Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#12I am not Linux admin, but I've been using Linux managed by others on servers for many, many years and I have a question: Is that 'systemd' thing is so crucial and important to devote so much effort to create brand new Linux distribution.
I have only vague picture what systemd is doing, I can imagine that there could be something better (as always in IT), but is this really that important?
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#13I never understood why the Devuan developers could not just contribute their work to Debian directly. Yes, systemd had become the default init system, but the idea that other developers would oppose contributions that would do nothing but improve interoperability is just absurd.
To me, this whole "we're forking Debian" thing just feels like a strongly emotional opposition to systemd, not rational solution to the init system problem.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#14Does anybody know how many people are working on this and how many people are working on the security team?
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#15Congrats for following through on Devuan. I'm guessing it took a lot of resolve to make this happen. Should we be worried about the fact that it took over two years to untangle systemd from Debian with respect to Linux in general? In case someone from the Devuan project is around, what alternate init system should maintainers be targetting now for Devuan? OpenRC, classic SysV init, or something else?
> Should we be worried about the fact that it took over two years to untangle systemd from Debian with respect to Linux in general? The time it took says nothing about the difficulty of the task. It could be very hard with the best hackers working on it full time. It could be the time it takes committees to reach a consensus. Even if it was that hard, is it because systemd is so entangled with the system? Or because…
> Or because it makes maintaining a distro so much easier ?
In my experience, such a general statement is not true of any init system. I had to maintain a systemd-based system (albeit not a general-purpose one) and I was moderately happy. The profiling tools are great and units are easy to write even by people with no Linux development experience (hint: easy to outsource to cheap consultancy firms). On the other hand, it's extremely complex; if you get into trouble with systemd itself, you've got a lot of code reading to do. systemd upstream itself is a pretty volatile target, so you regularly end up with things that used to work three versions ago but now bork.
Maybe for a general-purpose distribution like Debian, or for a special-purpose, but server-/cloud-oriented distribution, it makes life easier, but at the other end of the spectrum I wouldn't say it made my life any easier than other init system (albeit not much harder, either).
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#16I am not Linux admin, but I've been using Linux managed by others on servers for many, many years and I have a question: Is that 'systemd' thing is so crucial and important to devote so much effort to create brand new Linux distribution. I have only vague picture what systemd is doing, I can imagine that there could be something better (as always in IT), but is this really that important?
For most users, it wouldn't matter anyway, and I'd argue that that's true even for a lot of the sysadmins. But the argument had a few layers more. Quite a few people agreed that the current init system wasn't exactly the bee's knees, but disagreed on what to use to replace it (systemd, upstart, heck, even Apple's launchd).
There was a rather vocal group that didn't actually care that much about the specific implementation either, but but wanted something in the "Unix spirit", i.e. consisting of a more modular base of small components. Systemd pretty much fails that test as much as humanly possible without being J2EE.
And it all ended with a bad debate on the Debian mailing list. Can't remember all the details, but the Grand Poobahs were accused of acting a bit too grand.
So it wasn't just about the technical merits themselves, but also about philosophy and policy.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#17I never understood why the Devuan developers could not just contribute their work to Debian directly. Yes, systemd had become the default init system, but the idea that other developers would oppose contributions that would do nothing but improve interoperability is just absurd. To me, this whole "we're forking Debian" thing just feels like a strongly emotional opposition to systemd, not rational solution to the init…
Yes it would have made better sense to create some kind of process to switch mainline Debian from systemd to runit, openrc etc.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#18I never understood why the Devuan developers could not just contribute their work to Debian directly. Yes, systemd had become the default init system, but the idea that other developers would oppose contributions that would do nothing but improve interoperability is just absurd. To me, this whole "we're forking Debian" thing just feels like a strongly emotional opposition to systemd, not rational solution to the init…
Debian can already run various init systems. E.g. you can run GNOME under sysvinit. Within Devuan they just removed GNOME.
If you want init system choice, run Debian (or e.g. Gentoo). Devuan seems more about hating systemd than any actual choice.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#19Great to see they are making headway. Wonder about the long term sustainability though, as more and more software such as GNOME3 DE lists it as a dependency
Under Debian you can run GNOME under other init systems thanks to Debian+Canonical creating systemd-shim (alternative to logind). Under Devuan you cannot use GNOME (they don't offer it). This as Devuan claims that it is impossible (despite being possible within Debian) (!)
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#20I never understood why the Devuan developers could not just contribute their work to Debian directly. Yes, systemd had become the default init system, but the idea that other developers would oppose contributions that would do nothing but improve interoperability is just absurd. To me, this whole "we're forking Debian" thing just feels like a strongly emotional opposition to systemd, not rational solution to the init…
One possible reason: They are making a philosophical stand/statement against systemd.