5 ms·

I'm not seeing a lot of hope here. There is an incredible investment in systemd by distributions, there is no turning back. Help me..

by pknopf 6y ago

BeetleB 6y ago
Gentoo is reaching out to you.
- vpzom 6y ago
  Or if you don't want to go source-based, maybe Void or Alpine
edoceo 6y ago
OpenRC, it's available on some Linux distros.
a-nikolaev 6y ago
Void Linux, amazingly awesome distro.
- dTal 6y ago
  Second this, an incredible distro with an impressive package manager.
  - pknopf 6y ago
    Except its maintainer recently quit.
    - dTal 6y ago
      That's not accurate. There are many competent maintainers.
wrycoder 6y ago
Devuan.org
- kelnos 6y ago
  I still don't entirely get the point of Devuan. I put Debian buster on a low-RAM embedded box, and since systemd eats up precious RAM I'd rather keep, I just switched to OpenRC with apt install openrc && apt purge systemd If I needed it, Debian packages elogind as well. Rebooted and it worked perfectly. Now, I get that Debian doesn't really support OpenRC[0] (or sysvinit), and it could break in horrible ways when bullseye goes stable, or get removed entirely, but... I don't see why we need a fork before that happens? It seems like it's a lot of work to maintain a distro fork, when I feel like that effort could be more productively redirected to stronger maintenance and advocacy of OpenRC and/or sysvinit in Debian itself? [0] Debian's openrc package hasn't been updated in a little over a year, which is indeed concerning. sysvinit does seem to be more actively maintained, though.
  - wrycoder 6y ago
    Late reply, sorry. The problem isn't systemd's init. It's probably fine. The problem is the systemd project is taking over the userspace with mutually cross-linked modules. Devuan was started by a group of Debian maintainers who disagreed with the direction systemd was taking Debian.
spindle 6y ago
My bet is that it depends on whether NixOS or Guix takes over the world. (And my bet within a bet is that it will be NixOS.)
JChase2 6y ago
Slackware doesn't use it, and Patrick Volkerding recently got a Patreon account set up so Slackware 15.0 or 14.3 will hopefully be out soonish with updated packages. I'm writing this on 14.2 and have been running it since it came out with basically no issues. Also have it on a backup server, runs great.
- enriquto 6y ago
  I love slack. There's something extremely beautiful in launching htop and seeing less than 10 processes (including those of root).
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  But it’s 2020, and we need package management.
  - JChase2 6y ago
    Use Alpine or something then. I use Alpine as well on a server, OpenBSD on a server, slackware on a server, slackware on my laptop... There's some options. We even use Devuan to host OP's essay, although we'll eventually move to openbsd probably for other reasons. In terms of package management... why do you need it? I have no problem maintaining everything with slackpkg and sbopkg along with slackbuilds.org. Sometimes it takes a while to find all the requirements for an application and add them to a queue, but once it's set up it's just sbopkg, click on update, upgrade, and you're good. It's pretty much rock solid once I get everything installed and I haven't missed package management much at all. My main gripe is the old packages in 14.2 but -current has a lot newer stuff. I don't mind waiting though.
  - bandrami 6y ago
    It's 2020, and nix and guix both run on top of Slackware just fine.
baybal2 6y ago
> there is no turning back. Iron grip, aggression, pushiness are needed to lobby systemd out. Another important initiative is to not to let Poettering, Sievers and co. continue throwing new systemds onto distributives. A preemptive action is needed.

I'm not seeing a lot of hope here. There is an incredible investment in systemd by distributions, there is no turning back. Help me..

by pknopf 6y ago

I'm not seeing a lot of hope here. There is an incredible investment in systemd by distributions, there is no turning back. Help me..

BeetleB 6y ago

Gentoo is reaching out to you.

vpzom 6y ago
Or if you don't want to go source-based, maybe Void or Alpine

edoceo 6y ago

OpenRC, it's available on some Linux distros.

a-nikolaev 6y ago

Void Linux, amazingly awesome distro.

dTal 6y ago
Second this, an incredible distro with an impressive package manager.
- pknopf 6y ago
  Except its maintainer recently quit.
  - dTal 6y ago
    That's not accurate. There are many competent maintainers.

wrycoder 6y ago

Devuan.org

kelnos 6y ago
I still don't entirely get the point of Devuan. I put Debian buster on a low-RAM embedded box, and since systemd eats up precious RAM I'd rather keep, I just switched to OpenRC with apt install openrc && apt purge systemd If I needed it, Debian packages elogind as well. Rebooted and it worked perfectly. Now, I get that Debian doesn't really support OpenRC[0] (or sysvinit), and it could break in horrible ways when bullseye goes stable, or get removed entirely, but... I don't see why we need a fork before that happens? It seems like it's a lot of work to maintain a distro fork, when I feel like that effort could be more productively redirected to stronger maintenance and advocacy of OpenRC and/or sysvinit in Debian itself? [0] Debian's openrc package hasn't been updated in a little over a year, which is indeed concerning. sysvinit does seem to be more actively maintained, though.
- wrycoder 6y ago
  Late reply, sorry. The problem isn't systemd's init. It's probably fine. The problem is the systemd project is taking over the userspace with mutually cross-linked modules. Devuan was started by a group of Debian maintainers who disagreed with the direction systemd was taking Debian.

spindle 6y ago

My bet is that it depends on whether NixOS or Guix takes over the world. (And my bet within a bet is that it will be NixOS.)

JChase2 6y ago

Slackware doesn't use it, and Patrick Volkerding recently got a Patreon account set up so Slackware 15.0 or 14.3 will hopefully be out soonish with updated packages. I'm writing this on 14.2 and have been running it since it came out with basically no issues. Also have it on a backup server, runs great.

enriquto 6y ago
I love slack. There's something extremely beautiful in launching htop and seeing less than 10 processes (including those of root).
lawnchair_larry 6y ago
But it’s 2020, and we need package management.
- JChase2 6y ago
  Use Alpine or something then. I use Alpine as well on a server, OpenBSD on a server, slackware on a server, slackware on my laptop... There's some options. We even use Devuan to host OP's essay, although we'll eventually move to openbsd probably for other reasons. In terms of package management... why do you need it? I have no problem maintaining everything with slackpkg and sbopkg along with slackbuilds.org. Sometimes it takes a while to find all the requirements for an application and add them to a queue, but once it's set up it's just sbopkg, click on update, upgrade, and you're good. It's pretty much rock solid once I get everything installed and I haven't missed package management much at all. My main gripe is the old packages in 14.2 but -current has a lot newer stuff. I don't mind waiting though.
- bandrami 6y ago
  It's 2020, and nix and guix both run on top of Slackware just fine.

baybal2 6y ago

> there is no turning back. Iron grip, aggression, pushiness are needed to lobby systemd out. Another important initiative is to not to let Poettering, Sievers and co. continue throwing new systemds onto distributives. A preemptive action is needed.