boycott systemd

[rokytnji]

But what is the effect on us? Does this simply mean that we have to capitulate if we want to use NEW hardware (and therefore new kernels) - but we can still do what we want with the old hardware (and old kernels)?

What if we are happy to stick with old kernels - can we avoid systemd and instead graft in new modules to cope with new hardware?

You are stuck if wanting to use XFCE, certain apps, a modern linux operating system. A modern computer. (Even bsd even eventually). Systemd is tied into a lot of stuff.

I am neutral. I have lived long enough to see this rant before. Just in a different way. Motorcycles and Cars.

Computers are not needed in motor vehicles. Neither is fuel injection needed on motorcycles. Too many sensors that can break in the mix.
But guess what. You ended up with those features anyways.

So ranting about systemd and thinking you will effect how this will play out
kinda reminds me of that turtle yelling at the fencepost to let it go.

Just a exercise in futility. So you are stuck like the turtle below.

[James C]

Systemd: The Biggest Fallacies

http://judecnelson.blogspot.fi/2014/09/ ... acies.html

Over this past year, I've seen a lot of frequently-used but logically invalid arguments for using systemd. This blog post is meant to serve as a repository of common but invalid arguments for using systemd that I and others have had to refute multiple times. This is meant to be a living document--I'll update it with more fallacies as I encounter them, and I will direct people here who make these mistakes.

Please be informed that this post is not meant to be a criticism of systemd or its authors. For the record, I personally believe that the question "is systemd good or bad?" can only be answered in terms of a particular user's requirements.

[James C]

Debian "Administration" cancels systemd-shim to force systemd lock-in upon "users"

https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/7/254

A few days ago the Debian administration ruled out any use of a systemd "substitute"
>(cancelling its own systemd-shim project for desktop users) and now requires systemd whole
>hog.

We knew that would happen. Accommodations are only a temporary
stratagem with the systemd people. They are out to conquer. They need
to be stopped, halted.

There has been no General Resolution amongst debian package maintainers.
Red Hat has instituted a regulatory capture of the "bug squashing" committee
within debian (the "Technical Committee") by having current or former (but
stock holding) employees moonlight in debian and gradually gain membership
in that comittie.

Once their numbers were sufficient they proceeded to file a bug report on
the fact that systemd was not standard in debian.

This is illicit abuse of process and they need to be prosecuted.

Debian is an unincorporated association. It has bylaws, trade
practices, and dealings
by which it was governed. The RedHat associated members of the
Technical Committee have illegally and in bad faith abused their
positions in-order to
realize financial and strategic gain for their employer.

[James C]

Debian leader says users can continue with SysVinit

http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/ ... h-sysvinit

Users of Debian GNU/Linux will be able to continue using SysVinit as their init system, despite the project having switched to systemd as the default, according to the leader of the Debian project.
Lucas Nussbaum (pictured) told iTWire that a package named systemd-shim had been made available for this purpose. It was already in the testing stream and would be available in the next release, Jessie, when that hits the download servers.

The Debian technical committee decided to change the default init system from SysVinit to systemd in February this year. There has been an avalanche of opposition from users for various reasons, mainly that the new system has unprecedented levels of complexity and seeks to take over the running of too many things.

This has not gone down well with those who believe in the UNIX way of doing things - one thing at a time and that done well.

In response to a query, Nussbaum said: "It is still possible to install and use sysvinit instead of systemd on Debian. However, there is software in Debian (e.g. GNOME's or XFCE's login and power management features) that now require specific interfaces which are provided by systemd components such as systemd-logind.
"For people wanting to use sysvinit or upstart as PID 1, there is a package (systemd-shim) that works as an emulation layer between systemd components like systemd-logind and an alternate init system: GNOME/XFCE talks to systemd-logind, which talks to systemd-shim (instead of systemd)."

Nussbaum said systemd-shim was likely to be available in Debian Jessie (it is already part of 'testing'). Jessie, the next release, is due to be frozen in November - which means no new packages will be added after that - and released within the next few months after bug-testing has been done and release-critical bugs have been fixed.

[samhain]

So Debian does not know what it's up to ...

[James C]

Systemd: Harbinger of the Linux apocalypse

http://www.infoworld.com/article/260879 ... lypse.html

Now that Red Hat has released RHEL 7 with systemd in place of the erstwhile SysVinit, it appears that the end of the world is indeed approaching. A schism and war of egos is unfolding within the Linux community right now, and it is drawing blood on both sides. Ultimately, no matter who "wins," Linux looks to lose this one.

While systemd has succeeded in its original goals, it's not stopping there. systemd is becoming the Svchost of Linux -- which I don't think most Linux folks want. You see, systemd is growing, like wildfire, well outside the bounds of enhancing the Linux boot experience. systemd wants to control most, if not all, of the fundamental functional aspects of a Linux system -- from authentication to mounting shares to network configuration to syslog to cron. It wants to do so as essentially a monolithic entity that obscures what's happening behind the scenes.

No matter which side of the argument you're on, this monolithic approach is in violation of the rules of Unix, specifically the rule stating it's best to have small tools that do one job perfectly rather than one large tool that is mediocre at performing many jobs. Prior to this, all the functions subsumed by systemd were accomplished by assembling small tools in such a way that they performed the desired function. These same tools could be used within a variety of other scripts to perform myriad tasks -- there was no singular way to do anything, which allowed for extreme freedom to address and fix problems. It also allowed for poor implementations of some functions, simply because they were poorly assembled. You can't have both, after all.

[James C]

Shall we fork Debian™? :^|

http://debianfork.org/

We are Veteran Unix Admins and we are concerned about what is happening to Debian GNU/Linux to the point of considering a fork of the project.

[jamesbond]

Shall we fork Debian™? :^|

http://debianfork.org/

We are Veteran Unix Admins and we are concerned about what is happening to Debian GNU/Linux to the point of considering a fork of the project.

About time !

[James C]

Uselessd: A Stripped Down Version Of Systemd

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTc5MzA

Uselessd in its early stages of development is systemd reduced to being a basic init daemon process with "the superfluous stuff cut out". Among the items removed are removing of journald, libudev, udevd, and superfluous unit types.

Uselessd meanwhile adds in support for compiling it under musl and uClibc as alternatives to using glibc. Uselessd is also in the early stages of being ported over to FreeBSD while upstream systemd only cares about Linux compatibility.

It's not clear how the init wars will end and if uselessd will end up generating a following or extra developers, but those wishing to learn more about this serious project (contrary to its name) can visit the new project site.

Link to new uselessd site

http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/

[James C]

On LKML: an open letter to the Linux World

http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/on-lkml ... nux-world/

I wish I were better with words. There’s thoughts that strike a note in your heart and mind, but I would not be able to express these thoughts on paper so that they deliver the needed punch. That was my first thought when I read this open letter on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML): https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/12/459 . The text is written by a longtime Debian user who feels deeply betrayed by its board of leadership. The emotions he penned down are exactly mine. Thank you, Christopher Barry. This was of course not the first eloquently written rant, but I hope it sparks a discussion in Kernel Land about what is happening in User Land, and whether they can afford to keep looking the other way (with the public exception of Linus and some others).

One word. One demon. systemd.

What relation does Christopher’s rant have to Slackware? After all, it’s Debian that got the flak, and in the comments section people indicate they intend to switch to Gentoo… forgetting that Slackware is a good systemd-free alternative (but hey! this automatic dependency resolution thingie that makes life so comfortable in Gentoo is not part of Slackware either).

Last week I asked the SDDM developers to reconsider their decision no longer to support ConsoleKit because Slackware does not have systemd or logind and thus we need to keep using ConsoleKit. The answer could be expected: “answer is no because ConsoleKit is deprecated and is not maintained anymore

[01micko]

Far-king wonderful

Just went to build usbutils-008 (21-Oct-2014) and I get this..

Code: Select all

configure: error: Package requirements (libudev >= 196) were not met:

Requested 'libudev >= 196' but version of libudev is 182

Know what that means? usbutils now depends on systemd !!!

Guess I'll build 007 and run a wget to grab a new usb.ids

[mavrothal]

Know what that means? usbutils now depends on systemd !!!

But that's the whole idea behind systemd. Control the entire OS.
Hopefully debian will acctually take a vote and will not vote for Amendment C in the proposed general resolution on init system coupling

[goossbears]

Note that Puppy Slacko should be binary-compatible with Slackware Linux's packages. Slackware Linux itself currently uses the BSD-style init system, instead of the SystemV init system that systemd is trying to obliterate.

FWIW, I'm currently trying to use a tried-and-true SLAX Linux liveUSB to backup and then wipe out a Debian Jessie install (with systemd) on a netbook. After Jessie is wiped out, then I plan to put on and keep on Puppy Slacko.

p.s., now fully completed (easily too)

[James C]

http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/s ... 19657.html

To make this clear, we expect that systemd and kernels are updated in
lockstep. We explicitly do not support really old kernels with really
new systemd. So far we had the focus to support up to 2y old kernels
(which means 3.4 right now), but even that should be taken with a grain
of salt, as we already made clear that soon after kdbus is merged into
the kernel we'll probably make a hard requirement on it from the systemd
side.

I am tempted to say that we should merge the firmware loader removal
patch at the same time as the kdbus requirement is made. As that would
be a clean cut anyway...

Also note that at that point we intend to move udev onto kdbus as
transport, and get rid of the userspace-to-userspace netlink-based
tranport udev used so far. Unless the systemd-haters prepare another
kdbus userspace until then this will effectively also mean that we will
not support non-systemd systems with udev anymore starting at that
point. Gentoo folks, this is your wakeup call.

Lennart

[mavrothal]

Unless the systemd-haters prepare another
kdbus userspace until then this will effectively also mean that we will
not support non-systemd systems with udev anymore starting at that
point. Gentoo folks, this is your wakeup call.

Lennart

He is an arrogant ba****rd alright, but he is unfortunately right.
Unless some alternative code appears cursing alone is not going to do it.

Latter: Here is some reading for long winter nights

[James C]

From the developer of uselessd...... interesting read.


http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/

[James C]

One way around systemd....... GhostBSD..Version.4.0 w/ MATE.Firefox. LibreOffice.

Not Linux but not bad.

http://www.ghostbsd.org/

[Galbi]

@James C, if systemd wins, you will have to change your avatar.

[James C]

Re: Can't We Have Another Vote for Systemd (Coup)

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/20 ... 01834.html

And the answer is no!
Of course.

The debian founding documents state that debian was created for the benefit of the user.
(The premise of the whole free software movement is the rights of the user: the developers rights are clearly best served by the standard proprietary copyright regime)
We are told that any vote by the user would be, in a word, disrespectful of the founding documents!

We are then informed that because earlier a general resolution by some attentive debian package maintainers failed there shall never be another attempt. Of course this earlier attempt occurred before everyone decided to update to Jessie from wheezy, but that makes no difference.

How convenient.

The fact of the matter is that the technical committee even ruling on this matter was an illegal abuse of process. Such wide ranging changes which are not purely technical in nature Must go to a general resolution to be voted on by all of the debian package maintainers. The abuse of the technical committee, which is stacked with former or current redhat and ubuntu(canonical) employees was intentional. It came just at the time when the correct person was in the chairmanship.

What has occurred in debian can be described as a coup.
And the trajectory has followed the standard coup path: a beurocratic organ was used to over ride and subvert a formally democratic body, then once such was completed the decision made by a few was declared fiat complete, then harsh critics of the new regime were silenced, and the population informed that they had two choices: conform or get out.

You can see the same in Egypt today. Same mechanisms. They use bullets though, rather than bans.

Debian, in its founding documents, like the free software movement it once belonged to in fact and in spirit, was created for the users. It is not, by fiat, a doacracy.

When it was created the users of debian and some of the programmers who created the "upstream" as it is now called were the debian packagers. Since then a new class that is neither user nor programmer has arising and stuck itself between us, all the while kicking the actually productive free software developers out of debian for social crimes.

That is the story, that is what has happened. They have taken our Linux distribution from us. The Frenchman above me is one of that number.

[James C]

The world after systemd

http://the-world-after-systemd.ungleich.ch/

Welcome to a world after systemd. After systemd?

Why after systemd?

We think that even though many distros have adopted systemd, the general design or motivation of the project is not good and will lead to more problems than it solves.

We anticipate that systemd is currently in fashion, however many of us have seen software rising and falling, especially if it was ill designed (sendmail anyone?).

In that sense we are planning for the time when distros and users are beginning to migrate away from systemd.

What this site is about

Our aim is to find a good exit strategy for distros and users of systemd.

We do so by analysing the current situation, the needs that systemd actual fulfills and the problems it causes and how to get rid of those.

We focus on being productive for the next generation of people using Linux and other Unices (yes, they exist and yes, they are important, too!).