The website needs some work. I could gather they were a fork of Debian, but I couldn't find the benefits. I had to come to the HN comments to learn about the systemd controversy. Less important, the mobile experience was not good on Android Chrome. When scrolling, the logo visibility toggles and the page content jumps.
Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
31–40 of 71 posts
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
But these are hard deps not just recommends so will pull in systemd dependencies regardless of it using them or not. If it were a recomends type dep, again no one would have a problem. It used to be considered bad packaging to hard dep when recommends or suggests would suffice.
7.2 states: "When selecting which level of dependency to use you should consider how important the depended-on package is to the functionality of the one declaring the dependency"
You say "being able to use software under another init system." Looks like the level of dependency should be adjusted to fit your point.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#33I 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.
Another is that they can see where the systemd bus is going and it's not somewhere they choose to follow.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#34I 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?
> They were told to by debian.
I don't follow. Are you saying that representatives of the Debian project refused to collaborate with the Devuan developers with regards to improving init system interoperability?
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
But these are hard deps not just recommends so will pull in systemd dependencies regardless of it using them or not. If it were a recomends type dep, again no one would have a problem. It used to be considered bad packaging to hard dep when recommends or suggests would suffice. 7.2 states: "When selecting which level of dependency to use you should consider how important the depended-on package is to the functionalit…
You might want to learn how shared libraries work under Linux. Then you might be able to understand why packages have a Depends: libsystemd0 (which btw. doesn't depend on systemd itself).
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
It might also point into the direction that the people behind Devuan have never worked on a distribution before and needed quite a bit of time to figure out how stuff works.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 d…
the entire point of devuan (iiuc) is to have a clean separation of function. if systemd is a wide dependency, then the separation of the init system is a bit superficial and isn't what the distro cares about.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#38The website needs some work. I could gather they were a fork of Debian, but I couldn't find the benefits. I had to come to the HN comments to learn about the systemd controversy. Less important, the mobile experience was not good on Android Chrome. When scrolling, the logo visibility toggles and the page content jumps.
at the very bottom of the page it addresses it:
> Devuan is about choice. We think people should be able > to choose whether to use a GNU+Linux system with or > without systemd. > Devuan decided to fork not only the base distribution, > but also its governance, because Debian has made it > difficult to avoid systemd as init, entangling the system > with unnecessary dependencies and did so despite...
but you're right that it makes sense to put it in a more obvious location, given that it seems to be the reason the project exists.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#39Some 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…
I agree, this logo looks terrible.
Re: Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release
#40Congrats 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?
Good question. The proof will be in how rapidly they track their upstream going forward. If it was a mostly one-time transitional task, then future releases should come more quickly. They may also have taken extra time to polish because the quality of the 1.0 release will have a huge impact on how many people decide to dive in and support future development. If there are major problems, they could sour a bunch of fence-sitters. But if it works great, they may gain momentum.