I haven't used Devuan for a while but I use another systemd-free distro and I think all such distros have benefited from work that Devuan has done to keep the option on the table.
I think you can even get my favorite init system on Devuan now - dinit. It has a simple and useful service file format that's trivial to use and it can monitor and restart processes and users can use it for starting up their daemons etc - BUT it doesn't take over the world and the log file formats are all text.
It seems though not having systemd in it would be against "init freedom": https://www.devuan.org/os/init-freedom . Or is there some particular criteria an init system needs to satisfy to be included, that systemd doesn't satisfy but the others do?
A systemd distro tends to be locked to systemd, with many pieces of software requiring systemd to be running. An init–freedom distro avoids such dependencies. Presumably, you can still install systemd if you really want to.
Honestly though, the argument against systemd is that it moves too much stuff into init, but I don't think it does enough of that, it's still extremely conservative, like, SD-DBus should be using binder x-port IMO.
I don't care:
I can administer with relatively high confidence any Redhat- or Debian-derivate.
Thanks to systems.
Most issues regarding systemd I encountered were due to a halfway adoption (Debian).
Some things like timers are a bit more cumbersome than "the old way", but I wouldn't want to miss the added robustness.
Most things systemd implements lead to _less_ issues.
And writing a systemd unit is pretty easy, contrary to the old bash script mess.
So, no. Keep your Poettering-Bashing to yourself.
I'd rather invest the time in geokking the systemd choices deeper.
I use another distro but totally appreciate the effort to keep different branches of potential futures alive. Humans have a tendency, in tech and most other domains afaict, to put a lot of eggs in one basket because it's easier/allows-faster-moving-forward.. but that basket may have structural weaknesses that only shows once it has A LOT of eggs in it.
As a passionate systemd hater I still will not go back to using older bash-based initsystems and thus devuan.
I strongly believe that systemd brand is a worst thing that happened to Linux, hindering the spread and innovation in the Linux space, but at the same time I have to admit that systemd-as-pid1 is the best init system out there.
Love/hate systemd as I might, it's been rock solid everywhere I've used it, and I've used it heavily. It has it's quirks, as does the init-scripts that came before, and launchd on OSX (not sure what the modern equivalent is for MacOS).
However, the systemd journal raw format is binary data and would much rather a plain text log. All things being equal I'd rather deal with human readable files.
I have to admit to still having some philosophical discomfort over SystemD as I feel that it encompasses too much functionality. That said, it does work and that is probably the most important thing.
In my job, I often release Linux services integrated with systemd and I like it more than the old init system.
My problems with systemd is the bloatware, not init related, that comes with it in modern Linux distributions.
In my perception systemd people doesn't respect the freedom of choice of the users, the right to simply switch off features they find useless, annoying or simply they don't want in their workflow for any reason. I have a personal wiki related to the preparation of the development server or PC I personally use and the large majority of the chapters are related to the systemd features I need or want to remove and often that is a pain. I would like to see the users' right to NOT use given secondary feature respected, giving them the capability to easily remove or disable them without side effects, for example, in the OS installer, to have the power to deselect features, having alternative options like "manual operation" (i.e. DNS, I should be able to disable the option opting for manual configuration using resolv.conf, just as example). Even better, the possibility to have an input configuration file with all your options so that them will be applied automatically during the installation.
IMHO, if all the distributions enforce the systemd way to do anything , we have a monopoly and monopolies are never good.
But why is there no such pushback agains linux kernel? What makes that monolith you cannot customize different enough from systemd? What if I don't want to use in-kernel usb stack, or audit, or key management, or LSM modules, or ELF binfmt support, or filesystems — you are forced by the distro to use all those features. Yet with systemd it's somehow different. I'm genuinely curious
Devuan is my go to if I need a mainline distro without systemd, but honestly I just use Alpine for everything, even my desktop. People have this idea that it's only for containers, but that isn't so - its package library has everything you could need well maintained. I like the tools better than void, and prefer the release model to that of Artix/Arch.
Debian without systemd is a good start. Now, do Debian without dpkg, and you may finally be getting somewhere.
The reason Debian fell to the systemd behemoth is because its sysvinit scripts were already a complete disaster. Slackware and Gentoo, on the other hand, were able to stay clear of the mess because they had a decent implementation to begin with.
And Sysvinit was never the only place Debian kept its mess.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 48.6 ms ] threadI think you can even get my favorite init system on Devuan now - dinit. It has a simple and useful service file format that's trivial to use and it can monitor and restart processes and users can use it for starting up their daemons etc - BUT it doesn't take over the world and the log file formats are all text.
Honestly though, the argument against systemd is that it moves too much stuff into init, but I don't think it does enough of that, it's still extremely conservative, like, SD-DBus should be using binder x-port IMO.
Most issues regarding systemd I encountered were due to a halfway adoption (Debian). Some things like timers are a bit more cumbersome than "the old way", but I wouldn't want to miss the added robustness. Most things systemd implements lead to _less_ issues. And writing a systemd unit is pretty easy, contrary to the old bash script mess.
So, no. Keep your Poettering-Bashing to yourself. I'd rather invest the time in geokking the systemd choices deeper.
I strongly believe that systemd brand is a worst thing that happened to Linux, hindering the spread and innovation in the Linux space, but at the same time I have to admit that systemd-as-pid1 is the best init system out there.
Just through some random mess of unintegrated incomplete long abandoned half baked subsystems?
I really want to know, what do you use instead?
Even the defunct Upstart is better than what's in Devuan.
However, the systemd journal raw format is binary data and would much rather a plain text log. All things being equal I'd rather deal with human readable files.
It is like the cult of "The UNIX Philosophy" hardly found in any commercial UNIX that spun out of AT&T UNIX System V.
My problems with systemd is the bloatware, not init related, that comes with it in modern Linux distributions.
In my perception systemd people doesn't respect the freedom of choice of the users, the right to simply switch off features they find useless, annoying or simply they don't want in their workflow for any reason. I have a personal wiki related to the preparation of the development server or PC I personally use and the large majority of the chapters are related to the systemd features I need or want to remove and often that is a pain. I would like to see the users' right to NOT use given secondary feature respected, giving them the capability to easily remove or disable them without side effects, for example, in the OS installer, to have the power to deselect features, having alternative options like "manual operation" (i.e. DNS, I should be able to disable the option opting for manual configuration using resolv.conf, just as example). Even better, the possibility to have an input configuration file with all your options so that them will be applied automatically during the installation.
IMHO, if all the distributions enforce the systemd way to do anything , we have a monopoly and monopolies are never good.
It's very much not the same situation for systemd.
The reason Debian fell to the systemd behemoth is because its sysvinit scripts were already a complete disaster. Slackware and Gentoo, on the other hand, were able to stay clear of the mess because they had a decent implementation to begin with.
And Sysvinit was never the only place Debian kept its mess.