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Debian Linux

Systemd-Free Devuan 4.0 'Chimaera' Officially Released (devuan.org) 140

Luna (Slashdot reader #20,969) quotes the Devuan web site.

"Dear Friends and Software Freedom Lovers," its announcement begins: "Devuan Developers are delighted to announce the release of Devuan Chimaera 4.0 as the project's new stable release. This is the result of many months of painstaking work by the Team and detailed testing by the wider Devuan community."
This release is Based on Debian Bullseye (11.1) with Linux kernel 5.10, according to the announcement, and lets you choose your init system : sysvinit, runit, and OpenRC.

Another feature it's touting: Improved desktop support. "Virtually all desktop environments available in Debian are now part of Devuan, systemd-free."
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Systemd-Free Devuan 4.0 'Chimaera' Officially Released

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  • by Ostracus ( 1354233 ) on Saturday October 23, 2021 @12:39PM (#61920363) Journal

    Gotta know something is hated when it's toted as a selling feature. Like Debian and "free".

    • by shanen ( 462549 ) on Saturday October 23, 2021 @01:23PM (#61920461) Homepage Journal

      I just can't get worked up about the systemd wars. To me they aren't even worth the price of the popcorn. To pop or not to pop? That is the question!

      However, my question about every piece of OSS these days is "Does it have a stable financial model?" and the answer is almost never "Yes" or even some flavor of "Maybe". No matter how much the developers love their code, love doesn't pay the bills (or test for and fix the bugs), and it always creates what I see as a kind of paradox. If the developers are skilled, then various employers will be trying to hire them for their programming (or other skills), but if the developers aren't skilled, then the software (distro in this case) will be flawed. The intersection of "independently wealthy" and "super programmer" and "dedicated to a single piece of code" is small enough to mostly ignore. (Yes, I could make a list, but it would not be long--and all (save two) of the top candidates I can think of have been abandoned now, either by the world, by their creators, or by both.)

      There are a couple of cases that stretch the limits of the paradox, but they are using the big donor model, which I see as flawed. If the donors are corporate, then they always try to twist the software to the corporations' various purposes. If the donors are rich guys, then there are two main flaws: The depth of their pockets and their judgment in calling the shots. I am not aware of any big donor who doesn't want to call shots. (If you know of one, then I'm sure I'd appreciate an introduction. ;-) (Another paradoxical joke is buried here.))

      There's also the crowd funding approach. The main problem there is the lack of project management, leading to large numbers of great ideas that implode or fade away, even if they "win" the lottery. The Diaspora fiasco is the best bad example I know of from that road to ruin.

      For some years I have been advocating for something I call the CSB approach (from Charity Share Brokerage). I actually fantasize that it would be possible to balance cost recovery against project management against the donors' desires . It obviously isn't a fantasy to notice that there are lots of people who donate to charities, but the difference with the CSB is that the small donors would have some degree of control over the use of their donations. You know. The sort of control that the big donors insist upon before they put up the big bucks. The CSB mechanism would let you make and track your small donations used for the purposes you want to support. The example of this story might be your $10 charity share donated to "Project X to remove systemd from Devian." But there's obviously something fundamentally wrong with the CSB idea and I'm just too stupid to figure it out, even after years of tinkering with the concepts.

      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        *sigh*

        After several Previews, too.

        s/programing (or other skills)/programming (or other) skills/

        *sigh*

        But this may be the main reason why I'm beginning to prefer Jimmy's sub-critical-mass WT.Social over Slashdot?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        However, my question about every piece of OSS these days is "Does it have a stable financial model?"

        That's okay. There's lots of other people who don't understand what Free Software is about either.

        • by shanen ( 462549 )

          Before I say anything rude about your syntactic error, may I ask you if you are fluent in English? Perhaps it's the second or fourth language you've studied?

          Seems unlikely, however. Many languages actually use different words for the various senses of "free" and "freedom". Japanese even has a single word for TANSTAAFL free. (Just joking. My Japanese isn't nearly that good. However there is a word that sometimes seems as though that's what they mean.(But if I was keeping count it's higher than fourth. And if

          • by nagora ( 177841 )

            to ask you to define what you think you mean by free?

            Software you didn't have to pay for but which you are nevertheless allowed to use.

            Apparently you think it is software someone else has to pay for to save you the hassle of doing anything for yourself. You whine about the lack of "a stable financial model" as if the people writing the software that you are allowed to use are in some way shirking some responsibility for additionally fulfilling your future needs. If the software is that important, then you can put your hand in your pocket and do something abou

        • However, my question about every piece of OSS these days is "Does it have a stable financial model?"

          That's okay. There's lots of other people who don't understand what Free Software is about either.

          Apparently, the one who doesn't understand "Free Software" is you. It is not "Free as in beer" it is, supposedly, "Free as in Freedom". Are you saying the first 20-30 years of FLOSS propaganda was a lie?

          • by nagora ( 177841 )

            However, my question about every piece of OSS these days is "Does it have a stable financial model?"

            That's okay. There's lots of other people who don't understand what Free Software is about either.

            Apparently, the one who doesn't understand "Free Software" is you. It is not "Free as in beer" it is, supposedly, "Free as in Freedom". Are you saying the first 20-30 years of FLOSS propaganda was a lie?

            In what way does "free as in freedom" require the author to have a stable financial model?

            • Lets recap, shall we?

              Someone posted:

              However, my question about every piece of OSS these days is "Does it have a stable financial model?"

              You responded:

              That's okay. There's lots of other people who don't understand what Free Software is about either.

              Someone else asked you "to define what you think you mean by free" you responded:

              Meanwhile, I stated you didn't know what was meant by free and your comment proves you don't.

              Now, you have asked

              "free as in freedom" require the author to have a stable financial model

              which is you trying to change horses in mid stream. What it means is that because something is free, as in freedom, it isn't necessarily free, as in beer, and that if one doesn't have a "stable financial model", then one will not be maintaining and will stop writing "f

              • by nagora ( 177841 )

                Lets recap, shall we?

                Someone posted:

                However, my question about every piece of OSS these days is "Does it have a stable financial model?"

                You responded:

                That's okay. There's lots of other people who don't understand what Free Software is about either.

                Someone else asked you "to define what you think you mean by free" you responded:

                Meanwhile, I stated you didn't know what was meant by free and your comment proves you don't.

                Now, you have asked

                "free as in freedom" require the author to have a stable financial model

                You missed a few words out there. I asked

                In what way does "free as in freedom" require the author to have a stable financial model?

                And you have studiously avoided the answer because:

                What it means is that because something is free, as in freedom, it isn't necessarily free, as in beer, and that if one doesn't have a "stable financial model", then one will not be maintaining and will stop writing "free software" because things like food and shelter cost money.

                Is not an answer to that, because apparently you think free software somehow owes you some debt of gratitude or something.

                Are you finished being stupid, arrogant, rude, and wonderfully insightful now?

                Once you explain why all that is the responsibility of the person you're freeloading off, sure.

                You could also try to learn about quoting so that you post the messages you're actually responding to.

              • by shanen ( 462549 )

                See why my NAK was sufficient for this branch?

                In my definition of freedom, the exponent on the beer is to cover the various senses of "free beer", but I'm sure 177841 wasn't worth the time.

                However, in your case, I'll go ahead and dig up a copy of my Ambrosian definition for your amusement:

                #1 Freedom = (Meaningful + Truthful - Coerced) Choice{~5} <> (Beer^4 | Speech | Trade)

                (As modified for the font problems of Slashdot.)

      • You got it backwards. It's always love that pays for the product. Whether it's the love for coding, or the love for the money that comes from selling it, that's just a question of how many middle men you like in on your spree.

        It's not like a useful (to you or me) commercial product never got cancelled, or altered into unusability for its original purpose for lack of a wide enough user base. Same goes for enough free software, with or without sponsoring.

        At least with free software, you could at least pick up

        • by shanen ( 462549 )

          Eh? Near as I can figure out what you seem to be saying, it sounds like you agree with me, but you seem to think you don't agree. Eh, again? Beg pardon? Can you state your position more clearly and in particular clarify where you think you disagree with me?

          Maybe it would help if you start with what you regard as a concrete and positive example of your position?

          So I guess that puts an onus on me to go first, since I didn't cite a concrete example. Kind of an old one, but how about FORTH? Based on a distinctl

    • Gotta know something is hated

      There are 7 billion people on the planet. I guarantee I can find someone who hates you personally as well. That's the strange thing about hate, my ex is married now, I hate her, presumably her husband loves her (though I don't know why).

      I am genuinely happy Denuvo exists and continues to exist. I am a proponent of Systemd and like it a lot. I think it has made managing daemons easier and Linux more flexible. But I don't want to live in a world where it's the *only* option.

      You want to talk about hate, I remi

  • yay... (Score:2, Funny)

    by retchdog ( 1319261 )

    ``Improved desktop support: "Virtually all desktop environments available in Debian are now part of Devuan, systemd-free."``

    WOW, desktops almost as good as Debian?! Where do I sign up?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Chas ( 5144 )

      If the system is free of the systemd system compromiser, then yes.

      • linux culture wars are just as stupid as the normie ones.

    • Unicode desktops. Ncurses never looked so...emotional.

    • to be fair, no one chooses debian over other distros for their polished desktop environments.

    • Gnome3 and kde4+ have been broken as fuck for the better part of a decade. I've found myself using Mate Desktop almost exclusively at home and at work. I tried xfce but found it way too spare and lxde was just not quite there either.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      ``Improved desktop support: "Virtually all desktop environments available in Debian are now part of Devuan, systemd-free."``

      WOW, desktops almost as good as Debian?! Where do I sign up?

      You probably do not understand what you are talking about. It is about the desktop _alternatives_ available. It is a rather large number as this is not Windows.

      • no, i know what i'm talking about here just as i know what i'm talking about when you agree with me.

        their news means something like >90% of our desktops are at least as good as the debian-stable version. if you are an anti-systemd zealot, sure, great news for you!

        but debian desktops are ime a least-effort vanilla bundle. that's the joke.

        as for windows, my first linux install was slackware off floppies. bite me.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          no, i know what i'm talking about here just as i know what i'm talking about when you agree with me.

          their news means something like >90% of our desktops are at least as good as the debian-stable version. if you are an anti-systemd zealot, sure, great news for you!

          but debian desktops are ime a least-effort vanilla bundle. that's the joke.

          as for windows, my first linux install was slackware off floppies. bite me.

          Thanks for confirming you have no clue. What else but a "vanilla" bundle would a window manager bundle be? You have or get a configuration you like yourself.

  • Note this is sarcasm.
    :)
  • Does it work? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Saturday October 23, 2021 @01:47PM (#61920513) Journal

    When I switched to Linux a few months back I tried several distros... I stuck with kubuntu because it's the only one that worked out of the box with the least annoyances... Ubuntu was being weird when plugging in USB audio devices, switching around the preferred audio device. Very annoying in a KVM scenario.

    Devuan, meanwhile, fecked up the boot loader on the first install. The BIOS didn't even offer the disk as bootable. On the second install, My user didn't have su rights...
    The comment a Devuan user made when I said I trashed the install and went back to kubuntu was "Well, if you give up that quickly about something that is an easy fix... just add the user to su group".
    Problem was A, I shouldn't HAVE to fix root elevation right after initial deployment and B, the user WAS part of the su group!

    I am running kubuntu because the few things I had to fix I managed myself with some googling because if there is one truth about running linux it's that you're on your own. I've asked questions in like four different venues, including Reddit, and nobody gives a fuck. And by that I don't mean people are rude. Hell, I'd be SO happy if people were rude like 15 years ago and solve my problem along the way. No, people don't even answer questions at all these days.

    There simply isn't a good OS for me at this point. kubuntu is the least frustrating one but that's really not saying much.

    • Still has issues (Score:4, Informative)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday October 23, 2021 @02:31PM (#61920607)

      I just gave the new 4.0 release a spin and ran into the same su problem. The user account you're asked to create isn't given su rights. So you have to login as root initially to fix it. It also asks you to specify which disk you want the bootloader written to. That really shouldn't be a question when you pick the guided install.

      • by Kludge ( 13653 )

        The user account you're asked to create isn't given su rights.

        As a grizzled old Unix person, I would say, yes, that is how it should be. That's how it was for many years, and works just fine.

        It also asks you to specify which disk you want the bootloader written to.

        Thank, the Unix Gods! I don't want the installer overwriting the bootloader without my permission EVER!

        I should try this wonderful distribution.

    • Re:Does it work? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bobby ( 109046 ) on Saturday October 23, 2021 @02:32PM (#61920613)

      Hmmm, your post has me thinking and reflecting. I'm sorry you're not getting more help. Maybe I need to take part in some forums; I have very few online logins (this being one of very few). Sometimes I feel like sw development, especially "features" and security, go a bit faster than I can keep up with.

      I'm a very long-time Slackware user, as well as many other distros. It might have been 10 years ago I installed a shiny new Slackware, selecting packages individually as I always do (yes, tedious), and a bunch of KDE apps would not run. But no useful error messages. It turns out I needed to install several security libraries and apps. But I don't need all that stuff. Sigh.

      With everything in life, there's truly no "one size fits all". I tend to steer clear of the distros that try to be more Windows / MacOS-like. Probably the main reason I use Linux, for personal / desktop, is that I have more control of what it does and doesn't do.

      I like the idea of an installer asking if you want novice, intermediate, or expert installer prompts.

      Knowing what I know of Linux distros, I don't think I'd ever trust any of them to do everything correctly for a non-tinkerer. But, many distros install well, depending on the specific set of hardware in the computer.

      All that said, I don't think any Linux distro installer has ever done everything I wanted, and usually they do things I don't want. An example: I'll partition the HD exactly the way I want it (using a "live" boot media), and then run an installer that insists on scrapping my partitions and doing things its way, and usually very difficult to stop it from doing so.

      Many like Arch Linux. I haven't tried it in many years.

      For servers I've been using CentOS, but forget it for average person's desktop.

      I really like Alpine Linux- they have from very tiny ARM-based / embedded installs up to full-on bare-metal XEN hypervisor. Someone recently commented there might be problems with some non-Alpine-compiled apps because Alpine is based on MUSL libraries, not glibc. I don't know- everything I've needed I've found in the Alpine repositories.

      I know I'll get flack, but I generally enable direct root access on my systems. Debian generally blocks root logins / su, forcing sudo for everything. I prefer fewer keystrokes, so one of the first things I do on any Debian derivative is enable root login, though 'su - is' fine too.

      And just to be clear, I never allow direct root login through ssh.

      • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        Frankly I am at the point where I would LOVE a support subscription for home users... like pay 20 bucks a month like a patreon and for that you get to ask a reasonable amount of questions and are ENTITLED to get an answer... even if that answer turned out to be "Sorry I can't help with that particular one".

        For me one big ass problem, on a regular basis with linux, is to even find out where the log file is I should have a look at. If it isn't obviously placed in /var/log, the first annoyance is finding the d

        • by bobby ( 109046 )

          Yeah, generally and frustratingly everyone has their own way of doing things. I can't remember the specific software, but something I had to deal with, pretty major stuff, installed into its own directory tree. /var/log you say? I fart in your general direction!

          I'm often forced to do a find -iname '*.log' or some such from root (/). But it might not even be a *.log name, so on you go. And there's no guarantee that the information will be useful at all to anyone but the original developer (a major gripe

          • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

            "And there's no guarantee that the information will be useful at all to anyone but the original developer (a major gripe I have with all software- useless error messages)."

            As someone working with Cisco UCS and Vmware... oh do I ever hear ya...

    • Oh come on, tell me you don't like recompiling the kernel when you need to tweak something or reconfiguring the bootloader or adjusting the dependencies...
      • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        I had the issue that videos would have tearing... both streams in browser and files played in VLC.

        Turned out I had to upgrade the kernel... only issue is you can't easily do that with apt, because the Ubuntu repository is a bit behind and I already had the latest stable release...

        So I manually installed a newer one. I was lucky... the one I tried fixed the issue and didn't have new dependencies... I would later find out that going further to an even newer kernel would throw dependency issues to which the in

        • by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

          *Wait for the next major distro release?

          Anybody else getting more dyslexic as they age? I make more and more typos as I get older...

          • by bobby ( 109046 )

            Most of us chalk that up to spellcheck. "What" is spelled perfectly, so you don't catch it. Sometimes I proofread and find the same kinds of mistakes.

            BTW, I'm trying to get away from the pain of upgrading to "next major distro release"; IE, looking more and more to "rolling release" distros. That's fairly easy to search for.

            That said, my fear is I'll have a good OS on aging hardware, and at some point it'll quit working due to an update/upgrade. Hopefully if/when that happens one can back out of it, and

    • by meisdug ( 1603907 ) on Saturday October 23, 2021 @03:45PM (#61920743)

      I've asked questions in like four different venues, including Reddit, and nobody gives a fuck. And by that I don't mean people are rude. Hell, I'd be SO happy if people were rude like 15 years ago and solve my problem along the way. No, people don't even answer questions at all these days.

      The problem is that you are only asking questions. You need two accounts. Ask your question with the first, then use the second account to answer your first question. Give a completely wrong answer but do it with the utmost confidence. People might not care about answering your question, but they won't miss an opportunity to tell someone they are wrong. This gets you the best answers quick.

  • I admit I haven't kept track but I was under the impression that GNOME was dependent on parts of systemd. If so, how do they get GNOME to run?

    • Re:What about GNOME? (Score:5, Informative)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday October 23, 2021 @04:41PM (#61920873)

      Nothing depends on systemd. Thing depend on the functionality systemd provides. For that Devuan provides shims for this to other software which takes the place of systemd.

      Specifically Gnome is dependent on the functionality systemd provides which they used to provide themselves via the since abandoned by Gnome Consolekit which provided login tracking and dbus management. Gnome depreciated it in favour of systemd-logind and systemd's dbus API.

      An example of such a package that emulates systemd calls to other packages that take over the task is systemd-shim. Consolekit too looks like it has been maintained since gnome dropped it.

  • systemd has its downsides.

    1. hasn’t emulated NetworkManager’s rich network/netdev/interface setups, notable the many protocols sitting on top of other protocols such as VLAN over 802.1x, bridging, iSCSI.

    2. still requires you to manually bring certain interface online. It will fail if you dont bring your interface online by some rc.local.

    3. Has a strange failure when one drive failed in RAID-anything-non-zero. It is catastrophic.

    4. Does not work with some ISP (looking at you, Comcast, Verizon,

    • it is maddening that if you pulled an Ethernet cable, that systemd will kill and restart your server when you reconnect.

      all that server reloading their huge data and prepping it for operational mode, argh!

  • I have two computers I mainly use. One has devuan installed, the other pclinuxos. I like both or I wouldn't keep them around.

    I seldom see devuan mentioned anywhere, so it's nice to see it brought up here. (When I do an internet search, the search engines usually ask me if I mean 'debian' instead of 'devuan') But I never see pclinuxos mentioned except as one in a list of non-systemd deistros, so I thought I'd give it a shout out here.

    • Modern systems are powerful enough nowadays that Gentoo's build times are not as painful as they used to be. So, rolling-release, systemd optional (mine run OpenRC), source-based (thus, configurable ad-nauseam). A little brittle when installing for the first time, and on the first few days of messing with it, but when you get the hang of it, I believe there is nothing else better (again, if you have reasonably modern hardware). A tinkerer's dream.

      Arch Linux is also rolling release, and I believe systemd is

      • Longtime and happy Gentoo user here also. Running amongst many other things OpenRC and Xfce.

        But I only recommend it for people who are comfortable with the command line, or at least willing to learn it.

        There are other distros more suited, IMO, for newer Linux users. Not because Gentoo is hard to use once set up, but because setting it up the first time really does require knowing one's way around the Linux command line, or at least being willing to learn.

        And also because things can go wrong, just as with

  • It's as if the whole "systemd is so monolithic it can't be removed" is a fucking lie...
  • by Budenny ( 888916 ) on Sunday October 24, 2021 @03:32AM (#61921595)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    "The Tragedy of systemd"

  • emacs goes next - Viva Le Revolucion!

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