Here we go: devuan

[GoOSSBears]

--- togo at of.net wrote:
From: Tony Godshall <togo at of.net>
To: Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu>, Ian Zimmerman <itz at buug.org>,        "Elizabeth K. Joseph" <lyz at princessleia.com>
Cc: Bay Area Debian <bad at bad.debian.net>
Subject: Re: Here we go: devuan
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 15:17:37 -0800
...
...

> If Debian is breaking things, people will look elsewhere.
> Debian's been solid on server, while others have broken
> things, and it would be a shame if Debian followed the
> desktop into brokenness.  But I don't think it'll happen.
> Debian has good feedback at bugs.debian.org, and
> it'll be hard for core packages to adopt systemd without
> regression bugs being filed.  IMHO systemd-requiring
> packages will end up being limited to the kind of apps
> that require Gnome3.  Ironically, Ubuntu (with its large
> base of xubuntu and lubuntu and now ubuntu-mate users)
> may become a force for core desktop sanity rather than
> reckless change.  
--
Thanks, Ian Z, for bringing up the discussion subject of systemd and for Tony G's and others' elaborations. 
I myself posted a systemd-related thread to the BALUG-Talk mailing-list exactly three months ago today[1] and now see two overall approaches to the rise and prevalence of systemd; Avoiding systemd and Accommodating systemd. IMHO, each of these approaches involves some sort of a learning curve for those of us who have to deal with systemd in some way or another. 

When trying to avoid systemd, what comes to my mind are:
- Avoiding as many systemd-dependent apps and services as possible, e.g., avoiding Gnome3 and apps depending upon Gnome3 (as Tony G previously mentioned).  The learning curve could be with identifying, installing, and using systemd-free (non-Gnome3) desktop environments and apps.
- Sticking to Debian 7.x Wheezy for as long as possible (for those who already have Wheezy as opposed to the systemd-containing Jessie), and then _maybe_ upgrading to this devuan distro way in the future.  As Michael P previously wrote[2][3], devuan is undergoing distro startup pains, and is likely to do so for quite awhile, although who can really estimate whether or not devuan will stabilize and become popular within Wheezy's remaining lifecycle or "after all the dust has settled?"
If upgrading to this fork, devuan, then there certainly will be some sort of minor|major learning curve for getting up to speed with this upstart (not Ubuntu's init system!) distro.
- Completely avoiding the systemd init system by gutting Debian plus all other systemd-dependent distros, and replacing such Linux distros with one of the *BSD's or Slackware.  There is active discusssion of this possibility in /.'s 'Debian Forked Over Systemd'[4] and even within Patrick B's debian-user mailing-list topic 'Replacing systemd in Jessie'[5][6].  Becoming fully up-to-speed with the non-Linux *BSD's and their way of thinking is likely to be a major learning curve for those switching completely away from Debian/Ubuntu.  I would easily guesstimate that learning Slackware for longtime Debianistas and Ubunteros has a lower learning curve compared to learning the *BSD's, given that Slackware is fully Linuxized.

When accommodating systemd as an init system, IMHO, it becomes almost mandatory to learn about Jessie's systemd through the documentation on its management system 'systemctl' and on its logging system 'journalctl'. The ArchLinux systemd page[7] and a Carla S's 'Intro to Systemd Runlevels and Service Management Commands'[8] have provided myself and probably others clear guides to using and managing systemd with 'systemctl' and 'journald'.  I found that these two particular guides were even clearer than the current versions of the Debian and Ubuntu systemd guides[9][10] in becoming up-to-speed with the systemd init system.  The key systemd-related man pages in Jessie are systemd(1), systemctl(1) and journalctl(1).

FWIW, I am both accommodating and avoiding systemd. On Debian-installed boxes with Jessie and Debian-related Linux Mint 17.x installed, I of course use systemd. On other boxes, I have distros based directly upon Debian Wheezy installed (e.g., Wheezy, Crunchbang), as well as Slackware.  Besides trying to avoid systemd through using desktop environments other than Gnome -- and avoiding Gnome variants MATE and Cinnamon when possible -- I am wondering what realistic options other than those I mentioned above will be coming down the line for Debianistas wishing to avoid systemd?

-A

Refs:
=====
[1]http://lists.balug.org/pipermail/balug-talk-balug.org/2014-September/000587.html 
[2]http://bad.debian.net/pipermail/bad/2014-November/003654.html 
[3]http://bad.debian.net/pipermail/bad/2014-November/003657.html 
[4]http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/11/28/1846259/debian-forked-over-systemd 
[5]https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2014/11/thrd4.html 
[6]https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2014/12/threads.html 
[7]https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd 
[8]http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/794615-systemd-runlevels-and-service-management 
[9]https://wiki.debian.org/systemd 
[10]https://wiki.ubuntu.com/systemd 

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708#6734 
https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003 

--
Go Open Source Software Bears!


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