Debian Forked Over Systemd 647
jaromil writes: The so called "Veteran Unix Admin" collective has announced that the fork of Debian will proceed as a result of the recent systemd controversy. The reasons put forward are not just technical; included is a letter of endorsement by Debian Developer Roger Leigh mentioning that "people rely on Debian for their jobs and businesses, their research and their hobbies. It's not a playground for such radical experimentation." The fork is called "Devuan," pronounced "DevOne." The official website has more information.
Okay, this is a great idea (Score:3, Informative)
But that website is atrocious suck. Top AND bottom panes which don't move and serve no purpose other than to obscure the window? What the hell is this shit?
Re:Okay, this is a great idea (Score:5, Funny)
This recreates the correct 800x600 experience for optimum viewing. We've had 800x600 for years and years and it's well-proven and stable. There's certainly no need for all these extra resolutions to complicate things!
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Oh *uck even Gnome One is better looking! BTW, does it have systemd?
Well, at least it did not have blinking background. Or have my brains fused, did it?
My new-year-resolution will be "640-is-good-for-everybody, if it is white on black"
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This recreates the correct 800x600 experience for optimum viewing. We've had 800x600 for years and years and it's well-proven and stable. There's certainly no need for all these extra resolutions to complicate things!
Are you still using cash instead of the latest crypto-currency? That's soooo last century! When are people going to understand that keeping critical infrastructure running in a tried-and-true fashion is un-sexy and un-cool?! Plus, the people who invented it mock your concerns as antiquated, childish, and just plain dumb, so you know you should trust their plans and advice!
To the future!
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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One of my pet peeves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
Just because there's a fallacy doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong.
Re:Okay, this is a great idea (Score:5, Funny)
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But that website is atrocious suck. Top AND bottom panes which don't move and serve no purpose other than to obscure the window? What the hell is this shit?
In an attemt to make a real source for info about Devuan aside from that horrendous page, I've created a wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Please help me fill it out with information and sources. Thanks!
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I agree the text is way too large for viewing on a monitor, but a few clicks of the scrollwheel with the Ctrl key fixes that. Or if you prefer to keep your hands on the keyboard, Ctrl+- three times brings the font down to an acceptable
Re:Okay, this is a great idea (Score:5, Funny)
I'm going to start a more user friendly fork of Devuan that adds systemd back in! I'm going to call it Trayvon.
Website coming soon.
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What a horrible name (Score:2, Insightful)
Never let sysadmins name anything. They couldn't find one single marketing / PR person to test that name?
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Except when someone says "devone" and someone else tries to type that in a search and does not find anything. Pronounce "Oneders". If you stared out with a number you are in the minority. Devuan a could also be pronounced in three syllables as "Dev" "u" "an". Relying on a pronunciation of a made up word is not a good idea.
Re:What a horrible name (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
...a fork of Debian,
Such a thing is unheard of in Debian's 20-odd year history.
I wonder what the impact of this fork will be on Debian-proper.
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I think it's fair to say that this fork is far more significant.
I certainly wish them luck, but I am concerned that they may not be able to get the resources needed to successfully compete against the Redhat/Debian agenda.
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More significant than what?
Anyone who thinks that this is going to become more significant than Ubuntu has rocks in their head. Yes, Ubuntu started as a Debian fork... hell it still shares many upstream packages.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of all Linux distributions, Debian was *the* first choice for running servers, but since they decided to force systemd down users throats they have lost a lot of credibility in the BOFH world. A sysadmins first concern is reliability of its systems and this was also Debian's for a very long time. Clearly the adoption of systemd is not going in this direction. It seems to me that Devuan people understood that and want to take the now deserted land of server oriented distros. Of course the meaning for Debian is they will now have a hard time to compete with the whole lot of very good desktop distributions if they don't want to lose most of their users.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
You comment is well put. A distro that is "Debian without systemd dependencies" has a very large built-in audience right out of the gate. And that audience is technically sophisticated, with the ability to contribute. Regardless of whether or not you consider that audience a herd of Luddites (which I do not) it has both critical mass and sufficient know-how and motivation to give Devuan a fast ramp, which is the key to survival in today's crowded distro world.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of all Linux distributions, Debian was *the* first choice for running servers, but since they decided to force systemd down users throats they have lost a lot of credibility in the BOFH world. A sysadmins first concern is reliability of its systems and this was also Debian's for a very long time. Clearly the adoption of systemd is not going in this direction. It seems to me that Devuan people understood that and want to take the now deserted land of server oriented distros. Of course the meaning for Debian is they will now have a hard time to compete with the whole lot of very good desktop distributions if they don't want to lose most of their users.
Then why aren't you hearing anything from the Red Hat customer base? If anyone wants reliability it's the enterprise which is Red Hat's entire market. The fact that nothing is coming from that side tells me that this is about something else entirely where people are more concerned about the political process and symbolism than the technical merits.
Maybe there is a big demand for a very stripped down low feature server distro, but I suspect this isn't going do become a big player.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
Then why aren't you hearing anything from the Red Hat customer base?
I am. Were I to walk into the systems suite here at work and yell "yeah centos 7!" I would probably be bombarded with nerf darts. In a mean way.
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Interesting)
Except there is plenty coming out of the RHEL customer base - we're being told to shut up. Also notice how many RHEL shops are not moving to RHEL 7 (us among them).
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Also notice how many RHEL shops are not moving to RHEL 7 (us among them).
Ok so that's one. You got any more numbers? No seriously I'm interested to know how much this is affecting RHEL 7's adoption rate, are there any statistics published somewhere? Even inferred ones like adoption rate since release compared to previous adoption rates since release would do.
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I am part of the red hat customer base, and to be honest some of us have started looking elsewhere.
The other problem is that a lot of the RH base is not purchased by the admins, but by people who know nothing about systemd and force it down.
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Then why aren't you hearing anything from the Red Hat customer base? If anyone wants reliability it's the enterprise which is Red Hat's entire market. The fact that nothing is coming from that side tells me that this is about something else entirely where people are more concerned about the political process and symbolism than the technical merits.
Maybe there is a big demand for a very stripped down low feature server distro, but I suspect this isn't going do become a big player.
We're a Red Hat shop. 500+ servers by current count with capacity expected to double in the next 6 months. Not one single system 7 server yet and the more official Red Hat training we get the less we like the changes in system 7. But you won't hear our complaints because our concerns go directly to Red Hat.
Let's be clear here for the 'people more concerned about desktop users', systemd has absolutely NOTHING to do with desktops. The servers we manage are headless boxes (all of them). Red Hat is pushing
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I think it's fair to say that this fork is far more significant.
I think this fork will be fairly insignificant, and, further, that it will increasingly run into problems as desktops and other packages depend more and more on systemd components (that trend was one of the major factors in the Debian decision to adopt it).
I actually wish the Devuan guys all the best; I'd love to see another solid server-focused distro (server focus may help them avoid the issues with DEs). But I'm really glad to hear about this fork because the systemd debate has been a huge distraction
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why do we even need operating systems? A desktop is all anyone needs... just run your servers on that!
Why do we even need desktops? A browser is all anyone needs... just run your servers on that!
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
~~
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
You know... all that code that I don't know what it does because I don't understand the problem it solves! Surely if I don't know it can't be useful, right? Who are you to have features I don't understand?! /s
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Just disassemble it and reassemble it again. You'll end up with a hand full of parts, typically 3-4 screws and a little metal bracket but everything will work just fine and you've made your system lighter and less complex.
This has worked on every laptop / PC I've ever worked on.
subtle sarcasm? (Score:3)
The sarcasm on this site is usually a bit more obvious. Needless to say...or maybe not...Debian is the most forked linux distribution on the planet. Its the prison b!tch of distros ;-)
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I wish them good luck. (Score:2, Informative)
GCC was forked successfully to egcs
XFree86 was forked successfully to xorg
FreeBSD was forked successfully to netbsd and dragondflybsd
OpenOffice was forked successfully to libreoffice
Now it's the debian's turn to be forked. Good luck to everyone.
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Re:I wish them good luck. (Score:4, Insightful)
When this new distro no longer refers to *any* debian repos, maintaining and compiling their own deb packages entirely, then I'll recognize it as a fork. Until then it's just one of many distros that base themselves off of debian and its package base while changing parts they don't like.
I bet there is a high probability that Devuan will be based on uselessd. If so it will be interesting to watch the approach. Uselessd, if anything, validates the original ideas of systemd, just taking issue with the packaging, as near as I can tell.
I too wish them well, but I do not hold out much hope that they will go anywhere.
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just taking issue with the packaging
Not just the packaging, but also binary logging and cruft like embedded web servers and QR encoders.
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Uselessd addresses not only the packaging but the excessively tight coupling of components.
The fact that a small team could make such substantial changes shows that it really is a lack of maturity in the design/implementation of systemd.
Re:I wish them good luck. (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree. Uselessd shows that systemd's parts are not as tightly coupled as people suppose. Just because they are all part of one umbrella project does not, in fact, mean they are tightly coupled and integrated in some sort of orwellian fashion. Uselessd proves this fact. And Uselessd is a good thing to have. Provides competition for systemd, provides a few features people want, and could pave the way for modern desktops like Gnome to run on non-linux systems such as BSD. Gnome isn't bent on having *the* "systemd" just the capabilities that systemd provides. If Uselessd can do it, so much the better.
Re:I wish them good luck. (Score:4, Informative)
Uselessd requires code patches to relax the coupling. That means the code was more tightly coupled before. It bolsters my claim that systemd is gratuitously coupled to make it harder to rip out OR that it is a poorly executed project. Hanlon suggests the latter, so I'll go with that.
Were your claim true, there wouldn't be a uselessd project.
Re:I wish them good luck. (Score:4, Insightful)
You have clearly developed no taste in system architecture. The closer to the top of the stack, the more acceptable dependencies are, though even then they shouldn't be piled on without thought.
I don't WANT init to do the things systemd does. I want other utilities that don't give a damn how they came to be running to do those things.
I would list the dependencies needed to build Apache
ldd /usr/sbin/apache2 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3 (0x00007f9742320000) /usr/lib/libaprutil-1.so.0 (0x00007f97420fb000) /usr/lib/libapr-1.so.0 (0x00007f9741ec9000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f9741cad000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f9741921000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007f974171b000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007f9741513000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypt.so.1 (0x00007f97412dc000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f97410d7000) /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexpat.so.1 (0x00007f9740ead000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f9742801000)
linux-vdso.so.1 => (0x00007fff13dfc000)
libpcre.so.3 =>
libaprutil-1.so.0 =>
libapr-1.so.0 =>
libpthread.so.0 =>
libc.so.6 =>
libuuid.so.1 =>
librt.so.1 =>
libcrypt.so.1 =>
libdl.so.2 =>
libexpat.so.1 =>
That wasn't hard.
And again, apache runs on top of the environment created by init, it is acceptable for it to have more dependencies.
It;s one thing to build a house of cards on your dining room table. It's quite another to build your home on top of a house of cards.
Note how many systems have managed to support apache, samba, a GUI desktop and much much more on top of the simple but effective init.
Meanwhile, sysvinit can bring up a system with a degraded btrfs, systemd absolutely refuses and even Lennart can't seem to figure out what to do about it.
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Now you clearly don't understand. I DO want VTs. I want them handled by something that is equally happy being launched by sysvinit, systemd, openrc, or from a root shell when I boot with init=/bin/bash.
I want my system time handled by ntpd. Ntpd doesn't care what init is installed or if it is run by hand.
I don't want them to care if dbus is up, down, or modified beyond recognition. They may use it if it exists but shouldn't get out of shape if not.
Do those tangled up utilities you speak of meet those criter
Re:I wish them good luck. (Score:5, Informative)
Slight correction:
NetBSD and FreeBSD were developed independently in the 90s, and mostly in parallel.
OpenBSD forked off NetBSD.
DragonflyBSD forked off FreeBSD.
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What's the name again? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then just call it DevOne and be done with it. Stop with the words play and the phonetic cuteness, not everyone speaks english and spanish. If I read "Devuan" I'm going to pronounce "Dév-u-en" (french).
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Neologisms confustrate everyone.
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Just call it -traditional-init
What is this thing about creating supposedly funny or original names for technical things (a branch is not a brand). Just makes things hard to remember.
And look at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... [wikimedia.org]
Are you really telling me than not one of the countless existing forks of debian wants to stay with traditional init and you could help there? would that not increase the chances of continued support. Or is this just about being the boss of something?
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You only live Juan's.
great news! 2015 = YotLD! (Score:2, Funny)
I was just thinking that what's holding back the Linux community is the lack of yet another distro.
2015 will surely be the year of the Linux Desktop now!
The have an IRC channel! (Score:2)
Good, Linux Likes Diversity (Score:2)
Diversity is a good thing. I understand that, with increasing use of Linux as a desktop OS by people who don't run servers, systemd makes a lot of sense for some people.
I am the primary admin on servers in three different states. The benefits of using init for remote admin outweigh the simplicity and user-friendliness of systemd on my laptop.
I switched from Mandrake to Debian almost fifteen years ago when I first started doing heavy remote admin, I'll make a change again now, and the world will keep on spin
explain? (Score:3)
I don't suppose someone has a good article or explanation about why the entire systemd thing is a hot issue in the first place?
Re:explain? (Score:5, Insightful)
Systemd changes the way various start up and backgound processes are triggered.
The aim is to come up with something that can do more than the current init / cron et al processes in a more coherent way than at the moment, which dates back decades. Many approaches have been taken over the years, but generally try to keep the foundation of how it works the same, but make it "better". systemd throws out everything and starts over with a different approach.
The reasons why people don't like it are legion. Some because of change resistance - this manifests in many different ways. Some because of the "who" of it. They don't like source of the change. Some of the resistance has a technical foundation - the first process in the current init is very simple and everything spawns from it. With systemd, it is complex, and so the fear is that it has an increased probability of failure or instability. And linux is founded on a reputation of stability. Arguments are that it isn't very unixy - which is to have lots of small tight components that do one thing well all working together. Arguments are that having many processes spawn to do something relatively straight forward is unixy, but that doesn't automatically make it good. Arguments are that having one (main) process mediate all this stuff is better than having everything mediate itself and try to cooperate with everything else.
The difficulty with all of the arguments, is that a significant proportion of them are emotionally based, rather than technical, but all are couched in a technical setting, which makes it extremely hard to really get to grips with the real pros and cons.
I am happy to have systemd on some machines, and happy to not have it on others. With regards to this whole topic, the best bet when you see a discussion unfold is sit back with popcorn and watch either sides arguments dissolve into logical fallacy.
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Some people don't understand the motivations and goals of systemd. The whole "better foundation" view depends on where you are standing. According to the systemd developers:
What's systemd again?
A system and service manager
A platform
The glue between the applications and the kernel
That also means that this "glue" enables proprietary, close source binaries to run on, and access all the low-level functionality of, the GPL'd open source kernel software. The goals actually go even further than that:
What
Systemd and spirit of Debian (Score:5, Insightful)
From a Linux Journal article by Ian Murdock in 1994: [linuxjournal.com]
As the Debian developers create their pieces, they follow strict guidelines for constructing and maintaining these pieces, called packages. Because these guidelines are followed, each package can be dropped into the system independently without damaging or interfering with programs from other packages. By working with a set of consistent rules and with identical tools, the volunteers can and do create a truly modular system.
Nuff said.
Re:My son's name is Devuan (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A joke? (Score:5, Funny)
A joke? (Score:4, Informative)
It's worse. Pottering is paid by Microsoft to destroy the Linux community. Every. Single. Thing. he touches is crap, mostly pointless, controversial, and breaks everything. I have no idea why people don't see this.
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I'm kind of hopeful that the Ubuntu people will consider droppi
Re:A joke? (Score:4, Informative)
Ubuntu also moved to systemd because everyone was moving to systemd. Before that, Ubuntu has their own init system called Upstart, and there was much debate in Debian on whether to use systemd or Upstart.
Of course, in the end, even people wanting sysvinit are obviously doing something wrong because they're not using sysvinit properly. Sysvinit has a daemon manager built into it yet it's only used for one daemon typically (getty).
Instead, we abuse it to run shell scripts that barely replicate that functionality that is already built into sysvinit. I mean, init monitors the processes it runs, restarts them as necessary, and if they fail by restarting too quickly, init waits 5 minutes before trying again. Which his what daemon management is.
Re:A joke? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ubuntu also moved to systemd because everyone was moving to systemd. Before that, Ubuntu has their own init system called Upstart, and there was much debate in Debian on whether to use systemd or Upstart.
It's my understanding that there was an attempt to affect the voting by limiting who had the ability to vote, simply because one of the lead developers was a prominent Upstart supporter. One interesting reference is here [rath.org], though this is not the source I read about the vote manipulation from.
That said, I'm not overly familiar with how Debian elections are carried out. I only know what I came across in the last couple weeks when I was trying to get a grip on why major distributions were going so solidly with systemd, given issues that so many have found in the package. The trick to remember is that systemd is not the only solution to any {real|perceived} issues that sysvinit may have: There's also openrc and Upstart, to name two other alternatives, and they each have different solutions to bring to the table. Part of what made Linux what it is is the ability to choose what you want in your distro, to determine what you think is really "broken" and what the solution should be.
Honestly, I started getting migraines trying to wade through all the political crap. Proponents of systemd started to sound like American politicians (Democrat or Republican, take your pick; they both tell lies and break promises). It's mind-numbing, which I think is the point. I couldn't find a distro without systemd at all (this was a couple weeks ago, before I head of Devuan) so I wiped my Linux (Fedora) box and put FreeBSD on it.
Yeah, I'll have to learn how to deal with 'ports', but I won't have to deal with the nightmare that appears to be systemd.
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Re:A joke? (Score:5, Funny)
If RedHat now = "The Man" then I think we can finally declare, Linux has won. Linux has taken over the world. Long Live Linus!
http://img.photobucket.com/alb... [photobucket.com]
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I will stick with systemd version, which works fast and provides an actually exiting startup manager.
An exiting startup manager? Is that a less destructive alternative to the HCF (Halt and Catch Fire) instruction?
Re:Why not UselessDebian? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an admin. I don't want to be excited about startup managers. If I get excited by init, it means something is broken.
Re:Why not UselessDebian? (Score:5, Insightful)
When your career depends on things working, an "exciting" startup manager (which is what I presume you meant) is the last thing you want.
In fact, you want things to be as un-exciting as possible.
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the BSDs are doing it for a long time.
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That's actually dead simple to do. Most already have one that's been stable for years.
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Really? Posix dictates a particular init system? I don't think you really understand what Posix means.
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What are you talking about, no it doesn't. You're literally saying that with no idea what you're talking about. It doesn't kill anything. It's a modern init system for a modern os. don't be silly. It's a ridiculous idea that startup scripts should be written in SHELL. Solaris went away from it and did pretty well. OS X went away from it and did pretty well. FreeBSD wants to go away from it.
When you say Solaris 'did pretty well', what do you mean by that? It doesn't seem to be doing at all well in terms of popularity in the data center. Same with OSX, its use in the data center is MINIMAL.
Re: Unix tool philosopy == Good Thing (Score:5, Funny)
Completely unacceptable. I mean it's called "unstable" how dare it be unstable...
Re: Unix tool philosopy == Good Thing (Score:4, Informative)
Very droll. But misses the point. Historically, Debian unstable was usually absolutely solid. Better than the stable releases of many distributions. I should know, I've run it on my desktop(s) for the last 14 years. I've had maybe two minor issues in that entire time. Its quality has plummeted in recent months as all this "modern" stuff has been jammed in without regard to proper backward compatibility.
You might this this is amusing. I'm upset that the distribution I've spent the last 16 years working on has been subverted by developers pushing software with major design and implementation issues, and no formal specifications for its many interfaces. For something which aims to become the base of all Linux systems, its current form is pretty amateur, and its lack of attention to detail in breaking existing installs on upgrade in various different ways is breathtaking. This is largely down to the difference in attitude between the older developers such as myself who spent huge amounts of time testing things worked on all sorts of different configurations, and the systemd crowd who simply tell you you're doing things the wrong way and must change, even if you've got a configuration which was supported for the last decade by Debian. The big change here is that systemd has broken compatibility with Debian's past supported configurations by not caring to support the full range of configurations the old sysv-rc/initscripts setup did; and its maintainers did not spend the necessary effort to ensure these setups were migrated and supported properly.
Re: Unix tool philosopy == Good Thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Historically, Debian unstable was usually absolutely solid.
Except for all the major changes it goes through. The introduction of udev, change to 2.2 and 2.4 kernels, all of those broke for me (though switching to 3.0 was fine but I think that was more of a marketing move than a major version change). Then there's application level problems such as config utilities breaking things like Apache when it jumped a major version.
The system is labelled as unstable. If it's stable it is a bonus. What you *think* it should be is irrelevant, it is provided without any guarantee to be bug free, or even a guarantee that it will boot.
Re: Unix tool philosopy == Good Thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Um, what I think it should be is entirely relevant. I was primarily responsible for maintaining sysvinit and the initscripts from squeeze through to the wheezy release and after, doing the testing and providing the guarantee that it would boot. I was the one who did the testing before uploading. Different VMs, different upgrade scenarios, bare metal on different architectures, Linux, kFreeBSD and HURD kernels. If I'd screwed up, people would have had unbootable systems and come shouting. The quality bar was higher then and we did pretty thorough testing; I'd like to think we did a pretty good job. I certainly was never responsible for systems becoming unbootable on upgrade.
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And if you were then you were not to blame in any case. Not until the change was made to Debian stable.
I appreciate that you put that much effort into your work. The world could do with many more developers like you, but the fact remains Debian unstable is what it says on the box, and if you have a problem with it then sure file bug reports, but don't go somewhere and complain about how your "stable" system suddenly had an issue.
It reminds me about people who ran early betas of Windows 7 and complained abou
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Tell that to LibreOffice.
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Re:hum (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahh, the usual misrepresentation of why we oppose systemd that always shows up. Calling us haters while trying to reframe the discussion away from the real issues isn't convincing - it just adds evidence that systemd gains position by propagand and politics instead of design and implementation quality. No, you are not going to scare us away form linux. Some may retreat to FreeBSD, which is fine (it's a good OS). The rest of us are going to stay with linux, even if it large parts of linux leave and become part of the systemd monoculture. We've been here before, after all, over a decade ago.
The varied technical issues with systemd are bad enough, but they have already been discussed, and are a central reason why the sysadmins ae forking Debian. Many systemd advocates try and steer discussions back to these technical issues - while denying that systemd doesn't actually work for everybody - to avoides talking about the fundamental design problems and philosophical changes that systemd forces on Linux. While it is currently popular to "move fast and break things", those of us with more experience understand the value in not breaking everything. None of this means that those that are better served by systemd shoudl stop using it! We're only angry about the attemts to force a monoculture by breaking compatability for political reasons, when there as no technical need. You know, like Microsoft does with their "not invented here" attitude.
Still, those are philosophical issues about the software itself. That is not the primary problem some of us have with systemd, which is not about technical problems, but is instead an attack on our prefered method of licencing. The systemd takeover is an attempt to separate Linux and many userspace tools from the GPL, so that software can be used under the LGPL terms instead.
What is the big difference between GPL and LGPL? Linkage. Linking to a GPL library requires you to follow certain requirements if you link against it, while the LGPL specifically allows taht usage. (k)dbus provides the workaround, by replacing what would be a normal function call into a library with a "IPC". It's slower, but so what, computers are way faster than needed. In the end, while you can still choose to release your code as GPL, if you have to use an IPC mechanism to do anything useful the license requirements that will actually apply ends up being being more like the LGPL. For a better explanation, see this post by stevel [gentoo.org] in the Gentoo forums.
Well, if I wanted to release under the LGPL, I would. What I'm not going to do is undermine my choice of license just because a bunch of embedded developers (and others) want to use what were traditionally GPL projects without having to be bound by the copyleft requirements. If this was proprietary software, you would call that kind of behavior "stealing" or "piracy".
So don't bother with claims about "faster desktops" or "easier programming". When your solution also bundles a forced monoculture ("unifying the difference betwen distributions") and contains a loophole around the licence some of us chose it is simply not an option for those of us that place "freedom" as the most important feature. /how much does JTRIG (or their equivalent) pay for these propaganda attempts, anyway? //It's a waste of money regardless, given how transparent these comments are ///some of this post is reused from a post I made on HN
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RPC allows proprietary software to leverage the functionality of your GPL software, which might go against your intent, as RPC becomes the de facto interface of increasing number of components...
Honestly, I don't buy into the whole non-GPL can't link GPL argument in the first place.
Suppose I were to tell you to grab your copy of the 3rd paperback printing of Game of Thrones and look at the second sentence on page 320. Does posting that sentence make this post a violation of GRRM's copyright? Of course not - I didn't copy anything in his book - simply mentioning that it exists and that it contains a page 320 in no way makes this post a derivative work.
Well, when you link a binary to a shared objec
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In open-source, forking is as healthy as democracy, perhaps moreso.
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This isn't a "downstream branch" like Ubuntu, which strengthens the community by sending patches upstream
That's a groundless assertion - there is no reason (technical or political) that Devuan wouldn't send patches upstream for general packages.
Those people who created this fork are a bunch of malcontents that are whining because they didn't get their way.
So according to you, people should devote their time and effort for free to software they don't like, and if they don't they're "whiny malcontents." One of the key aspects of FOSS is the freedom to run and work on the software that you like and support. Once you understand that, you can stop whining about decisions you disagree with and get to work on something useful.
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My main assertion is that many forks are done with good intentions. This new fork, on the other hand, is not necessarily based on the best motivations.
Re:All right, allow me to expose my ignorance (Score:5, Informative)
I used to be a sys admin, but that was years ago and currently I only use Linux on the desktop. I don't suppose that someone could explain to me (or just give me a link to an explanation): what is systemd exactly, what does it change, and why do people both love and hate it so much?
Systemd is a piece of software, modular in design, monolithic in architecture. It is, on top of being a replacement for init and the init.d scripts, replaces basically everything touching kernel and whatnot. It is also a service management and monitoring framework.
It is authored by the same guy who created PulseAudio and Avahi. Think a guy with enourmous ego and the GNOME attitude ("my way, or the highway").
I've seen enough of these stories now to kind of get the feeling that it's mostly admins who hate this, and they mostly hate it because it's change and it screws up their configs. Is that right? Is there any other reason to hate it? I have no idea what the motivation is on the other side.
It takes what worked and everybody knows (mostly written in shell), and replaces it with binary blobs (binary programs, written in C).
The majority of admins (think: ex-Windows white collars) are overjoyed to have a new toy. They never knew how init worked - and now they do not have to care anymore. Because anything written in C is magically better than everything written in shell.
The minority of admins (think: *NIX guys) are royally pissed that something they were taking for granted - the total control over the system *NIX always provided - is now basically locked down and given away to some guys from interwebs about whom they never heard before. All for the sake, wait for it, that GNOME can shutdown or restart computer smoothly.
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At this point, some people will somewhat rightfully complain.
What does the init system have to do with this? Why can't we do this with sysv init? And the answer is "technically, no reason".
It just so happens that the only piece of software that currently can do this job properly (systemd-logind) is part of the systemd project and has a dependency on systemd(-init).
But at the same time, that dependency exists simply because no other project implements the necessary features. Once someone creates a capable al
Re:All right, allow me to expose my ignorance (Score:5, Informative)
systemd is, first, a new init system for Linux, to replace sysv init.
Additionally, it brings a host of companion daemons: logging (journald), a session manager (logind) and a bunch of others.
systemd and it's companions offer a host of functionality and a number of software pieces are becoming to depend on it, to the point you "can't" run a fully functional Gnome3 without using systemd as init (it needs the session management functionally of logind, for example).
The major distributions have adopted systemd as default init system: Fedora, RHEL, SuSE, Debian and Arch. Ubuntu hasn't changed yet but they have announced they will follow Debian in the future.
There is a number of people who dislike it for many reasons, which are hard to summarize because many of the people dislike it for false reasons and only some actually make valid and constructive critiques.
Eg, many people claim it's monolithic. In fact, it's made of ~100 daemons and applications and the init process isn't that big. Much much smaller than the Linux kernel itself, which a big monolithic kernel.
Many peole dislike being "forced" to use because the major distributions are adopting it and major projects like Gnome are becoming dependent (with KDE talking about it too).
I use "" in "can't" and "forced" because it's not strictly true. While a lot of people whine and hate in slashdot, a small number of people have been putting their code where their mouth is and working on alternatives.
Eg, there's a systemd-shim package in Debian which actually allows you to run Gnome3 very nicely without using systemd as init, by providing the necessary systemd features.
Re:All right, allow me to expose my ignorance (Score:5, Interesting)
Some people dislike systemd because they can see where it is headed. Here is your sign [0pointer.de].
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Ok so reading the slides they're planning on doing network management (byebye NetworkManager), Local DNS cache (yes please), mDNS responder, LLMNR responder, DNSSEC verification, NTP, sandboxing services and applications, OS/App/Container image formats, stateless systems, atomic node initialisations and updates and more. That is freaking awesome. Not only does it bring Linux distributions closer together.. it also takes the distributions as a whole to a new level. Instead of a kernel + some packages the future will bring us a true (GNU/)Linux/systemd operating system. I can understand this may seem scary to some but personally I really think this is awesome.
But we already have that available. It's called OSX.
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