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Shall we fork Debian?

debianfork.org

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Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#21

Post by captainmuon »

qznc wrote: post #5

How does forking Debian solve anything? The issue is that Gnome, KDE, and other software requires systemd. You need to fix/maintain their compatibility with other init systems. Then it is easy for Debian user to switch init systems.

> The issue is that Gnome, KDE, and other software requires systemd.

This I can't wrap my head around, why does Gnome for example need systemd? There are standard ways on GNU/Linux to do everything it needs in a unix fashion (by deferring to small specialized tools):

    shutdown
    reboot
    whoami
    uname
    mount
    ...
These and similar tools (or libc functions) give you all information you need (username, etc.) and system functions a desktop environment needs (reboot, hibernate). You then only need something like udev for plug-and-play (which is available without systemd, and as a part of it), and interfaces to the X/Wayland server and the audio system (which are both not a part of systemd). This seems to be all stuff that can easily be abstracted away in one module per OS. I don't see why you have to tightly couple your DE to systemd. (Unless, you are using your DE as a vehicle to push systemd, which I hope is not the case...)

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#23

Post by DoubleMalt »

Just use coreOS and docker on the server and leave the init system discussion to the desktop people.

There are some fundamentally different and sometimes conflicting requirements regarding the startup process on a server and on a desktop machine and I think systemd which is obviously desktop driven will be the catalyst for a split between server and desktop distros.

I don't think classical desktop environments have much future personally, but that's just my gut feeling.

Server will definitely move further into modularization of services, and that will make init systems there less and less interesting.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#24

Post by justincormack »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #18

No. Even the pro-fork advocates (even the above article) see the Jackson / Vernon proposal as a much better idea (choice of init systems with a systemd default) No. IMHO Debian is less a distro than a democratic experiment - and systemd shows it is working. If you don't like systemd (and I vastly prefer my FreeBSD world) get on board with the democratic process - it is always messy, frustrating, driving you insane sl…

But isnt that proposal kind of too late, the process has already chosen systemd?

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#25

Post by justincormack »

DoubleMalt wrote: post #23

Just use coreOS and docker on the server and leave the init system discussion to the desktop people. There are some fundamentally different and sometimes conflicting requirements regarding the startup process on a server and on a desktop machine and I think systemd which is obviously desktop driven will be the catalyst for a split between server and desktop distros. I don't think classical desktop environments have m…

CoreOS is entirely based on systemd. Fleet is a distributed systemd. It is far more systemd oriented than any other distro, having built it in as a core feature form day one.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#27

Post by brute »

The website could be replaced by a much shorter version simply stating "I dont like SystemD. -anonymous".

The author is essentially making a threat, that there will be a fork of Debian if the project does not give in to his demands. Then he states that he is totally not just speaking for himself, but for a much larger group, and in fact claims to have the majority on his side. I have a hard time evaluating the seriousness of these claims, as there is no intend to back up any of this.

As far as the arguments go, there is nothing new here. The concerns have been stated before, and have been heard, too.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#28

Post by buster »

Or just shut up and put your efforts into maintaining https://packages.debian.org/jessie/systemd-shim

Also, critique starts with "We like controlling the startup of the system with shell scripts that are readable".. How on earth is a systemd service file less readable then a hundreds of lines bash script?

Also relevant: http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/open-source/65684-deb...

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#29

Post by yxhuvud »

qznc wrote: post #5

How does forking Debian solve anything? The issue is that Gnome, KDE, and other software requires systemd. You need to fix/maintain their compatibility with other init systems. Then it is easy for Debian user to switch init systems.

You can also chose to ditch them and not support anything that requires systemd.

Yes, really.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#30

Post by 0x006A »

23david wrote: post #17
snogglethorpe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The anti-systemd-brigade only seems to be a small minority of Debian devs (though they're very loud, and very persistent), so I'm not sure it would have much effect on the project as a whole. If a fork would reduce the time spent arguing about the init system (which 99% of users don't care about), it could even prove beneficial for Debian. [It seems unlikely the fork would attract the critical mass of devs/users to s…

Decoupling systemd is a feature desired by system administrators, who are responsible for installing and managing most debian and debian-based distros.

on the contrary, systemd is a feature desired by system administrators, who are responsible for installing and managing most debian and debian-based distros.
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