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Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

devuan.org

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Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#21

Post by rbanffy »

mhd wrote: post #16
piokoch wrote: post #12

I 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 implement…

As a dev/sysadmin, systemd is barely noticeable when you think if it as an init system. When you look at the cool tricks it can do, it's more like its part of the OS than something living on top of it, providing services you'd expect a kernel to provide (albeit not a very Unix-like one, which is what makes people so mad about it).

It's a large and complex beast, doing a lot of different things that make sense in a modern server environment.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#22

Post by badminton1 »

Some things that need work:

- The logo. Logos are very affordable. I would consider revisiting this logo, buying a new one or organizing a contest. Believe it or not, many people use t-shirts with the Debian logo and I assume that's some source of revenue stream. I do not see myself wearing a Devuan t-shirt with this logo. Right not it looks like a logo for a UFO cult or some cheap Internet cafe.

- The information on the landing page should be organized to emphasize what is important for each type of experience. e.g: dividing it into info for users, info for prospect contributors, info for existing contributors, and donation (what and how to donate, and what is done with donations). Try to interleave these roles less and summarize more.

Then, I would like to understand what the key differences are with Debian, also what specifically does "control over your system" mean?

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#23

Post by nottorp »

bkor wrote: post #18
ckastner wrote: post #13

I 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.

As far as i know, systemd is creeping in as a dependency of a lot of unrelated packages - even UI packages. So you can have a Debian that doesn't run systemd, perhaps, but not a Debian that doesn't depend on bits of pieces of the systemd OS any more.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#24

Post by bkor »

aerique wrote: post #10
flevo wrote: post #4

Great 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

There's also Linux life without Gnome. I hope this means more people will try out alternative window managers.

This doesn't address the point raised. He mentioned that more and more software relies on systemd giving just one example.

IMO not much has changed in the last 2 years. Not too much additional software really relies on systemd. Nor that systemd integrated any other software like it did in the beginning (e.g. merging udev into it). There haven't been too many feature additions as well. What did happen is that way more software ships a systemd conf file, but that's about it.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#25

Post by bkor »

nottorp wrote: post #23
bkor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As far as i know, systemd is creeping in as a dependency of a lot of unrelated packages - even UI packages. So you can have a Debian that doesn't run systemd, perhaps, but not a Debian that doesn't depend on bits of pieces of the systemd OS any more.

You have a tiny systemd library which does little more than checking if systemd is running. It's a helper library for doing that check. Within Devuan they didn't want this dependency, but that's unrelated from being able to use software under another init system.

There's a huge difference between not accepting any dependency with systemd in the name vs being able to use another init system.

That some software has a dependency does NOT mean that the software is restricted to only run under systemd.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#26

Post by vacri »

ckastner wrote: post #13

I 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…

Systemd is a lot more than just init. It also manages user auth, udev, time, syslog, and a few other things.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#27

Post by bkor »

softwarelimits wrote: post #14

Does anybody know how many people are working on this and how many people are working on the security team?

The major contributors are listed here: https://devuan.org/os/team/. Either they don't mention packagers specifically or they don't have a lot of them.

They didn't fork too many packages, so security handling should be fairly easy. They plan to offer support for a longer period than Debian. I don't think they'll be able to based on my experience contributing to a slightly bigger distribution (e.g. maybe 30-40 packagers) whom are lagging behind on security updates.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#28

Post by frodob12 »

vacri wrote: post #26
ckastner wrote: post #13

I 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…

Systemd is a lot more than just init. It also manages user auth, udev, time, syslog, and a few other things.

That is the main complaint.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#29

Post by appleflaxen »

Aissen wrote: post #9
tannhaeuser wrote: post #7

Congrats 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…

> says nothing

you're point is well-taken, but I think it says something. It just doesn't necessarily mean that it's a messy, entagled system which is deeply integrated and hard to isolate.

but it does point, circumstantially, in that direction.

Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release

#30

Post by frodob12 »

ckastner wrote: post #13

I 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…

They were told to by debian. They argued for as long as they could while debian was still 'their' distribution to change the direction systemd would take it. It was clean that wasn't going to happen. Final response; "If you don't like it you can always fork. But you'll never release anything."

So now they have forked and they have released. So now their splitters. Cake and eat it types, what can you do?

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