Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 1, 2016 16:17 UTC (Sun) by jaromil (guest, #97970)
In reply to: Devuan Jessie beta released by pizza
Parent article: Devuan Jessie beta released

Ehrr, no. I can assure you 'ridding the world of libsystemd' is definitely not what we care about.
Let's say we are pro-choice :^) and all developers involved have a life and many more projects to care about.

The incentive you mention stands somehow, we'll see.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 1, 2016 20:20 UTC (Sun) by bronson (guest, #4806) [Link] (15 responses)

> Let's say we are pro-choice

Debian certainly appears to be pro-choice since the user can choose which init system to run.

I don't understand your terminology... How is Devuan pro-choice?

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 7:31 UTC (Mon) by jaromil (guest, #97970) [Link] (14 responses)

Have you actually tried what you mention as possible?

Debian developers should actually be honest with their users and drop sysvinit because is not a viable choice as of release 8. The intertwined network of dependency from systemd creeps in at any stage from init to desktop, omitting one of these stages is not a solution. Because of these dependencies, Debian Jessie became unusable in production unless systemd is adopted. I mean production, not a lab situation when init can be choosen at install.

I used Debian in production on a vast range of diverse appliances for more than 10 years and some senior members of my organization are DDs. Believe me I'm not making it up, nor have fun when writing this.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 7:55 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (10 responses)

I used Debian in production on a vast range of diverse appliances for more than 10 years and some senior members of my organization are DDs. Believe me I'm not making it up, nor have fun when writing this.

I have been a DD since the mid-1990s and have used and supported Debian on a wide range of servers, desktop and mobile systems. Speaking for myself, I have yet to experience any problems with the transition to systemd in Debian Jessie. In fact I am convinced that making systemd the default init system for Debian is entirely in tune with the project's quest to provide its users with the best operating system.

Having said that, converting a distribution that is the size of Debian and used in many different contexts to a different init system is not a trivial task to be undertaken lightly. While the DDs involved have been, and are, doing sterling work, problems are to be expected, but their impact must be seen in comparison to the impact of the problems to be expected when sticking to the traditional setup which is becoming more and more obsolete – not only because better technical solutions (like systemd) are available but also because Debian would deliberately remove itself farther from the Linux mainstream, for little benefit. On the whole, the Debian project has proved perfectly capable of dealing with problems that switching to systemd has caused, and there are no grounds for the assumption that this would not be the case going forward. As far as I'm concerned the effort to move Debian to systemd has been thoroughly worth it, and will pay off even more in the future as systemd is improved further and more software packages are adapted to take advantage of its features.

I don't deny that you may have had problems with systemd in Debian, and that forking the entire distribution is something that you're perfectly entitled to do if you want to. I still wonder whether the effort incurred would not have been better spent helping to improve systemd-based Debian, or for that matter systemd itself. What I definitely don't buy is the notion that Debian, having adopted systemd as the default, is now terminally broken, because in my personal experience (and that of many others) the opposite is actually the case.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 8:57 UTC (Mon) by jaromil (guest, #97970) [Link] (9 responses)

Thanks for your prose. I still miss the answer. It is just between the lines that you seem to admit that its factually impossible to opt-out systemd in Debian Jessie.

I do not intend to diminish your work, your goals and the usefulness of having systemd in your environment. I would just like to mark this mutual understanding, if there is some.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 9:08 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (8 responses)

It is just between the lines that you seem to admit that its factually impossible to opt-out systemd in Debian Jessie.

As far as I know System-V init is still a supported init system within Debian Jessie. The release notes for Debian Jessie document in detail how to prevent a system from being switched over to systemd when upgrading to Jessie. I haven't tried this myself because I'm happy with systemd and frankly could not care less about System-V init at this point.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 9:26 UTC (Mon) by jaromil (guest, #97970) [Link] (7 responses)

Right. I see the chapter 5.6 of release Debian Jessie release notes recites:
"/!\ Caution: Be advised that some packages may have degraded behavior or may be lacking features under a non-default init system."

I hereby confirm that Debian 8 "Jessie" running sysvinit behavior is so degraded that cannot suit any production use. That is why we had to fork and started Devuan in 2014.

For the sake of intellectual honesty, I'd greatly appreciate if you and others would stop denigrating Devuan saying "it is not needed", as I believe we can well understand it is. Of course such manipulative arguments coming from the mouth of a DD are doing nothing else but eroding the trust between members of our projects.

And I wish you happy hacking with systemd.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 9:41 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (3 responses)

I hereby confirm that Debian 8 "Jessie" running sysvinit behavior is so degraded that cannot suit any production use. That is why we had to fork and started Devuan in 2014.

That doesn't follow. The obvious action to take if you run into “degraded behaviour” on the part of a Debian software package with a non-default init system is to file a bug report on the package in question, preferably with a patch that will fix the problem, not to fork the entire distribution. Also note that the “degraded behaviour/lack of features” packages include things like GNOME, where the systemd dependency is basically an upstream requirement that Debian can't realistically be expected to work around, and which in many contexts where Debian is used aren't required or wanted anyway.

The main reason the release notes include the passage in question is essentially CYA against the case that something has not been tested with every non-default init system in Debian (which include not just System-V init but also Upstart and a few others). The number of users who run non-standard init systems on Debian is expected to be fairly small, and while it would be great if the maintainers of relevant Debian packages made a point of testing their packages against every single init system in Debian, we can't realistically force them to do that. Therefore the people who do use a non-standard init system are encouraged to share the work to make sure that bugs are fixed, i.e., to help scratch their own itches.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 9:53 UTC (Mon) by jaromil (guest, #97970) [Link] (2 responses)

> file a bug report on the package in question, preferably with a patch that will fix the problem, not to fork the entire distribution.

I haven't tried that, but know people who have done that and it was leading to nothing. There are traces of such interactions on your bugtracker.

> The number of users who run non-standard init systems on Debian is expected to be fairly small

This assumption as been proven wrong by a deeper and independent analysis lead by Distrowatch.
I'm not just talking about this poll: http://distrowatch.com/polls.php?poll=8
But also of the analysis made on current updates to Debian 8 and packages used in there, as reported in this article http://www.pcweek.ru/foss/article/detail.php?ID=174973

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 10:15 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

I haven't tried that, but know people who have done that and it was leading to nothing. There are traces of such interactions on your bugtracker.

[Citation needed]

But also of the analysis made on current updates to Debian 8 and packages used in there, as reported in this article http://www.pcweek.ru/foss/article/detail.php?ID=174973

The only thing that analysis seems to prove is that people are generally happy with the default init system that their distribution provides. Also as I said, right now systemd and System-V init are both supported init systems within Debian, and it is totally possible to upgrade a Debian system to Jessie without having to move to systemd, so there's really nothing to see here. Some people may just be deferring the move, for whatever reason, even though they upgraded to Jessie. (The other thing the article seems to do, at least in Google's translation to German, is to call into question the necessity of a Debian fork à la Devuan, but maybe the original Russian says something else – my Russian isn't good enough to be able to tell.)

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 17:33 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> But also of the analysis made on current updates to Debian 8 and packages used in there, as reported in this article http://www.pcweek.ru/foss/article/detail.php?ID=174973
I speak Russian.

This article simply tells that people do not touch the default setting and very few people running oldstable (where sysv init was the default) had switched to systemd.

Duh.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 2, 2016 18:06 UTC (Mon) by andreasb (guest, #80258) [Link]

> Right. I see the chapter 5.6 of release Debian Jessie release notes recites:
> "/!\ Caution: Be advised that some packages may have degraded behavior or may be lacking features under a non-default init system."
>
> I hereby confirm that Debian 8 "Jessie" running sysvinit behavior is so degraded that cannot suit any production use. That is why we had to fork and started Devuan in 2014.

The major causes for "lacking features" would be desktop environments like GNOME or KDE. I don't see how Devuan helps with that, especially since further up in the comments it was mentioned that in Devuan, GNOME works… not at all.

As someone who had to do a non-systemd upgrade to Debian 8 on a virtual root server I rent[1] I can say that in my experience there is no problem for server environments and I wouldn't expect any if you're not a desktop user. And again, if you are, you'd probably still be better off with Debian.

[1] Because I don't know what containerization thingymabob it uses and it's running a Redhat 2.6.32 patched-all-the-way-to-hell-and-back kernel.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 3, 2016 6:39 UTC (Tue) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

> I hereby confirm that Debian 8 "Jessie" running sysvinit behavior is so degraded that cannot suit any production use. That is why we had to fork and started Devuan in 2014.
Non sequitur. The issues could have been fixed within the Debian project. It's not a matter of policy, there's apparently just not enough interest in sysvinit any longer.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 3, 2016 15:57 UTC (Tue) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

> "/!\ Caution: Be advised that some packages may have degraded behavior or may be lacking features under a non-default init system."
> I hereby confirm that Debian 8 "Jessie" running sysvinit behavior is so degraded that cannot suit any production use. That is why we had to fork and started Devuan in 2014.

That is a very maximillist interpretation bordering on absurd, of course if you depend on a feature that the default init system has that other systems don't then your behavior will be different or degraded on other systems, this is not the same as saying that the system is failing at _any_ production use, that's just gross hyperbole. Do you have any specific examples of the complete brokenness you describe or is this entirely theoretical.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 12, 2016 16:24 UTC (Thu) by Nikratio (subscriber, #71966) [Link] (2 responses)

>>> Let's say we are pro-choice
>>
>> Debian certainly appears to be pro-choice since the user can choose which init system to run.
>> I don't understand your terminology... How is Devuan pro-choice?
>
> Have you actually tried what you mention as possible?

I have not, but sysvinit support is still required for packages in Debian. So you can rely on Debian giving you a choice between systemd and sysvinit - with all packages being configured to support both.

Devuan, on the other hand, doesn't seem to give you much choice at all: if you don't use sysvinit, you're own your own. There's not a single supported alternative. Instead, packages have been deliberately modified to prevent some alternatives from working. Sure, you can install openrc or any of the others, but you can do the same in Debian, and none of the packages will work with it out of the box.

It seems when it comes to init system choice, so far Debian is the better choice.

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 12, 2016 17:36 UTC (Thu) by johannbg (guest, #65743) [Link] (1 responses)

"Devuan, on the other hand, doesn't seem to give you much choice at all: if you don't use sysvinit, you're own your own. There's not a single supported alternative."

Well according to those enlighten devuans [1] "Devuan uses sysvinit, offers openrc, runit, sinit" that's their definition of "Init freedom" but I would take that with a grain of salt what's written on that page since they are for example referring to Gentoo "Gentoo uses openrc (see Gentoo without systemd)" in the "GNU/Linux Distributions without systemd" and link to a wiki page subjected for removal [2] "This article has been flagged as dirty for not conforming to the wiki guidelines. " ( which begs the question if this wiki page was actually written by the Gentoo community ) when in fact Gentoo offers both ( and have done so since more or less systemd inception ) [3][4] along with comparisons of init systems [5]

As people can see if they read devuans own page that distribution is built on factual incorrectness and propaganda against systemd despite " jaromil" claiming they are not waging any crusade against systemd.

1. https://www.devuan.org/os/init-freedom/
2. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_Without_systemd
3. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/OpenRC
4. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd
5. https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Comparison_of_init_systems

Devuan Jessie beta released

Posted May 12, 2016 17:45 UTC (Thu) by Nikratio (subscriber, #71966) [Link]

>> Devuan, on the other hand, doesn't seem to give you much choice at all: if you don't use sysvinit,
>> you're on your own. There's not a single supported alternative."
>
> Well according to those enlighten devuans [1] "Devuan uses sysvinit, offers openrc, runit, sinit" that's
> their definition of "Init freedom" but I would take that with a grain of salt [...]

Yes, the other systems are *packaged*. But if you install them, they won't start any services. You have to configure them all on our own. In other words, only the easy work has been done, and the majority of the work required to use e.g. sinit is the same for Debian and Devuan.