59 ms·

What are the top 3 alternative ways to do GNU/Linux without systemd?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
easterncalculus 6y ago
Void Linux uses its own init system and it's pretty nice and familiar. The distribution has gotten a lot better over the years. https://voidlinux.org https://voidlinux.org
ChuckMcM 6y ago
I was going to mention the debian distro. I've got a 'cleanse' script that has grown over time for Ubuntu installs that I first install stock Ubuntu, then cleanse it of snap, systemd, modem-manager, and a couple of other things. And then add the packages that I like. But every release it gets more onerous to do this.
kingofpandora 6y ago
Slackware.
tannhaeuser 6y ago
https://www.devuan.org/ https://www.devuan.org/
Shared404 6y ago
The most common for me are Void, Alpine, and Artix. For most people you could probably sub Devuan for Artix though.
freebuju 6y ago
Genuinely curious, for both casual and advanced users, what *major* reasons are there for not using systemd? I've used systemd for years bug-free
- superkuh 6y ago
  Something I can't accept is the use of binary logs and the requirement for programs to access the contents of the logs. Yes, most distros will put compatibility layers in place and create text "logs" in parallel. But if everyone is doing that maybe systemd's paradigm isn't right for the desktop even if it's great for servers.
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    Binary logs sound like a good thing to me since in most cases I want to just ship them off, and if I don't, a local consumer that can parse is just fine. Is there something I'm missing?
    - perryizgr8 6y ago
      How do you "ship off" .journal files? Whenever I do it either the timestamps are off or you can't read the file at all. I resort to `journalctl xyz.journal > xyz.log` and send the resulting text file to outside the system.
    - superkuh 6y ago
      Yes. The ability to use the giant ecosystem of text processing and piping infrastructure that underlies the entire idea of the unix philosophy. That something besides eyes is required to parse the logs is absurd and unacceptable. And no one on desktop is shipping off logs to somewhere else. That's cargo cult behavior.
  - posix_me_less 6y ago
    It isn't right for server either. I want my server logs to be files in filesystem and readable with standard tools.
- enriquto 6y ago
  > what major reasons are there for not using systemd? ps aux | wc -l
rgomez 6y ago
I tried Gentoo and Artix, both being a very good experience. Some minor issues with laptop suspension and lightdm session handling in Artix tho. Flawless behavior with Gentoo, pity that an update broke my system a while ago.
bat_sy 6y ago
You can also try Artix(arch minus systemd).
MuffinFlavored 6y ago
answering my own question: > Devuan is a fork of Debian that uses sysvinit or OpenRC instead of systemd. > Void uses the runit(8) supervision suite to run system services and daemons. > Alpine Linux uses OpenRC for its init system.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Void Linux uses its own init system and it's pretty nice and familiar. The distribution has gotten a lot better over the years. https://voidlinux.org https://voidlinux.org

ChuckMcM 6y ago

I was going to mention the debian distro. I've got a 'cleanse' script that has grown over time for Ubuntu installs that I first install stock Ubuntu, then cleanse it of snap, systemd, modem-manager, and a couple of other things. And then add the packages that I like. But every release it gets more onerous to do this.

kingofpandora 6y ago

Slackware.

tannhaeuser 6y ago

https://www.devuan.org/ https://www.devuan.org/

Shared404 6y ago

The most common for me are Void, Alpine, and Artix. For most people you could probably sub Devuan for Artix though.

freebuju 6y ago

Genuinely curious, for both casual and advanced users, what *major* reasons are there for not using systemd? I've used systemd for years bug-free

superkuh 6y ago
Something I can't accept is the use of binary logs and the requirement for programs to access the contents of the logs. Yes, most distros will put compatibility layers in place and create text "logs" in parallel. But if everyone is doing that maybe systemd's paradigm isn't right for the desktop even if it's great for servers.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  Binary logs sound like a good thing to me since in most cases I want to just ship them off, and if I don't, a local consumer that can parse is just fine. Is there something I'm missing?
  - perryizgr8 6y ago
    How do you "ship off" .journal files? Whenever I do it either the timestamps are off or you can't read the file at all. I resort to `journalctl xyz.journal > xyz.log` and send the resulting text file to outside the system.
  - superkuh 6y ago
    Yes. The ability to use the giant ecosystem of text processing and piping infrastructure that underlies the entire idea of the unix philosophy. That something besides eyes is required to parse the logs is absurd and unacceptable. And no one on desktop is shipping off logs to somewhere else. That's cargo cult behavior.
- posix_me_less 6y ago
  It isn't right for server either. I want my server logs to be files in filesystem and readable with standard tools.
enriquto 6y ago
> what major reasons are there for not using systemd? ps aux | wc -l

rgomez 6y ago

I tried Gentoo and Artix, both being a very good experience. Some minor issues with laptop suspension and lightdm session handling in Artix tho. Flawless behavior with Gentoo, pity that an update broke my system a while ago.

bat_sy 6y ago

You can also try Artix(arch minus systemd).

MuffinFlavored 6y ago

answering my own question: > Devuan is a fork of Debian that uses sysvinit or OpenRC instead of systemd. > Void uses the runit(8) supervision suite to run system services and daemons. > Alpine Linux uses OpenRC for its init system.