubt redhat et al would be giving it to their customers - hence the flamebait indication.

MHM! https://www.agwa.name/blog/post/how_to_crash_systemd_in_one_tweet

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me started! Ever thought that some might not even WANT cgroups support in their system? systemd mandating it is a PITA! Just like relying on journalctl program running on a working booted system to diagnose in log why same system didn't boot. And suggesting to use gcc to adjust a system's boot behavior you must be kidding me .

Wtong, those experienced ancestors - of nitwits like you who stand on the shoulders of those veterans to pretend you were giants yourselves - have chosen shellscripting -- not bash! -- since it is the best tool for the job at hand. You not understanding this tells more about you and the problem with systemd than about the veterans and sysvinit..

Re:systemd

[gweihir]

Indeed. The systemd idiots are waging an emotional campaign on a technological issue. That is about the most stupid thing possible. And they continue to demonstrate their utter cluelessness at any possible opportunity. At this time, the systemd proponents resemble a fanatical sect more than anything else.

Re:systemd

[gweihir]

"Appeal to authority" fallacy. Well, you have proven to be stupid before and you continue to do so. At least you are consistent.

Re: systemd

[gweihir]

While I expected I could stay away from all the systemd failure, I recently got hit as well. I have a netbook that is used for one purpose: Access to serial consoles via USB-serial adapter. Accidentally, it got downgraded to use systemd. And what does systemd break? Right, the serial adapter! The kernel detects it just fine, but then systemd and its tools mess with it and _remove_ it without good reason and without any useful diagnostic. That is _not_ the Linux I have come to know an love.

Of course, removing systemd again fixed the issue, but one has to ask who such utter crap can make it into a supposedly stable release.

Re:systemd

[Kazymyr]

486DX50 (yes not DX2) on Octek Hippo DCA2 motherboard with 16MB RAM and a total of 5 HDDs (3 IDE and 2 SCSI) salvaged from older computers in a RAID0 configuration for a total of 1.3GB, with Slackware 3.6

Re:systemd

[Tenebrousedge]

Don't get me started! Ever thought that some might not even WANT cgroups support in their system?

In an embedded system maybe. Otherwise I'm sure I'd be thrilled to hear a non-stupid reason for that.

systemd mandating it is a PITA!

Because you'd rather not run a recent kernel? Either you'll never know that cgroups are there or you've already recompiled both your kernel and systemd/OpenRC to disable them.

Just like relying on journalctl program running on a working booted system to diagnose in log why same system didn't boot.

The binary logs contain the normal text that any other log would have, plus a short checksum or somesuch that serves as an integrity check. They're legible with or without journalctl. However, journalctl is a rather nice way to dig into said logs.

And suggesting to use gcc to adjust a system's boot behavior you must be kidding me .

Outside of sysvinit pretty much all init systems are written in C. None require you to use anything but a text editor to change process behavior.

...veterans...have chosen shellscripting -- not bash! -- since it is the best tool for the job at hand.

Again, I literally wrote a book on the subject, and I beg to differ. However, if you have some argument to support the notion that process management is best done with shell scripts, you'd do a lot better to actually make that argument instead. Relying solely on argument from authority is not going to get you very far. Generally, you seem to be ignorant of the many reasons and methods which have led to sysvinit's replacement, so I can't imagine you have much of an argument to make, but do knock yourself out.

Re:systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

MX-16 derivative of AntiX is a near perfect System-D free lightweight Debian-based distro.

Choice is good

[mx b]

I'm glad to see Devuan gearing up for a release. While Debian is not my favored flavor of linux, and I personally don't see any problems with systemd, I also recognize that this is exactly why different distros exist: we all have different needs.

So cheers to the Devuan team on this upcoming release, and best wishes for many more.

I hope this will help end the systemd "debate". I get a little tired seeing the constant re-treading of which one is better. If you like systemd or don't care, you have distro options. If you don't like systemd and DO care, you also have at least one distro to choose from. Use the tech that makes most sense for you.

Re:Choice is good

[LVSlushdat]

Actually at least two, the other being Slackware.. From what I gather, Pat Volkering, Slackware's head-honcho hates systemd with a burning passion......

Re:Choice is good

[Anonymous Coward]

new space-age dongles shouldnt change the backbone of.crucial infrastructure. systemd is a trojan horse.

for how long will it be viable?

[Anonymous Coward]

GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon have been removed from tasksel, but can still be installed although they "are known to suffer from some glitches due to the lack of systemd

Thing is, I consider KDE the only desktop GUI worth using anymore. (Notice I didn't say "only Linux GUI worth using". Haven't found a better one on another OS either). The way these things tend to unfold over time is the "glitches" become "bugs" and the "bugs" become "doesn't work at all without heavy merging work" and that becomes "impossible to keep working without people dedicated to the task".

I wonder if this is going to be a viable thing to do over time as dependencies on systemd in upstream software become deeper.

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[yeupou]

That is unfortunately a serious concern. A question I asked in 2015 here https://linux.slashdot.org/sto... and I am afraid situation is only worse now.

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who are working on GNOME, and most distro maintainers, use mostly systemd, so naturally support for alternatives dies off.
But, IIRC, I heard in principle the GNOME people were open to systemd alternatives, if someone would work on supporting those (by way of testing/coding etc). But that doesn't seem to happen enough.
I believe there were some attempts but those failed to live up to their standards, which was by some interpreted as "fuck off you non-systemd pariah".
Don't have any good pointers at hand, but here is some info on which problems should be worked on.

I don't know about KDE but perhaps it's the same. Of course if nobody works on supporting alternatives then eventually alternatives are not supported, simple as that.
Perhaps if Devuan is done with releasing, they can fork KDE/GNOME (if they feel the upstreams aren't open to accepting patches for alternatives).

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[TWX]

What's going-on in non-Linux? BSD and the like? Shouldn't their windowmanagers port over to a non-systemd Linux distro easily enough?

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[HiThere]

The interesting thing is, the last I heard both Gnome and KDE ran on BSDs. And the FreeBSD website currently lists both of them as choices.

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[TWX]

Sounds to me like there's a pathway to make them both work without systemd then, even if it requires looking at what might be unique about the BSD port.

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[nukenerd]

Sounds to me like there's a pathway to make [Gnome and KDE] both work without systemd then, even if it requires looking at what might be unique about the BSD port.

I am using KDE on Devuan beta and the only thing I have noticed that does not work in KDE (and does not even exist as an option) is a suspend mode. I can still suspend from a root command line though with pm-suspend

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[Aighearach]

No coding or porting is needed, it is only a matter of package management.

None of the systemd-haters who claim on the internet to be sysadmins are really sysadmins. There are lots of complainers who claim to have technical Special Needs that systemd doesn't meet, the problem is none of them are technical enough to manage a fancy zipfile that holds the configuration they want together. If only they had a Jr sysadmin or web programmer among their numbers, they could just maintain a PureGUIwithNOsystemdPackageDependency.rpm or whatever.

But if they understood how to create what they want, and how easy it is, they'd also accidentally learn that they don't have to run systemd at all to use any of those window systems, all they have to do is let a small part of it get installed to meet the requirements of the package manager.

Gnome and KDE don't want to have to know which init system you have installed, and they have to make sure various support files get installed for various use cases. That is why there are package dependencies. Because distro maintainers have experience with which dependencies need to be installed all the time so that features can be activated from config files, and which ones don't. Which ones create extra work if you want to leave them out, and which ones don't. For the same reasons, when I install GCC on x86-linux and I also install a cross-compiler for ARM, I end up with support for all sorts of CPUs in addition to the one I actually have. Maybe I'm only trying to target one ARM microcontroller from Texas Instruments, but I end up with SPARC support at the same time. It is not actually a problem. Things are grouped into packages for reasons.

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[Vlijmen Fileer]

"I consider KDE the only desktop GUI worth using anymore."

That put a wry smile on my face. KDE is the desktop equivalent of the html blink tag, and Word's marching ants. Each new version I give it a try again, and each time its basic failing, of being far too intrusive, and having a UI design seemingly thought up by a drunkard on LSD, is still there.

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[ruir]

If you are so smaart, maybe you should lunch your own linux distribution. And yeah, many of us are running Linux pretty well without system.
However, it is no longer a question of package management. Several packages have already dropped support for other boot managers.
You would better inform yourself better oh mighty one.

Re: for how long will it be viable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, neither gnome nor kde is needed. I run linux desktops without. For myself as well as for non-savy users who don't even know they're on linux.

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[Anonymous Coward]

If he is even smarter than that, he won't waste energy creating his own distro if he is satisfied with his current distro.

Re:for how long will it be viable?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a nitwit premise. First, you can be perfectly capable of working around all of the idiocy that systemd is imposing and still hate it as a concept and as a cancerous tumor that is growing in the Linux ecosystem.

Second, silly to suggest that it's a good use of anyone's time to fight build time dependencies and configurations in a distribution that isn't specifically committed to making sure that things work without systemd. Any effort that you put into such folly can be thrown out the window the next time they push an update. Just because something *can* be done doesn't make it a good idea.

It's much less effort in the long run to just switch to a distro that doesn't engage in such foolishness in the first place. There are many more options than most people realize. http://without-systemd.org

how's the HW driver support?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the NVidia hardware drivers work OK on this? I'm wondering if my games collection would be OK on it. The open source graphics drivers aren't suitable for modern games, so it's closed source or bust for that. One thing about Ubuntu is they make getting the gfx drivers and keeping them up to date effortless.

Ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

If only Ubuntu would rebase from this, it would help cement it's position as the server OS of choice, and renew interest for it on the desktop.

You are an idiot, STFU, GTFO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian violated it's charter when it made the systemd move. No if's, and's, or butt'$; at this point in time, Debian is mimicking RHat while Devuan is sitting as a Slackware alternarive.

The accounted flexibility is in the developers of Devuan as seeing that Debian stagnated inro proprietary hands now.

Perhaps Devuan will promote a target experience and not a constant series of releaae candidate naming schemes like all the others.

Re:You are an idiot, STFU, GTFO!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a well thought out response. Thank you so much for contributing to this discussion in such a impactful way.

Re: You are an idiot, STFU, GTFO!

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words you have no clue what so ever.

Re:You are an idiot, STFU, GTFO!

[Vlijmen Fileer]

"Debian violated it's charter when it made the systemd move. No if's, and's, or butt'$; at this point in time, Debian is mimicking RHat ..."

Precisely!
All knowledgeable people dumped RedHat like the pile of stinking poo it had become very long ago already for changing to be commercialised, non-compatible, and dumping Unix philosophy.
Debian essentially did the same with their accepting systemd.

Did try RC1, works fine as it is, glitch for KDE

[what about]

Comments on the RC1

Install for the default version works well

installing the kde version was not available as install option but needs
# apt-get install task-kde-desktop

wicd integration works, but NetworkManager does not
some issues on handling permissions smb4k does not work as normal user but needs to be run using kdesudo

I am really looking forward to use it on all my machines.

systemd surely is a NSA work

Going to test RC2....

KDE and Cinnamon can run fine without systemd.

[sombragris]

GNOME, KDE, and Cinnamon have been removed from tasksel, but can still be installed although they "are known to suffer from some glitches due to the lack of systemd."

Cannot say anything on GNOME, but KDE (both KDE4 and Plasma 5) run fine in Slackware. As for Cinnamon, there's also an excellent distribution for Slackware, Cinnamon Slackbuilds . There are also implementations for Xfce, MATE, Lumina and LX-Qt, all up to date and fully functional. No glitches due to lack of systemd at all.

I'm typing this on a Slackware64-current box, using the latest KDE Plasma with no trace of systemd.

Since Slackware manages to avoid systemd like the plague even to this day, using modern desktop environments in a systemd-free environment should be no problem.

Re:KDE and Cinnamon can run fine without systemd.

[LVSlushdat]

Didn't Pat Volkerung (sic) the Slackware "head-honcho" say systemd was evil and would NOT appear on Slackware as long as he controlled it??? Seems I heard something to that effect a while back...

Re:KDE and Cinnamon can run fine without systemd.

[walterbyrd]

Actually he said that systemd may be inevitable for Slackware.

Re:KDE and Cinnamon can run fine without systemd.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm running Devuan on two systems, one with XFCE and one with KDE. No problems with either of them.

Upgrade breaks shutdown

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried "upgrading" from Debian to Devuan's second RC. My system no longer shuts down and Network Manager was swapped out for wicd. The systemd software is still installed, it just doesn't run as init by default. There are fewer working desktops available for Devuan. Otherwise, the two appear to be nearly identical.

Re:Upgrade breaks shutdown

[TWX]

The only Devuan install I've done was a fresh install. I'm using it as a multimedia PC in my entertainment center and it's working fine.

Re:Upgrade breaks shutdown

[drinkypoo]

Yes, likewise. I have Devuan installed on a low-power Athlon X2 3800+ system with 8GB RAM and 8GB flash (it was lying around) and I'm molding it into a CarPC. Would have just used Debian if not for systemd. Kodi, Navit. Works a treat, except that I got corruption with the nvidia driver. That might just be me running into the limits of my PicoPSU, though. Nouveau works fine.

Re:Upgrade breaks shutdown

[Anonymous Coward]

systemd software still installed? No way, check again!

Nothing to see here; move along!

[Anonymous Coward]

The butt-hurt is strong with this one.

MX Linux

[supertall]

For those interested in a polished out-of-the-box distro that does not use systemd, MXLinux is based on Debian Jessie and defaults to sysVinit. I'm a fan.

Re:MX Linux

[gomadtroll]

+1, another satisfied user..like the lack of noise..
greg

MATE

[Anonymous Coward]

MATE works just fine without systemd

Re:Not RedHat

[gweihir]

Most clueless statement so far. Presented as absolute truth in addition. Nice!

I'm using Devuan

[Anonymous Coward]

with the Mate desktop 1.81 - gtk2 - version which works as expected.

if you are familiar withe gnome 2 or Mate you will be right at home.

The default installer was simple, direct, and quick. There are several other operating systems on the ufei disk I used for installation. I do not use secure boot. I chose to manually partition of the disk. The simplicity and directness of the installer made it a joy to use for me.

Installation offers an option to enable a net connection and install updates during the installation.

I first installed in a location where there weren't any net connections available. Installing this way was less than optimal because of the minimal nature of the installation and the bugs in the default debian/xfce desktop.

When I rebooted and tried to get updates for the system I was unable to get a net connection up..

I reinstalled when I had a net connection, enabled downloading updates as part of the installation, choose the mate desktop and waited for the installation to complete. It was a long uneventful installation.
When installation completed it rebooted into a login screen - slim - and a mate desktop.

NetworkManager may be part of the distribution, but the NetworkManager panel applet is not yet enabled for the mate desktop. Wicd is in the notification area (system tray) for network management.

Firefox-esr 45.9 is part of the applications installed by default. Thunderbird is in the application repository.. These are both gtk2 applications.

if you don't want to work from the command line, Synaptic is available.

Devuan defaults to a root password requirement for admin tasks. Sudo is installed by default but needs to be configured.

Boot up and shutdown are very quick as is the system as a whole. The default kernel is 3.16. There is a procedure to change the kernel to a latter version but I don't know what it is. I haven't used debian directly for twenty years.

My prejudices:

I've used Linux since it first was released as the Caldera Network Desktop with a gui called Looking Glass from Viisx corp.

There are a few teething problems with Devuan, but I've decided this is going to be my default distribution.

I am appalled at systemd, what gnome and kde have become and expect a never ending series of api changes on gtk3 till gtk4 replaces it.

I'm fine with GTK2 and all the customization i've done including themes and icons which don't move to the gtk3 mate desktop.

pigsycyberbully

[pigsycyberbully]

What is going on today something special? LinuxMint 17.1 (rebecca)
WARNING: /etc/snort/rules/community-web-misc.rules(68) GID 1 SID 100000336 in rule duplicates previous rule. Ignoring old rule.#012
4150 Snort rules read
3476 detection rules
0 decoder rules
    Couldn't find support for device at '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.4/0000:03:00.0': not supported by any plugin
Rule application order: activation->dynamic->pass->drop->sdrop->reject->alert->log
WARNING: failed to copy account pic to .face file: Error opening file '//pigsys_home/pigsy/.face': Permission denied
Losing network connection reconnecting hello Ubuntu server

I'm on board

[Bruce Perens]

I installed Devuan on a laptop and will probably expand it to my other systems over time. I installed 1.0 and the absence of NetworkManager was a problem, so it's nice to see that this new version includes it.

So explain to this greybeard, pottytrainer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain why GNOME, KDE and Cinnamon suffer from glitches from something supposed to replace init with something "better". Because as far as I can tell, this indicates systemd is doing a fuckload more than just being a component in the OS but is the same system virus that MS claimed IE was, inseperable form all and every part of their OS, as systemd seems to be for those three DEs.

Which is fucking stupid design, for a start, totally against UNIX design philosophy, and precisely why systemd is railed against by us greybeards.

But maybe you can explain why this is not evidence of the infection of systemd but a result of the bad programming choices or the dependence on some arcane internal thing with systemd and not its fault.

Why does systemd have to be so obnoxious?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as someone who has no real skin in the game either way I just don't understand the point of systemd or what benefit it gives me as a user who has a Linux server to run some basic services... This lack of perceived benefit makes Devuan a compelling option.

Since this systemd crap started kernel logs are full of nothing but systemd-journal messages.

Logs are kept in a binary format and extracting data from them takes forever.

Systemd is constantly using CPU time . In fact it uses more than any other application. I have no idea how any of what it's doing benefits me in any way. I just don't see how it can possibly be doing anything that benefits me.

Being hit with typical Internet noise... SSH scan probes and shit is bad enough... what makes it infinitely worse is systemd logging overhead associated with it dwarfing the impact of server processes responding to such spam.

Sometimes I login and see systemd logging processes pegging entire cores.

I am sick and tired of the change everything all the time service management. It seems every day I log into a system somewhere and there is a completely different set of CLI magic necessary to perform basic tasks.

If systemd were doing something new and great you think I would as an end user know about it and appreciate it... as it stands can't help but feel too much of what passes for progress is simply rearranging deck chairs... semantic shell games that just cause unnecessary fragmentation and don't really help anyone or improve anything in any tangible sense.

Re:Why does systemd have to be so obnoxious?

[nukenerd]

Speaking as someone who has no real skin in the game either way I just don't understand the point of systemd or what benefit it gives me as a user who has a Linux server to run some basic services...

They say it boots quicker. So when you or I have to reboot (as I do about once every 3 months) we won't have time to arrange our chair nicely while it boots. That's it, I think.

Re:Why does systemd have to be so obnoxious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think they've removed that killer feature (not deterministic enough to be stable), saying it isn't really important because SystemD brings so many other benefits as it's not just an init system.

Re:Why does systemd have to be so obnoxious?

[ashkante]

So you're basically saying that systemd is the "Lotus Notes" of init?

Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[shoor]

From my (admittedly casual) perusal of these followups that is what it seems like. Come on, who is willing to say:

I'm pro-systemd and I'm proud!

and sign with their slashdot monicker.

In case anyone is curious, I would like to avoid systemd myself, and I resent that it's getting hard to do that. As for why I'm opposed, I don't have any facts I can cite as clinching arguments. I do see mysterious things happening on my latest Ubuntu and Mint distros that I don't know the cause of, but they don't happen on slackware. As an old time Unix guy (going back to BSD 4.2), the whole principle of systemd, not having init scripts that can be broken down and fixed with an editor, just seems wrong to me, and the claims I've seen about the advantages of systemd seem to have a suspicious amount of hand-waving, and a lot of "we know what we're doing you ignorant, backward luddite twerp!" to them. That's all.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Anonymous Coward]

As for why I'm opposed, it's because I'm a fucking dumbass moron.

Fixed that for you.

Re: Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you would take your cock out of your brother's mouth, you wouldn't sound like a Millennial transvestite every time you post here.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[shoor]

Mr Coward, I put the words "ignorant, backward, luddite, twerp" into the mouth of a hypothetical systemd advocate. Your post reminds me that systemd folks don't use such language.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if they posted all their responses as Kay and Lennart, people would eventually catch on.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Spasmodeus]

I'm mostly pro systemd, but I see no reason to be "proud" about init system preferences. I refuse to become partisan about it.

I didn't like systemd at first, but I made the effort to start learning it, and I've come to like a lot of its features.

I don't bother engaging in these "discussions" (more like Two Minutes Hate), because most of the anti-systemd commenters are so rabid and irrational that they are impervious to facts or reason. I expect I'll be called an NSA shill or Pottering's cock-holster just for this comment.

I'm all for choice, though, so I'm glad that there are non-systemd distros available. I'd like to think it would mollify the anti-systemd folks, but I'm sure they'll still reflexively foam at the mouth every time systemd is mentioned.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Anonymous Coward]

nice repost!, Oh , and death to systemd.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Kabukiwookie]

I'm all for choice, though, so I'm glad that there are non-systemd distros available. I'd like to think it would mollify the anti-systemd folks, but I'm sure they'll still reflexively foam at the mouth every time systemd is mentioned.

Well, one of the reasons, people who don't want system-D foam at the mouth is that initially this choice was taken away. Quite a lot of people had to put in a lot of work to make sure that there was a choice, something pro-system-D people didn't appear to actually give one shit about when they were pushing hard to move all distros to use system-D.

It's funny that, people getting upset because they have to do (a lot of) extra work, just because some other group of people push their agenda and don't give a damn about the consequences for anyone else as long as they benefit themselves. Who could have imagined that would upset people.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Aighearach]

I'm pro systemd and proud!

Activating services when a network connection comes, and without sucking at it, is a hugely good feature. And just a tiny example.

People whine and cry, whine and cry about loving their SysV init scripts. Personally, I think they're disgusting. Almost everything about SysV is disgusting and that was always true. That was even true when it was the best option, which is simply no longer true.

Systemd is modular and anybody who tells you differently is an idiot who didn't check, or can't comprehend how software is built and distributed. Yes, the different modules are in the same source code repository. No, that doesn't mean it is monolithic.

And even funnier, I'm still using all the SysV init scripts that I was actually using before. All the major distros support using both systems together, and if I already have a customized init script, I'm still using it! But those scripts are disgusting, I'm unlikely to want to create new ones when I need custom behavior in the future.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[jimbo]

I'm the spawn of Satan; I'm happily using Ubuntu with KDE, systemd and whatever audio subsystem it uses.

I really don't have strong opinions. I've created and set up daemons on systemd and it was easy and logical. I've done the same for decades before systemd was a thing. In both cases I first had to learn how it was done.

I've also used numerous desktop environments and I always made things work without harming my precious productivity. These days I find most desktop environments are just fine for me, just like I've happily used several different init/system management systems.

I wouldn't bring pride into, pride is often a bad thing but I enjoy using the systemd system management environment. It's no biggie either way though.

I hope that there is a lot of people out there who are relaxed, open minded and for whom it works and for that reason simply don't have reason to get involved in these flame wars.

Then I understand there's a minority with real problems with systemd in production environments and I'm happy they have other options.

Live and let live.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[mvdwege]

Well, one of the reasons, people who don't want system-D foam at the mouth is that initially this choice was taken away.

Poppycock. Everyone lived with SysV shortcomings and either did nothing and bitch about it, or tried to paper it over with bandaids like daemontools. Lennart & Co did the work to build an alternative, as did Ubuntu, and systemd won fair and square in the marketplace of those who matter: distribution builders.

You always had a choice if you didn't like what your distribution did: do it yourself.

I would wish Devuan all the luck, if they had more vision than "we hate everything with systemd in the name".

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[mvdwege]

I like systemd. It is the only viable alternative right now to the old mess of SysV, and my primary use case is resource control: systemd can control process resources from the equivalent of setting a nice(1) value up to complete containerisation. In fact, I think it takes less from Windows (as the haters maintain) as it takes from Big Iron systems in terms of process isolation and management capabilities.

It has warts: it feels overengineered, and using dashes in unit file names to represent / was a dumb idea: I hate having to escape options with a double dash just in case I have to manage a root unit.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Barsteward]

nicely put... they put "no choice" when they should say "too lazy to learn something new or change distros"

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Barsteward]

Most of us get tired of seeing the same whiny old ignorant posts against systemd and as devuan is getting closer to a full release maybe we can hope the anti's take their ignorance there and stop polluting the forums with total crap and lies.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[thegarbz]

No we're not.

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Anonymous Coward]

it pretends to be fucking modular.

its fucking not really..

pile of fucking unstable shite..

asnd the response to bugs from the systemDickhead team is fucking insane

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Aighearach]

If you can't find a module's makefile, try in its folder!

Re:Are all pro-systemd folks anonymous cowards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi!

I see you like being an antisocial idiot rambling cluelessly. Would like to connect with more stupid people? Either way, please join dng@lists.dyne.org / https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng to tell others how much you hate systemd. The hate-loving community of Devuan will be glad to give a big welcome to you and you will find a great echo chamber of like-minded haters!

Keep hating,
- The VUA Group -

That's the problem with systemd, not just an init

[raymorris]

> Rather than forking ALL OF DEBIAN so you can keep sysvinit, why not fork systemd to use only the init?

That's the entire problem with systemd - it forgot it was supposed to be an init. Systemd has consumed more and more of the OS, and in ways that require *applications* to have dependencies on systemd.

If it were just a bad init system, people would complain, but most would deal with it. Some would use a different init. Systemd doesn't work that way. Like a particularly nasty rootkit, you have to replace half the system to get rid of systemd.

Re:Did try RC1, works fine as it is, glitch for KD

[Anonymous Coward]

systems surely is a NSA work

That is a strong accusation.

I have 3 Distro's installed

[present_arms]

I have 3 Distros installed all systemd infection free. Slackware, PCLinuxOS and Devuan, all 3 have no problems at all, and it's just nice to use, oh and yeah i do serious work with all 3, my friend on the PClinuxOS kind of things even runs the PCLinuxOS website, forum and other nice things from it. Slackware to keep my hand in the "old" ways of doing things, for example PCLinuxOS you can literally configure everything from the GUI which can be nice to get some things up and running fast, but slack lets my cli knowledge works it's thing to :) oh and well done Devuan for making me think of the old Debian ways :)

Re:Not RedHat

[nukenerd]

Only RedHat derived distributions or Ubuntu are worth using for any serious work.

Idiot

Huge huge fan! Thank you devuan developers!

[Anonymous Coward]

Huge huge fan! Thank you devuan developers!

Launchd

[cadeon]

Is anyone using launchd on Linux? If I recall correctly it's modern like systemd, but primarily in it focused like it should be.

Re:Launchd

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you! I have been sifting through so much crap to find this. "Surely, someone will fork SystemD, and decouple everything not related to init? An architectural problem is not an unsolvable problem, especially in new software."

And so it happened, that the light shone over the horizon, and the trolls were turned to stone. Captcha: vilified

Re:Launchd

[Barsteward]

how many things are actually coupled to "init" PID1? or are you confused between systemd the init program and systemd the project - easy mistake to make when you don't research anything

Re:Did try RC1, works fine as it is, glitch for KD

[Anonymous Coward]

says the anonymous coward, of which I am also one. Even if Systemd isn't the work of the NSA, it certainly suits their interests. Conveniently enough.

IMO: Radical changes are for radical improvements

[walterbyrd]

Systemd is certainly a radical change. It takes over everything. It completely throws away POSIX, and the UNIX philosophy. Systemd changes everything that made Linux, Linux.

And for what? I see no substantial improvements. Just the opposite. I see a less stable system, more difficult to use, everything is hidden from the users.

Systemd may benefit Red Hat, but it does not benefit anybody else.

JMHO, of course.

If you like systemd, u will love ms-windows

[walterbyrd]

Everything that is great about systemd, is even better in ms-windows.

Want an OS that is controlled by a single for-profit corporation? A corporation that cares more about it's shareholders, than end users.

Want everything hidden from the users? Everything in binary.

Want an OS that has all kinds of mystery crap going on in the background?

Want a less stable OS, and mysterious changes forced on you all the time?

Want an OS designed by people who hate the UNIX philosophy, and have deep contempt for UNIX grey beards?

MS-Windows has better drivers, better graphics, way more apps - especially games. MS-Windows apps are way more standard.

Re:Did try RC1, works fine as it is, glitch for KD

[Barsteward]

they didn't land on the moon either... it s big conspiracy

debian without systemd

[Anonymous Coward]

https://wiki.debian.org/systemd
> Should one desire to install without systemd, i.e use sysvinit-core instead (old sysV5 init), it is possible to use preseed to replace systemd with sysvinit... ...
>There may still be a few bits of systemd installed,
> ==but at **least* init itself is not systemd**==
> and
> ==cleaning up any remaining pieces **should not be too hard**.==

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
completely neglecting the fact that systemd has its tentacles in everything now. I *really* want to see a single "I did it, debian without systemd, was just a matter of a few %WHATEVER%" by one of the zealots that call others names for not knowing how easy it was to get rid of this cancer. With PROOF like a ps|grep systemd. It's not anymore about not running systemd as PID1, it's about *getting rid* of it, completely

Followup to my own post:Are all pro-systemd

[shoor]

I was thinking about the James Brown song "Say It Loud! I'm Black and I'm Proud!" when I put in the "I'm pro-systemd and I'm proud" remark. Maybe I should have included the "Say It Loud!" line. Then again, how many of y'all are old enough to remember that song.

For myself, I wanted to show honestly my position that I'm wary of systemd but not an expert and not trying to present myself as somebody who 'knows'. But one of the things that makes me wary is that while a lot of people who make anti-systemd posts do so as themselves (or at least not as ACs), the ones who were pro-systemd were ACs, and that seemed kinda fishy to me.

Anybody who takes a position one way or the other is going to catch some flames, and I can see how, in a forum where most people are against systemd (like slashdot) maybe pro-systemd folks figure it's not worth all the flaming to say what they think. But some did post in response to my call and I appreciate that.

Re:Not RedHat

[Anonymous Coward]

You might want to re-read the text as a tale of caution.

Re:I'm using Devuan - update re: nm-applet

[Anonymous Coward]

Nm-applet is part of gnome-network-manager which is not installed by default. I did not realize this.

Wicd is the default network connection tool
.
After installing gnome-network- manager, removing wicd from the list of startup applications in mate-control-center and then rebooting, nn-applet was in the system-tray and functioned as expected.