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Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

danielcordova.me

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Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#131

Post by iamnothere »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #124
iamnothere wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Stand up and be a test case like Bernstein. Show some guts. In the case of a company there’s even less at risk, and a lot of good will to be farmed.

Are you offering to pay for their lawyers?

If it’s a good test case, EFF would surely represent an individual pro bono. Depending on the importance of a corporate case, they would contribute heavily. But you can think of the expense as marketing, especially for a company like Red Hat who gets a lot of unnecessary grief from the community.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#132

Post by bayindirh »

jeroenhd wrote: post #128
bayindirh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that the same someone has formed a company called Amutable which has the sole purpose of converting Linux to a locked-down immutable OS where the users doesn't have the key. Also it's interesting that a set of simple interfaces have worked for so long. Maybe they did something wrong that it didn't break? See: https://www.amutable.com

> converting Linux to a locked-down immutable OS That approach is part of why Valve has been able to ship Linux to general consumers. I don't know exactly why you'd go for amutable specifically, but not handing users the key is a huge benefit to any company-owned hardware out there.

Having an immutable OS for some scenarios makes sense. However, I find waving the whole layer into systemd and kernel permanently, instead of having it as a layer which you can install and enable if you need so is a bit sinister.

This enables the danger of locking out every Linux distribution out there, esp. with new IPC protocols, new image based installation methods, encryption and whatnot systemd brings in with all these modules.

One day, Microsoft can disallow disabling of secure-boot for PC certification and stop signing 3rd party bootloaders. The rest will be fun.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#133

Post by jeroenhd »

bayindirh wrote: post #132
jeroenhd wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> converting Linux to a locked-down immutable OS That approach is part of why Valve has been able to ship Linux to general consumers. I don't know exactly why you'd go for amutable specifically, but not handing users the key is a huge benefit to any company-owned hardware out there.

Having an immutable OS for some scenarios makes sense. However, I find waving the whole layer into systemd and kernel permanently, instead of having it as a layer which you can install and enable if you need so is a bit sinister. This enables the danger of locking out every Linux distribution out there, esp. with new IPC protocols, new image based installation methods, encryption and whatnot systemd brings in with al…

> instead of having it as a layer which you can install and enable if you need so is a bit sinister

I don't really get it. If you don't want systemd, you can install your own OpenRC-based immutable OS. I don't know if that currently exists (Android does, I suppose? maybe ChromeOS?) but it's not like systemd is forbidding everyone from doing anything.

The biggest difference between systemd and alternatives is that systemd builds out the architecture that makes things like building immutable distros easy. If you have a thousand different components, all with slightly different roles, the amount of coordination necessary to get everything to play nice together makes it near impossible to achieve the same things a coordinated system can achieve.

I'm sure that if someone would build an alternative to systemd-sysext and prepare a prebuilt set of tooling and configuration that does what systemd does, there will be distros that will use them.

Secure boot can be overridden by just adding your own keys. At worst, Microsoft will refuse to boot Windows because you added a key yourself. The exception is extra expensive, specially labeled Enterprime (TM) hardware built for Windows sysadmins and Microsoft tablets built for consumers, but I don't know why you'd buy either if you don't want to give MS that much control.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#134

Post by tuna74 »

wolvoleo wrote: post #45
lukan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what are your thoughts on deploying software to a fragmented system?

Just like it's done now, every distro having their own system. It containerization for people who like that. What I have an issue with is apps making themselves dependent on systemd like KDE is doing. https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1qi9vo5/comment/o0pzvq...

KDE is not an app, it is a fully blown DE.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#135

Post by tuna74 »

shevy-java wrote: post #28
atmanactive wrote: post #6

I'm confused... isn't Devuan exactly this?

Well - it is an alternative to debian and in many ways is debian. But the counter-question is: why should debian users HAVE to use systemd? This is a much more fundamental question. Devuan solved it via forking. I think the proper way to handle this is to be able to offer both. I think gentoo went that approach. Debian went the "my-way-or-the-highway" route, which objectively is worse, even if understandable (less to…

Debian is an OS, not a kit to build an OS using lots of different components.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#136

Post by 7e »

iamnothere wrote: post #123
ChocolateGod wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> comply with age verification laws Do you want the developers to ignore the law and in the case of companies like Red Hat etc be vulnerable to law suits?

Yes. Stand up and be a test case like Bernstein. Show some guts. In the case of a company there’s even less at risk, and a lot of good will to be farmed.

These are laws passed by democratically elected legislatures. It’s not a legal issue, it’s a political one. Ostensibly, the will of the people. But these wimpy geeks passively-aggressively protest by arguing about code online, instead of engaging in real political activism.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#137

Post by lawrencejgd »

xuhu wrote: post #80
0dayz wrote: post #50

To this day I have not found a single modern argument against systemd that is a technical one (I tried systemd but it does not support x which openrc does), instead it's these vague bike shed arguments (Unix philosophy, anti-centralization and "bloat" ). I can't wrap my head around it, since those 3 are a "you" problem, systemd is just a service manager it's you who decide to use other systemd parts.

If Unix philosophy is what's keeping systemd from requiring a Microsoft account during install, I'm all for it.

If everything followed the UNIX philosophy then we wouldn't be here, because for opening this single page, or the author's one you need a gigantic and monstrous program like a browser that has a lot of features and functions that the philosophy would forbid.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#138

Post by iamnothere »

7e wrote: post #136
iamnothere wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Stand up and be a test case like Bernstein. Show some guts. In the case of a company there’s even less at risk, and a lot of good will to be farmed.

These are laws passed by democratically elected legislatures. It’s not a legal issue, it’s a political one. Ostensibly, the will of the people. But these wimpy geeks passively-aggressively protest by arguing about code online, instead of engaging in real political activism.

When lobbyists push legislators to enact laws that violate the Constitution, and voting differently does not resolve the problem, the next recourse is the jury box. Courts are a check on the other two branches.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#139

Post by wolvoleo »

graemep wrote: post #52
lukan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what are your thoughts on deploying software to a fragmented system?

Systemd does not solve the deployment problem, and will not unless it adds something like a systemd package manager. It is interesting that Linux is far more widely used than alternatives that are not fragmented (e.g. FreeBSD) and has not standardised on one distro. Different people have different needs and preferences. People using Debian, Alpine, and NixOS are unlikely to agree on what they want.

Well no but that has some other reasons outside the fragmentation.

Businesses in general hate the MIT license because anything they contribute can be used by their competitors without opening the source.

I personally like this about FreeBSD. I hate the way Linux has been infiltrated by all the business suits and it's now an OS with billions of dollars of interests pulling at it. Look at the linux foundation board, it's all suits, they're not community guys. Or all the contributions that are mostly done by people doing it as part of their work at big tech.

In my opinion the big tech companies' interests are completely opposite to my own, I don't believe in 'win-win' when it comes to enterprise participation in open source. As such Linux is not a great option for me, but for many people it is because they don't care so much about that.

FreeBSD isn't really a monoculture either by the way. There are many different distros there too, they are just really fringe because FreeBSD itself is fringe.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#140

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

wink wrote: post #111
ChocolateGod wrote: post #23

This makes the mistake of confusing systemd the service manager and systemd the project. This is an easy mistake to make given they have the same name. The systemd service manager does not have an installer, systemd-sysinstall is a separate tool that's part of the systemd project. > systemd already integrated it, why (age verification) systemd has not integrated age verification. All that's been discussed is a simple…

Which law though? Which country/state/region? Does it even apply? We're talking about an open source project that is not being sold, with contributors from all over the world.

The laws which any contributors to the OSS project are subject to. Some projects geographically restrict who can contribute to avoid issues like this, but when laws are passed by a jurisdiction in which existing maintainers reside those maintainers have the choice to either comply or move to a different jurisdiction. Moving is extremely disruptive & expensive, so they often comply.
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