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Shall we fork Debian?

debianfork.org

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Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#211

Post by nullymcnull »

zanny wrote: post #178
feld wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bu…

Thing is, Debian is already effectively (since Ubuntu) a Linux distro that's supposed to be for us. People who want a nice desktop experience go with Ubuntu, people who want a server reach for Debian.

If the higher ups at Debian really think they're going to be a player in desktop and are making decisions along those lines, then they must be seriously oblivious to the niche that Debian has actually settled into post-Ubuntu.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#212

Post by 23david »

ownagefool wrote: post #58
TheSwordsman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who manages a large Debuntu fleet, please don't speak on my behalf. If I had the opportunity to vote for systemd it would have been 'no'.

Is that because you think it's somehow technically inferior or because you you've learnt a whole bunch of skills and don't really want to have to replace them? I mean, would you like to see the init system change, period?

It's great to have new and alternative init systems (and process managers) to use. Nobody is complaining about having to learn new skills.

Yes I want a better init system and process manager setup. But personally, I'm not sure that goal is worth losing Unix distro compatibility.

I would love a system that works the same across OSX, BSD's, Illumos and other newer experimental OS's etc.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#213

Post by atweiden »

buster wrote: post #43
fapjacks wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your attitude is exactly the problem. "Shut up and do what I say" is exactly what systemd is about.

This sentence (if it's not obvious) is a hint to invest energies into making debian work fine without systemd instead of countless whining and crying but in the end doing nothing. There may be some people opposed to systemd, but there have been votes that saw systemd as the clear winner for the default init system. Why should the majority of users who are FOR systemd bending to some users who don't like systemd out o…

> people can work on letting Debian run fine without systemd

Arch switched to systemd about a year ago. When official distro packages are shipping with systemd service files by default, it means there is drastically less effort required on your part to maintain a systemd-based environment. It would take an experienced and dedicated crew to translate the systemd service files of dozens of upstream packages to Runit for instance. The enterprise level support just isn't there, whereas with systemd it is.

That being said, I like writing systemd service files. I just wonder what would happen if more distros pushed for, e.g. uselessd or Runit as the standard init system.

> uselessd (the useless daemon, or the daemon that uses less... depending on your viewpoint) is a project to reduce systemd to a base initd, process supervisor and transactional dependency system, while minimizing intrusiveness and isolationism. Basically, it’s systemd with the superfluous stuff cut out, a (relatively) coherent idea of what it wants to be, support for non-glibc platforms and an approach that aims to minimize complicated design.

http://uselessd.darknedgy.net

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#214

Post by click170 »

So, all I've really heard about Systemd are arguments from proponents and complaints from opponents, and based on that alone it's difficult to get an idea of the true merits of one vs the other because rarely does any one comment lay out all the Pros and Cons for the different init systems.

So I went searching, and found this Page. It probably isn't complete, and probably comes at this from a single perspective though. http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Talk:Comparison_of_init_systems

I am interested in any other comparisons that you believe is a good representation of both sides. I just want to fully understand the two before making a choice.

Edit: Removed references to there only being 2 options, there are multiple init systems.

Edit: Additional comparison from the perspective of someone involved with Systemd - http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/why.html

and

A Unix.StackExchange question asking the same thing with a variety of answers. http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5877/what-are-the-pr...

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#215

Post by rodgerd »

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…

> I use a Mac as my desktop, because I don't have to fight with it. 99% of everything works, and the other 1% breakages are ones I can live with.

So there you are, happy with a radically non-traditional Unix environment (no X, launchd is one of the patterns systemd is copying, etc).

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#216

Post by pas »

wbl wrote: post #161
andor wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people like this "do one thing and do it well" is the only way that you can beat the impossible complexity of a modern machine back into a running computer even some of the time. When you have a single point of failure which is a black box you're just back to windows land: restart the service, reboot the computer, reinstall the system. For the developers, on the other hand, it might mean that some use case that i…

And what happens when that single file doesn't work? The one time I had to deploy a custom service using systemd, there was no feedback as to why it wasn't working with service start. No error message, no guidance on how to debug online, no indication of where to look. By contrast adding it to a shell script just worked.

You can strace pid1 too.

If start-via-systemd doesn't work, hack around it with a script and report it as a bug or write to the mailing list.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#217

Post by rodgerd »

perlpimp wrote: post #139

I am not sure why debian needs to force replace sysvinit, can't they have systemd-debian distro that will have all the shiny stuff in it? and maybe have it grow and if it won't go down with their userbase then they can discontinue it? Everyone moving to systemd seems a bit fishy. C is very insecure for daemon coding with all other options why no use go for example? There might be some influence on behalf interested g…

> C is very insecure for daemon coding with all other options why no use go for example?

What's sysvinit written in?

What are bash and dash written in?

What are coreutils written in?

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#218

Post by Maken »

xobs wrote: post #159
feld wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does systemd handle situations where you need to check for the existence of directories and check their permissions, etc, before starting the service? You'd have to script it... and it would end up looking like a sysvinit script anyway.

You can add ConditionPathExists= or ConditionPathIsDirectory= to a Unit to check if one or more directories exist. You can also substitute the userid into commands with %U, so you could have it always chown before running the command, as you can have multiple ExecStart= directives. http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.serv... and http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.unit...

That sounds a bit like reinventing the wheel. Can you use the result of external scripts to conditionally launch processes?

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#219

Post by chias »

Please fork Debian.

I find it very difficult to get behind a movement whose primary complains are that the status quo is "a slap in the face to the _____ philosophy" and "betrays the _____ philosophy" and so on. If you want to sway me, you have to tell me why your way is better. The alternative is "offensive" to you? I cannot begin to describe how much I don't care. You can tell a lot about a movement by those they stand with, and you've listed your them as "Harbinger of the Linux Apocalypse", a boycott, and finally something that does nothing but mock those it disagrees with. I mean you may be bringing up valid points but curb the drama, eh?

So I'm all for a fork. That is the point of open source, no? Go on and make a fork and if it's awesome people will use it, otherwise people won't. And maybe then we can curtail the endless arguments about this in Debian. But in spite of the title this article, it really didn't read like it was asking if we should fork Debian. It read like it was asking people to pressure Debian to follow the authors' agendas, with a threat (?) of making a fork if it didn't.

Re: Shall we fork Debian?

#220

Post by click170 »

TheSwordsman wrote: post #45
0x006A wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

As someone who manages a large Debuntu fleet, please don't speak on my behalf. If I had the opportunity to vote for systemd it would have been 'no'.

May I ask why?

There's a whole lot of "I don't/do like it" and "It did/didn't work for me" but not a lot of explanation of why they do or don't like it, or what didn't work, and I'm interested in those details.

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