Systemd-Free Devuan 2.0 'ASCII' Officially Released (devuan.org)

"Dear Init Freedom Lovers..." begins the announcement at Devuan.org: We are happy to announce that Devuan GNU+Linux 2.0 ASCII Stable is finally available. Devuan is a GNU+Linux distribution committed to providing a universal, stable, dependable, free software operating system that uses and promotes alternatives to systemd and its components.

Devuan 2.0 ASCII runs on several architectures. Installer CD and DVD ISOs, as well as desktop-live and minimal-live ISOs, are available for i386 and amd64. Ready-to-use images can be downloaded for a number of ARM platforms and SOCs, including Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, OrangePi, BananaPi, OLinuXino, Cubieboard, Nokia and Motorola mobile phones, and several Chromebooks, as well as for Virtualbox/QEMU/Vagrant. The Devuan 2.0 ASCII installer ISOs offer a variety of Desktop Environments including Xfce, KDE, MATE, Cinnamon, LXQt, with others available post-install. The expert install mode now offers a choice of either SysVinit or OpenRC as init system...

We would like to thank the entire Devuan community for the continued support, feedback, and collaboration....
The release notes include information on Devuan's new network of package repository mirrors, and they're also touting their "direct and easy upgrade paths" from Devuan Jessie, Debian Jessie and Debian Stretch.

Comments

Re: No one cares

[phantomfive]

Log message problems can be fixed (maybe by a different team, though), if that were the worst thing, it wouldn't be a problem. The problem is systemd is crappy architecture, and you don't want to build stuff on top of crappy architecture to get it embedded deeply within the system, you want to keep it flexible and replaceable. That's why this project is good even if you never use it, because it will improve the quality of the software you do use. And those people who do like systemd can use it.

Re:The Coveted Bruce Perens endosement :-)

[jaromil]

Many thanks Bruce. Your endorsement means a lot to me and other Devuan developers.

Re: No one cares

[phantomfive]

Perhaps you have an alternative explanation, if so I would like to hear it.

Yeah, I do, I discussed it at length in my journal, with this particular entry being the core. Lennart Poettering spent a lot of time working with distro builders and figuring out what would make things easier for them. So that one use case it does well, and I commend it for that.

And I would say there are other use cases it does well, but that is the most important one. Why am I against it? Again I discussed it at length, but the short answer I will restate from above: when pieces of the system become too entwined, that's bad architecture.

Re: No one cares

[jaromil]

We hope the inclusion of OpenRC in ASCII's installer (expert mode) can be a concrete answer to your question. OpenRC is also what good BSD folks are adopting.

Re: No one cares

[Ol Olsoc]

You're not paying for this racoon we are setting loose in your kitchen

I don't remember anyone forcing me to use a systemd distro.

Exactly. Systemd is mainly something that allows the ford versus chevy crew to get outraged about.

I guess they got tired of the text editor wars.

It isn't like there are no options if a person doesn't like systemd. In fact, for the most discriminating Linux cognoscenti, they can roll their own, with not a thing to disturb their delicate sensibilities : http://www.linuxfromscratch.or...

Re:No one cares

[geoskd]

Wait, they used start-stop-daemon in a unit file, WTF?

I have seen a lot of this. Developers who have an existing package under upstart, and saw the switch to systemd, wanted to be ready, so they "wrapped" their upstart script in a systemd unit file, and pretended it was all good. The practical result is that the package works fine under normal conditions, but any failure turns into a complete undiagnosable mess because the developer didn't take the time to understand what systemd is or how it works.

systemd does have one fundamental flaw, and it is the only truly real one it ever had: The documentation sucks ass. The one thing it really needs is a how-to instruction on porting from an upstart service to a systemd service, written by someone who actually knows how to do it properly instead of the droves of rank amateurs out there who "got something working" and are just documenting their own screwed up attempt. RedHat has a few examples, but they are geared to RedHat, and most were written in the last year or so, which did absolutely no good for the people who needed this 2+ years ago.