8 ms·

Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release candidate

59 points by liuw 9y ago

gareim 9y ago
I never understand when OSS projects give themselves names that will never go mainstream. If the goal is semi-popularity at least, then "Devuan" will not work.
- copperx 9y ago
  Is it hard to pronounce? Worse than Debian?
  - Koshkin 9y ago
    Yes.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Why not?
- e12e 9y ago
  To be fair, yahoo! and Google are pretty poor names too?
  - infodroid 9y ago
    Why are they poor names? Both Yahoo! and Google are easy to pronounce and easy to remember.
    - chinathrow 9y ago
      Indeed - and so is Devuan.
      - nickez 9y ago
        How do you pronounce it then?
        vertex-four 9y ago
        Something close to Dev One, I'd reckon. Mind, apparently I and most of the people I know pronounce nginx incorrectly, and that's reasonably mainstream.
        type0 9y ago
        > apparently I and most of the people I know pronounce nginx incorrectly How do you pronounce it then?
        vertex-four 9y ago
        En-jinks. Apparently it's actually Engine-ecks.
        chinathrow 9y ago
        Dev-u-an :)
        nextime 9y ago
        http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav
  - mxvzr 9y ago
    It's primal; something you can scream out during intercourse.
- lomnakkus 9y ago
  In this particular case I don't think it'll matter. All the big distros have (thankfully[1]) standardized on systemd. At least we now have something to point the systemd haters towards, I guess. [1] I doesn't even matter too much to me _which_ solution we have as long as it's reasonable (e.g. upstart wasn't) and a reasonably complete daemon supervision solution which can actually capture the output of the daemon's it's running, etc.
  - Koshkin 9y ago
    > standardized on systemd I sort of understand the reason for using systemd on desktop computers, where things may be rather volatile, but in a stable environment such as a server or a mainframe, the value that this complex piece of software brings to the table is not obvious to me; besides, others have mentioned that it is a sysadmin's nightmare, so...
    - ZenoArrow 9y ago
      >"others have mentioned that it is a sysadmin's nightmare" Any examples? If anything I'd expect systemd to make things easier for sysadmins, would be interested in finding out what challenges sysadmins face because of systemd.
      - petre 9y ago
        For instance apache not restarting properly on openSuSE 13.2 when ServerName doesn't resolve properly for some reason.
        lomnakkus 9y ago
        Haven't heard of this particular issue, but my main point is that the reaction should then be: "Ok, so let's fix that in systemd, upstream systemd .service files or whatever, and it gets fixed for everybody all at once.". The reaction should not be "systemd sucks!". That is the real value of standardization. EDIT: As far as I can tell as an outsider systemd is at least engineered well enough that these things can be solved, eventually. That wasn't the case before: Everybody had their own quarter-assed solutions that only worked for their specific case and would fail horribly in other cases, etc. etc.
- Koshkin 9y ago
  Well, it's not the name that makes a person, it's a person that makes the name... That's on the one hand. On the other hand, I agree with you - "Devuan", "Deviant"... Arrgh.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  how do you know if a name will go mainstream ?
- ratsz 9y ago
  I've heard it referred to as Dev1, which doesn't sound as bad.
  - klez 9y ago
    Since the effort started from some Italian developers/sysadmins, I would be surprised if dev-one wasn't a good approximation of the correct pronunciation. As an Italian, that would be how I'd pronounce it.
    - fapjacks 9y ago
      This is exactly the case, and people are being very US-centric about it, complaining about something which doesn't sound right to them, but which sounds perfectly natural to the original developers.
  - nextime 9y ago
    This is the right way to pronounce it: http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav
- shouldbworking 9y ago
  I don't like it either. I think it's just that "vaun" is a rarely used sound in English. No real words end in vaun.
  - klez 9y ago
    Vuan, not vaun. "Uan" would be pronounced as the number "one"
    - JdeBP 9y ago
      If it were "vaun", then the obvious response would be that Vaughan is a perfectly acceptable name, and look how English spells that. (-:
- duskwuff 9y ago
  As I noted on another thread, the choice to call their initial release "Jessie" is also bizarre -- that's the same as the release name for Debian 8.0, which was released in 2015. Between that and the project name (which is a typo of "Debian"), it all makes the project look like it's intentionally trying to create confusion between itself and Debian, rather than trying to succeed on its own merits.
  - hfjfktnc 9y ago
    Well, their release is essentially Debian Jessie with a few defaults modified (have the "init" meta-package depend on sysvinit instead of systemd), a few packages removed (systemd-sysv) and a few packages rebuilt to not depend on libsystemd (to no longer optionally support additional integration under systemd for freedom reasons). Keep in mind that they originally wanted to release their version on Jessie in early 2015...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nextime 9y ago
    The name "devuan" has been selected cause it's a merge of "debian" and "VUA" where "VUA" stand for "Veteran Unix Admins", the name of the group that started the fork. It has to be pronounced as this: http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav The first release has been named "jessie" cause it's a 1:1 replacement of debian jessie, and for our luck jessie is also a name of a minor planet, so, it match our nomenclature and reflect that is a very close path to switch from debian jessie, as Devuan consider itself the "real" continuation of debian after wheezy.
helb 9y ago
"Devuan Jessie 1.0 RC" on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14167447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14167447 For those who forgot what Devuan was, like i did – basically a Debian fork without systemd.
- eikenberry 9y ago
  Not really a fork, more of a child/derivative distribution. Hard to call them a fork when >99.9% of their packages are straight from Debian.
- nextos 9y ago
  For systemd-less distros, I really like GuixSD. A functional approach & Scheme for all stuff is a big plus.
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    A functional approach & Scheme for all stuff is a big plus. I'll bite. Why? Being "functional" and using "Scheme for all stuff" is just a means to an end. What value does it bring me as a user or administrator? Because I can think of at least one obvious downside: Scheme has no mainstream adoption. So they've picked a niche language (yes Scheme is niche) that users now have to learn. So the value it brings, in terms of features, maintainability, etc, better be significant in order to justify that pain. And I'm talking real value, not the value of intellectual rigor or functional purity. I'm talking about actual, real, tangible features that can't be gotten anywhere else.
    - nextos 9y ago
      Functional administration, not just implementation. Most sysadmin operations are non-destructive. This has huge implications.
      - zzalpha 9y ago
        Care to elaborate? This is a very vague statement taken in its own, and the GuixSD website does no better at explaining their real life value prop...
e12e 9y ago
"Devuan can be adopted as a flawless upgrade path from both Debian Wheezy and Jessie." That is nice, to have a supported path of simply add sources, signing keys and apt-get dist-upgrade. Impressive work. I'm personally not convinced there's a viable near future for Linux without systemd (not counting the mess that is android (as a potential workstation / server distro) - I think Debian/kFreeBSD is a better path. But I'd love to be wrong.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  > I think Debian/kFreeBSD is a better path. Is there an assumption that once Debian decided to go with systemd and an increasing amount of Debian standard software depended on it, the kFreeBSD port will have to be given up at some point?
  - e12e 9y ago
    Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it, is that when "all of Linux" went with systemd, there'd be little real interest and help upstream in various packages to port to "linux-without-systemd" - but as long as open Solaris (by any name), free-, net- and openbsd exist - there's likely to be some help with porting to a world without systemd.
    - petre 9y ago
      What makes is so hard to write init scripts or run scripts or unit files for a daemon? Of course, when you irreversibly mess things up by adding a hard dbus dependency, integrate udev in the init system, put systemd-resolved on 127.0.0.53 everywhere plus tons of other mess, then of course it's hard to "port" everything because you messed everything up so badly that it only works with your init system now.
      - e12e 9y ago
        Yeah, it's not the init scripts that are a problem, it's everything else, like keeping gnome working without logind etc.
MilnerRoute 9y ago
Here's the official web page for that announcement at Devuan.org. https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-candidate-announce-042017 https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-candidate-announce-...
JdeBP 9y ago
Duplicates https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14171119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14171119 , posted earlier by Denis Roio .

59 points by liuw 9y ago

I never understand when OSS projects give themselves names that will never go mainstream. If the goal is semi-popularity at least, then "Devuan" will not work.

copperx 9y ago
Is it hard to pronounce? Worse than Debian?
- Koshkin 9y ago
  Yes.
icebraining 9y ago
Why not?
e12e 9y ago
To be fair, yahoo! and Google are pretty poor names too?
- infodroid 9y ago
  Why are they poor names? Both Yahoo! and Google are easy to pronounce and easy to remember.
  - chinathrow 9y ago
    Indeed - and so is Devuan.
    - nickez 9y ago
      How do you pronounce it then?
      - vertex-four 9y ago
        Something close to Dev One, I'd reckon. Mind, apparently I and most of the people I know pronounce nginx incorrectly, and that's reasonably mainstream.
        type0 9y ago
        > apparently I and most of the people I know pronounce nginx incorrectly How do you pronounce it then?
        vertex-four 9y ago
        En-jinks. Apparently it's actually Engine-ecks.
      - chinathrow 9y ago
        Dev-u-an :)
      - nextime 9y ago
        http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav
- mxvzr 9y ago
  It's primal; something you can scream out during intercourse.
lomnakkus 9y ago
In this particular case I don't think it'll matter. All the big distros have (thankfully[1]) standardized on systemd. At least we now have something to point the systemd haters towards, I guess. [1] I doesn't even matter too much to me _which_ solution we have as long as it's reasonable (e.g. upstart wasn't) and a reasonably complete daemon supervision solution which can actually capture the output of the daemon's it's running, etc.
- Koshkin 9y ago
  > standardized on systemd I sort of understand the reason for using systemd on desktop computers, where things may be rather volatile, but in a stable environment such as a server or a mainframe, the value that this complex piece of software brings to the table is not obvious to me; besides, others have mentioned that it is a sysadmin's nightmare, so...
  - ZenoArrow 9y ago
    >"others have mentioned that it is a sysadmin's nightmare" Any examples? If anything I'd expect systemd to make things easier for sysadmins, would be interested in finding out what challenges sysadmins face because of systemd.
    - petre 9y ago
      For instance apache not restarting properly on openSuSE 13.2 when ServerName doesn't resolve properly for some reason.
      - lomnakkus 9y ago
        Haven't heard of this particular issue, but my main point is that the reaction should then be: "Ok, so let's fix that in systemd, upstream systemd .service files or whatever, and it gets fixed for everybody all at once.". The reaction should not be "systemd sucks!". That is the real value of standardization. EDIT: As far as I can tell as an outsider systemd is at least engineered well enough that these things can be solved, eventually. That wasn't the case before: Everybody had their own quarter-assed solutions that only worked for their specific case and would fail horribly in other cases, etc. etc.
Koshkin 9y ago
Well, it's not the name that makes a person, it's a person that makes the name... That's on the one hand. On the other hand, I agree with you - "Devuan", "Deviant"... Arrgh.
agumonkey 9y ago
how do you know if a name will go mainstream ?
ratsz 9y ago
I've heard it referred to as Dev1, which doesn't sound as bad.
- klez 9y ago
  Since the effort started from some Italian developers/sysadmins, I would be surprised if dev-one wasn't a good approximation of the correct pronunciation. As an Italian, that would be how I'd pronounce it.
  - fapjacks 9y ago
    This is exactly the case, and people are being very US-centric about it, complaining about something which doesn't sound right to them, but which sounds perfectly natural to the original developers.
- nextime 9y ago
  This is the right way to pronounce it: http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav
shouldbworking 9y ago
I don't like it either. I think it's just that "vaun" is a rarely used sound in English. No real words end in vaun.
- klez 9y ago
  Vuan, not vaun. "Uan" would be pronounced as the number "one"
  - JdeBP 9y ago
    If it were "vaun", then the obvious response would be that Vaughan is a perfectly acceptable name, and look how English spells that. (-:
duskwuff 9y ago
As I noted on another thread, the choice to call their initial release "Jessie" is also bizarre -- that's the same as the release name for Debian 8.0, which was released in 2015. Between that and the project name (which is a typo of "Debian"), it all makes the project look like it's intentionally trying to create confusion between itself and Debian, rather than trying to succeed on its own merits.
- hfjfktnc 9y ago
  Well, their release is essentially Debian Jessie with a few defaults modified (have the "init" meta-package depend on sysvinit instead of systemd), a few packages removed (systemd-sysv) and a few packages rebuilt to not depend on libsystemd (to no longer optionally support additional integration under systemd for freedom reasons). Keep in mind that they originally wanted to release their version on Jessie in early 2015...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nextime 9y ago
  The name "devuan" has been selected cause it's a merge of "debian" and "VUA" where "VUA" stand for "Veteran Unix Admins", the name of the group that started the fork. It has to be pronounced as this: http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav http://danex.nexlab.it/devuan.wav The first release has been named "jessie" cause it's a 1:1 replacement of debian jessie, and for our luck jessie is also a name of a minor planet, so, it match our nomenclature and reflect that is a very close path to switch from debian jessie, as Devuan consider itself the "real" continuation of debian after wheezy.

helb 9y ago

"Devuan Jessie 1.0 RC" on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14167447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14167447 For those who forgot what Devuan was, like i did – basically a Debian fork without systemd.

eikenberry 9y ago
Not really a fork, more of a child/derivative distribution. Hard to call them a fork when >99.9% of their packages are straight from Debian.
nextos 9y ago
For systemd-less distros, I really like GuixSD. A functional approach & Scheme for all stuff is a big plus.
- zzalpha 9y ago
  A functional approach & Scheme for all stuff is a big plus. I'll bite. Why? Being "functional" and using "Scheme for all stuff" is just a means to an end. What value does it bring me as a user or administrator? Because I can think of at least one obvious downside: Scheme has no mainstream adoption. So they've picked a niche language (yes Scheme is niche) that users now have to learn. So the value it brings, in terms of features, maintainability, etc, better be significant in order to justify that pain. And I'm talking real value, not the value of intellectual rigor or functional purity. I'm talking about actual, real, tangible features that can't be gotten anywhere else.
  - nextos 9y ago
    Functional administration, not just implementation. Most sysadmin operations are non-destructive. This has huge implications.
    - zzalpha 9y ago
      Care to elaborate? This is a very vague statement taken in its own, and the GuixSD website does no better at explaining their real life value prop...

e12e 9y ago

"Devuan can be adopted as a flawless upgrade path from both Debian Wheezy and Jessie." That is nice, to have a supported path of simply add sources, signing keys and apt-get dist-upgrade. Impressive work. I'm personally not convinced there's a viable near future for Linux without systemd (not counting the mess that is android (as a potential workstation / server distro) - I think Debian/kFreeBSD is a better path. But I'd love to be wrong.

Mediterraneo10 9y ago
> I think Debian/kFreeBSD is a better path. Is there an assumption that once Debian decided to go with systemd and an increasing amount of Debian standard software depended on it, the kFreeBSD port will have to be given up at some point?
- e12e 9y ago
  Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way to look at it, is that when "all of Linux" went with systemd, there'd be little real interest and help upstream in various packages to port to "linux-without-systemd" - but as long as open Solaris (by any name), free-, net- and openbsd exist - there's likely to be some help with porting to a world without systemd.
  - petre 9y ago
    What makes is so hard to write init scripts or run scripts or unit files for a daemon? Of course, when you irreversibly mess things up by adding a hard dbus dependency, integrate udev in the init system, put systemd-resolved on 127.0.0.53 everywhere plus tons of other mess, then of course it's hard to "port" everything because you messed everything up so badly that it only works with your init system now.
    - e12e 9y ago
      Yeah, it's not the init scripts that are a problem, it's everything else, like keeping gnome working without logind etc.

MilnerRoute 9y ago

Here's the official web page for that announcement at Devuan.org. https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-candidate-announce-042017 https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-candidate-announce-...

JdeBP 9y ago

Duplicates https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14171119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14171119 , posted earlier by Denis Roio .