[kwlug-disc] Devuan, a distro without systemd

[Hubert Chathi]

On Sat, 29 Jul 2017 11:00:21 -0400, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com> said:

> Debian does not 'allow it'. It is a workaround by one person, not an
> advocated configuration variant.

Debian does "allow it" by providing packages that provide alternate init
systems.  And those packages are supported in exactly the same way as
every other package in Debian.

And it is not a "workaround by one person".  For example, in these
followup message:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/05/msg00540.html

"Don't get me wrong, but the interesting part is that this has already
been the exact case long before your thread, and it is what you were
told several times throughout the discussion ;)."

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/05/msg00658.html

"I thought that information came out several times in the thread you mention
having started -- that it was possible to install the base system, then
disable and remove the main systemd component, just leaving some
of the pieces that have been picked up as dependencies by other
packages."

The fact that that one person managed to get a running Debian system with
not-systemd was unsurprising for many Debian Developers.

> If you install Debian you get systemd, with no official way to switch.

What do you mean?  For many things, "apt install [package]" is a
standard way in Debian to switch from one thing to another.

> So it is not a viable solution.

> Notice when he says: "I chose LXDE for the GUI as it has no direct
> systemd dependencies".

> So, the other three desktops, Gnome, KDE and XFCE, all depend on
> systemd. They are the more widely used, and their users are forced to
> use systemd. , And that is where the real issue lies.

Well, that's more to do with those desktops, and less to do with how
Debian went about adopting systemd.

Some Debian Developers, in fact, have done work on implementing things
to allow those desktops to work without systemd, though I haven't tried
it out myself, so I don't know how well it works.

> And I tried checking on Ubuntu 16.04, and neither sysvinit-core nor
> runit-systemd exist.

I don't pay much attention to Ubuntu, but those packages are present in
Debian stretch.

> On 7/29/17, Hubert Chathi <hubert at uhoreg.ca> wrote:
>> On Fri, 28 Jul 2017 23:21:50 -0400, Khalid Baheyeldin <kb at 2bits.com>
>> said:
>> 
>> [...]
>> 
>>> Adoption by Debian was a big mistake. At least in the mode that is
>>> in now, i.e. not pluggable.
>> 
>> Debian does allow you to switch init systems.  A lot of stuff will
>> still pull in the systemd libraries, but you don't need to actually
>> run systemd.
>> 
>> e.g. see this thread in debian-user:
>> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2017/05/msg00538.html
>> 
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