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TLDR; Debian chose to make room for systemd which broke the Unix compatibility. This decision created a precedent that Unix compatibility was no longer importan

TLDR; Debian chose to make room for systemd which broke the Unix compatibility. This decision created a precedent that Unix compatibility was no longer important. Devuan is distro that maintains the init daemon and tooling Unix compatibility promise and freedom as their philosophy titled Init Freedom. You got me to do the research. From the homepage: > Devuan GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd that allows users to reclaim control over their system by avoiding unnecessary entanglements and ensuring Init Freedom. From the Init Freedom page: > Init Freedom is about restoring a sane approach to PID1 that respects portability, diversity and freedom of choice. > Other Free Unices Without systemd > One of the critical arguments against systemd is the lack of portability to other Unices and the possibility that Linux-based systems using systemd would detach from the UNIX world. OpenBSD, FreeBSD and other BSD OSes are de facto incompatible with systemd or rather, systemd is incompatible with Unices not running Linux.

md8z 5y ago
Sorry I should have been clear. I've already seen all that, I know what the home page says, and I've used Devuan on and off since it was released. That doesn't really do a good job explaining and only seems to confuse the issue because, like I said before, Debian also supports operating without systemd. So it's not obvious what is actually being provided here. Also, the statement about portability is weak, as someone did manage to port systemd to BSD: https://github.com/InitWare/InitWare https://github.com/InitWare/InitWare For me, in general it just seems really difficult to justify creating an entirely new Linux distribution because you're waiting for somebody to port a few packages to BSD. That logic doesn't really follow. That's what I meant before, even the Devuan home page has some really hand-wavey and confusing statements.
- yepthatsreality 5y ago
  Sure but the bigger issue was that the actions taken had set precedent that portability can be broken. Once precedent is set, you open up a hole for everybody with reasons to become incompatible. People felt that this precedent was bad for a distro that prides itself on compatibility so they forked. Whether the results are the same is irrelevant to the difference in approach.
  - md8z 5y ago
    I'm really not sure what you mean, that precedent has existed since the very beginning of BSD when it was forked off from Version 6 Unix and they decided to change some things. There are a ton of other upstream Linux/Solaris/MacOS/whatever packages that don't work well or at all on BSD unless they are ported. That's why every BSD has a "ports" tree... Edit: I am also even more confused as to what that has to do with init systems because BSD never used a system V style init, whereas Linux distros typically did for that period before systemd. So this stuff wasn't portable anyway. See what I mean that the logic doesn't follow? I really can't understand what someone meant when they wrote that.
    - yepthatsreality 5y ago
      I guess just consider it this way: A group broke away, for whatever reasons beyond your understanding and because they broke away and don’t seem to still agree or seem to enjoy being a subset Debian, they continue to exist. Some people find value in this.
      - md8z 5y ago
        Yeah I get that but that's just restating the question. If you just want to look at it from that perspective then they would have found some other reason to break away and find value and there is nothing upstream could have done about it, so complaining about them seems pointless. I'm not saying there's anything morally wrong with it, clearly they can do whatever they like with the open source code that they find on the net. But if it can't be explained simply and easily, maybe it seems there is some value elsewhere that was missed or misunderstood.
        yepthatsreality 5y ago
        > That's why every BSD has a "ports" tree... To answer this question. This is about base compatibility so ports don’t apply. The ports collection has to be installed separately, hence incompatibility.

md8z 5y ago

Sorry I should have been clear. I've already seen all that, I know what the home page says, and I've used Devuan on and off since it was released. That doesn't really do a good job explaining and only seems to confuse the issue because, like I said before, Debian also supports operating without systemd. So it's not obvious what is actually being provided here. Also, the statement about portability is weak, as someone did manage to port systemd to BSD: https://github.com/InitWare/InitWare https://github.com/InitWare/InitWare For me, in general it just seems really difficult to justify creating an entirely new Linux distribution because you're waiting for somebody to port a few packages to BSD. That logic doesn't really follow. That's what I meant before, even the Devuan home page has some really hand-wavey and confusing statements.

yepthatsreality 5y ago
Sure but the bigger issue was that the actions taken had set precedent that portability can be broken. Once precedent is set, you open up a hole for everybody with reasons to become incompatible. People felt that this precedent was bad for a distro that prides itself on compatibility so they forked. Whether the results are the same is irrelevant to the difference in approach.
- md8z 5y ago
  I'm really not sure what you mean, that precedent has existed since the very beginning of BSD when it was forked off from Version 6 Unix and they decided to change some things. There are a ton of other upstream Linux/Solaris/MacOS/whatever packages that don't work well or at all on BSD unless they are ported. That's why every BSD has a "ports" tree... Edit: I am also even more confused as to what that has to do with init systems because BSD never used a system V style init, whereas Linux distros typically did for that period before systemd. So this stuff wasn't portable anyway. See what I mean that the logic doesn't follow? I really can't understand what someone meant when they wrote that.
  - yepthatsreality 5y ago
    I guess just consider it this way: A group broke away, for whatever reasons beyond your understanding and because they broke away and don’t seem to still agree or seem to enjoy being a subset Debian, they continue to exist. Some people find value in this.
    - md8z 5y ago
      Yeah I get that but that's just restating the question. If you just want to look at it from that perspective then they would have found some other reason to break away and find value and there is nothing upstream could have done about it, so complaining about them seems pointless. I'm not saying there's anything morally wrong with it, clearly they can do whatever they like with the open source code that they find on the net. But if it can't be explained simply and easily, maybe it seems there is some value elsewhere that was missed or misunderstood.
      - yepthatsreality 5y ago
        > That's why every BSD has a "ports" tree... To answer this question. This is about base compatibility so ports don’t apply. The ports collection has to be installed separately, hence incompatibility.