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Shall we fork Debian?

debianfork.org

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Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#171

Post by sophacles »

andor wrote: post #73
TheSwordsman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if that service file screws up how do you troubleshoot it? You end up diving in to the source code of systemd, versus fixing a bug in your script. And don't get me started on binary log files. As was said before, buster, your attitude is the problem. It's the same as the systemd developers and those within the community. SysVInit has served me thus far with no issues.

And if that service file screws up how do you troubleshoot it? You end up diving in to the source code of systemd, versus fixing a bug in your script. That's a good thing, because if you find a bug, it will be fixed for everybody, not just for your one-off init script. your attitude is the problem The attitude here is to fix problems at their source. Instead of using the hammer for everything, sometimes coming up wit…

That's a good thing, because if you find a bug, it will be fixed for everybody, not just for your one-off init script.

Generally I agree with this at a broad level. But, there is still the problem of: I need this running now. To do that, I need to compile and run a custom systemd, and hope that my patch gets accepted upstream, and that in a few months my distro finally adopts it and puts it in the standard package.

Generally speaking I really like systemd and am excited to get some time to update my installed stuff to use it, but the above is a real concern.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#172

Post by progman »

asdfaoeu wrote: post #150
progman wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A fork, or an alternative init system, could be a good solution. I consider this a good idea. Servers and desktops are two different things so why not have two different Debian versions? This way Debian Server could be kept small and simple while the systemd developers could continue without any restrictions. If they go too far then we could use the Debian server and add our own desktops to it.

A lot of the components mentioned are actually optional and you can build systemd without them or disable them at runtime. I'm guessing this idea that this idea that systemd is targeted for the desktop is from the logind kerfuffle with GNOME and friends but it's actually an optional component. If anything though systemd is more targeted towards server market.

Fine. There speaks nothing against Debian Desktop for servers by admins who prefer systemd. I am current happy Debian user myself, and I would use such a system for my desktop.

However regarding servers I agree with the Unix veterans that Unix(-like) systems should be faithful to the KISS philosophy which made Unix so great. The IT world has become very complex, and we should not make it more complex than necessary. Debian and its derived distris took over the server world, and (AFAIK) it accomplished that with SystemV not with systemd. So SystemV is not that bad.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#173

Post by atmosx »

mseepgood wrote: post #80
atmosx wrote: post #26

If Ritchie and Thompson knew the damage fork-ing would cause to the open source community, they would have never implemented the idea, as a system call in UNIX[1] in 1971. [1] http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/man21.pdf

I don't think that they care(d) much about "the open source community". And why do you think forking causes damage to the open source community? It helps resolve conflicts of interest.

I know they didnt care (there wasnt any significant OS community at the time) and even if they did its not reason to remove a core feature of like fork, because someone might abuse the idea.

It was a kind of pun to state my disaproval to level of fragmentation the linux community has gotten into.

Okay this SystemD saga might or might be AS important as some people tend to think. But fragmenting the community so much and having people working to 10 different, unstable solutions instead of 3 stable ones, its a waste of resources IMHO.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#174

Post by XorNot »

adekok wrote: post #155
seba_dos1 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, especially if everything what he wrote there was like that bitcoin hitman stuff, which turned out to be just a line like "maybe we should start btc fund?" from IRC written after someone else complained about issue with systemd by guy known from his funny trolling there - and absolutely nothing more than that. While at first I felt a bit sorry for him when I read that post, after I learned about what exactly was…

> I'd really welcome the anti-systemd ranters to just do some work that makes them feel happy, such as making a new distribution that has the exact init system they want. Most people are already working on things that make them happy. The frustration here is that the tools they depend on are changing... in a way that they don't like. They also have limited time for projects. Any time spent fixing other peoples projec…

You know, provided Apple continue to agree with you...it seems more like you're just zenning over the fact that even if you did disagree, you couldn't change anything.

Choice is widely regarded as actually making people more unhappy.

EDIT: It's also an ironic comment, since a frequent criticism of systemd is that it's trying to be too much like Apple's launchd.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#175

Post by XorNot »

CrLf wrote: post #81

As much as I dislike the idea of systemd, I'm starting to think it's pointless to fight it. There's still a large chunk of people that think the desktop is important for Linux's future and will keep pushing for turning it into a brittle mess of opaque components, unaware of what's really important to maintain and troubleshoot servers on a daily basis, and unaware of what has made Linux so successful in this area. It…

Since when have init.d scripts been anything but brittle?

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#176

Post by justincormack »

csirac2 wrote: post #101
voltagex_ wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next step in troubleshooting that one is to run strace and find out what's happening. I agree it's frustrating but if no one debugs these things, problems won't get solved. (and yes, scorching the earth and installing a different distro is a valid solution to the problem at hand)

I'm not sure how to make strace pid 1 :-) And I'm not quite ready to abandon Debian yet. I've created a virt-install script which reproduces the problem reliably (honestly all it does is install jessie, then lxc-docker). Hopefully my workload eases and I can put this trivially reproducible thing into a bug report somewhere (debian? systemd? docker) for somebody to see what's going on. FWIW systemctl start docker work…

strace -p1 should do the trick, you can attach after start, but you will have to get it started early, probably as a systemd service. Or if its in a container, strace form outside the container.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#177

Post by XorNot »

sophacles wrote: post #171
andor wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if that service file screws up how do you troubleshoot it? You end up diving in to the source code of systemd, versus fixing a bug in your script. That's a good thing, because if you find a bug, it will be fixed for everybody, not just for your one-off init script. your attitude is the problem The attitude here is to fix problems at their source. Instead of using the hammer for everything, sometimes coming up wit…

That's a good thing, because if you find a bug, it will be fixed for everybody, not just for your one-off init script. Generally I agree with this at a broad level. But, there is still the problem of: I need this running now. To do that, I need to compile and run a custom systemd, and hope that my patch gets accepted upstream, and that in a few months my distro finally adopts it and puts it in the standard package. G…

We have SysV shim layers for that though. We had them in Upstart, and we have them for SystemD. Boiled down, it can still run shell scripts that look like SysV scripts, and will be able to do so indefinitely because that's basic functionality.

At the worst case though, this reduces systemd to a shim-launcher for SysV init, which is the situation you find yourself in now or when using Upstart, which tons of Ubuntu users already have been.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#178

Post by zanny »

feld wrote: post #137
IgorPartola wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say exactly that. "We don't have time to work with the Debian folks on a solution, but have time to create our own distro." Right. Then again, they should go for it. If nobody but them uses it, that's that. If it gains traction, cool. On another point: why the hell would you have a choice in init systems? As a user of the OS, I care that the proceses start, stop, and keep running. I don't care how. A p…

Nobody said you had to futz with it. Ideally packages would ship with the correct init scripts and things would work exactly as you expect them to, or as they did. Unlike with systemd. Why the hell would you have a choice in kernels? Why the hell would you have a choice in filesystems? Why the hell would you have a choice in sound systems? Why the hell would you have a choice in desktop environments?

There needs to be a distinction between Linux distros for us, and Linux distros for everyone else.

For us, we care about all that stuff, because we are engrossed in it daily. For everyone else, they will never touch or understand and / or should never need to understand what a kernel, filesystem, sound system, or desktop environment is. To them, the computer is a tool, not an environment, and to use it is to press buttons to get some tangible result you want from it, and the buttons you have are not buttons you are going to know how to change.

So I want a choice in kernel, filesystem, etc because I care about the semantics, performance, ethics, and implementation of these things because I interact with, code for, and code against, them on a near daily basis. Everyone else does not know they exist, and thus don't care, so choice is irrelevant to them, in the same way the existence of Linux as an OS "choice" does not matter to them - if it is not on the notebook on the shelf at Best Buy, it might as well not exist.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#179

Post by catern »

riffraff wrote: post #170
andor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're spreading FUD. So I can imagine having very different init systems for desktops and servers if this means that the server won't be encumbered by a number subsystems which are of no use to it. systemd is about choice ;-) Only use the subsystems that you need. For example, if you'd want to save some memory and time, you could use systemd-networkd instead of shell scripts and dhclient. systemd is used in constrai…

which phones use systemd?

Most notably http://jolla.com/ but I think Tizen will use systemd as well.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#180

Post by monochr »

XorNot wrote: post #165
monochr wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone disagreeing with you doesn't mean they are stupid, evil and part of a grand conspiracy to destroy everything you love. They just have different priorities. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Because a lot of people are speaking very authoritatively, yet with little content, about systemd. They raise objections based on partial or inaccurate information. Various bans on discussion are happening precisely because it's apparent that a number of people are no longer interested in useful discussion, so much as creating chaos until they get their way. Manifestly described by the idea that people without time t…

If partial or inaccurate information about a subject was the criteria for not talking about it then Torvalds should have shut up about kernels and let Minix be the default for everything. Read the exchange between him and Tanenbaum and tell me it doesn't sound like two douche bags flame baiting each other with Torvalds sounding like he has no idea what he's talking about: http://oreilly.com/catalog/opensources/book/appa.html

The whole point of free licenses is to let half educated monkeys type away on keyboards because every so often you end up with Apache or Linux out of it, of course you also get pulse-audio and systemd but no system is perfect. If people like it more than Debian it will replace Debian, like Ubuntu nearly did before they went with unity and a whole bunch of other terrible decisions, if they don't it will die, and if it sticks around as a project with some users, like every other debian derivative, it will be a wonderful resource to find bugs.

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