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Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

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Re: Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

#51
post #35
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systemd isn't one component, so you'd be mistaken assuming everything in the systemd project is necessary to start a service. But second to that, I'm not sure why you think nginx_enable='YES' is fundamentally less opaque than an nginx.service file. Both are parsed by another application. As for why someone would make that 'trade-off' - I much prefer being able to add "Restart=on-failure" than using daemontools, and I…

> I'm not sure why you think nginx_enable='YES' is fundamentally less opaque than an nginx.service file. Both are parsed by another application. My guess: because the "another application" that parses nginx_enable=YES is a (rc) shell script instead of an ELF blob, so you can track its execution.

But do you need to?

Re: Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

#52

Don't want to troll or anything, just a question from curiosity: don't you think that massive popularity of systemd is a result of a massive demand for software like systemd?

Absolutely not. The init system we had was relatively fine, having worked with linux for the better part of a decade, systemd was an answer no one needed. Especially with its feature creep, stealing pid1, and being required - slowly - by other software packages. Or at the very least making it difficult to not soft require it.

Re: Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

#53
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure why you think nginx_enable='YES' is fundamentally less opaque than an nginx.service file. Both are parsed by another application. My guess: because the "another application" that parses nginx_enable=YES is a (rc) shell script instead of an ELF blob, so you can track its execution.

But do you need to?

Yes, when something goes awry with the initscripts system. And systemd is not exactly famous for its transparency of execution and stability of options' behaviour.

Re: Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the desktop where you need to deal with WLAN interfaces going up and down, maybe a monstrosity like systemd has its place, but even there my opinion is systemd just isn't worth fragmenting and polarizing the whole Unix ecosystem with systemd's total lack of mental discipline and attitude of wrapping each and everything under the sun including binary logging, mandatory systemd-only APIs for loggin in, cron replacem…

Systemd exist for two groups, macbook packing cypherpunks and devops "cattle farms". All the rest have to grin and bear it until Pottering and crew gets bored, run into those corner cases that made the older systems so gnarly to maintain, and move on.

I hope you're wrong on systemd on a Mac. I have to assume its being used for systemd-under-(systemd-infested-linux)-under-virtualbox or systemd-under-docker (or even systemd-under-docker-under--under-virtualbox). systemd-under-docker is particularly pointless IMHO if it's even possible. Could someone using systemd on a Mac chime in and explain the use case?

Re: Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systemd exist for two groups, macbook packing cypherpunks and devops "cattle farms". All the rest have to grin and bear it until Pottering and crew gets bored, run into those corner cases that made the older systems so gnarly to maintain, and move on.

I hope you're wrong on systemd on a Mac. I have to assume its being used for systemd-under-(systemd-infested-linux)-under-virtualbox or systemd-under-docker (or even systemd-under-docker-under- -under-virtualbox). systemd-under-docker is particularly pointless IMHO if it's even possible. Could someone using systemd on a Mac chime in and explain the use case?

Macs seems to be right behind Thinkpads in terms of Linux support, thanks to having fairly static hardware between models.

End result seems to be that quite a few either single or dual boot Linux on Mac.

Re: Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want to use sysvinit over systemd? Do you have init scripts already written that you don't want to port?

Well binary logs seem to be a good enough reason for me. I use FreeBSD and Devuan feels like I am in control. Some commercial software won't work on FreeBSD so I have to use some Linux. I also use Alpine because it uses OpenRC. With gLibc missing it is tough to compile some software. Compared, Devuan seems to be very software compatible and offers the familiarity of Debian. Over at FreeBSD we have loads of new users…

I hear the binary logging argument very often. What is bad with it? Is the format not specified? Maybe it is more efficient to log this way.

Often it comes down to "it's not text, which I don't like, ergo binary is bad".

Re: Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

#58
post #8

I’ve been running the beta on my desktop. In this release, they have also established sane defaults for a wider range of window managers and desktop environments. The rough edges I’ve hit can all be attributed to systemd brain damage (like the fact that the linux kernel no longer has a working, synchronous, “probe the network cards and create a logical interface for each one” primitive). My only beef with devuan is t…

I think elogind is used because at least Gnome and KDE are dependent on logind.

Thanks. I don’t use either of those. (Also, does “gnome” include “mate” in this context, I wonder?)

Re: Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

#59
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rough edges I’ve hit can all be attributed to systemd brain damage (like the fact that the linux kernel no longer has a working, synchronous, “probe the network cards and create a logical interface for each one” primitive). Multithreaded device probing exists far before systemd. It was introduced around Linux 2.6.18.

It's your basic grand conspiracy theory setup. You see a bunch of sensible features that don't add up to any particular larger plan, they see a sprawling plot by innumerable enemies to destroy a status quo that never actually existed outside their imagination. It is amusing to me that they call themselves "Veteran Unix Administrators" because an operating system needs _software engineers_ or at the very least _hacker…

Back in the old days, insmod and modprobe were synchronous. If you wanted concurrency during boot, you could use fork/join to get it (using the & line suffix and “join” command in bash, for instance).

In the brave new world, all kernel events are published over some wonky bus thing, so you need to write a daemon that listens for hardware events and replicates the kernel’s current state of the world in dram, and also is fault tolerant, and has a security subsystem that authenticates user requests before forwarding them to the kernel.

The new approach is fundamentally broken because it is too complicated to understand or implement correctly.

Also, it is gratuitously reimplmenting basic kernel functionality (security, process lifecycle) in user space, and in at least one case that has hit me personally (DriSetMaster) the systemd contingent has been blocking straightforward patches to the Linux kernel that make it possible for non systemd init systems to work without adding their own crappy shim processes.

I run Linux because I want a working unix environment. Systemd is turning it into something else.

I think it is telling that we’re seeing things like fuschia and renewed interest in the BSD’s specifically because Linux on the desktop / laptop is increasingly an unsupportable mess.

Re: Devuan “ASCII” 2.0 Release Candidate is now available

#60
post #9

Why they use "ASCII" for a distro release? This is so confusing name for people who don't know what Devuan is. I firstly thought some wierd guys created their own character encoding and claimed 2.0 version of ASCII.

That's like asking why use "Stretch" for a Debian release. Anyone who doesn't know what Debian is might think it's a new version of the Toy Story character it's named after. Linux distribution naming conventions are often weird, there's nothing new here.
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