back to article systemd-free Devuan Linux hits RC2

Devuan Linux has released its second release candidate. Devuan was created by self-described “Veteran Unix admins” who find Debian's adoption of systemd abhorrent, because they want complete control over the packages that load when Linux boots. “Devuan decided to fork not only the base distribution, but also its governance,” …

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  1. Christian Berger

    It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

    I mean Windows has a rather good kernel team, they actually work on making their kernel faster and more secure every day. The reason why people who dislike Windows dislike Windows is the userspace. It's all that crappy software which spies on you or prints PDF-files differently to how it displays them: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/platform/issues/11896203/

    Now we have the same on Linux. There is a team which tries to make the kernel faster and more secure, but there are also teams who make the userspace more complex, buggy, harder to fix and insecure. Often even by doing exactly what Microsoft did wrong 20 years ago, like binary log files and highly opaque service management.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

      No, Linux does not have this problem. systemd is not in the Linux kernel. Rather, several distributions of Linux have chosen to include this problem. There are other distributions which choose not to have this problem. Which distribution to choose is up to the individual. Me, I choose a distribution without the problem. YMMV.

      1. Christian Berger

        Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

        "No, Linux does not have this problem. systemd is not in the Linux kernel."

        Yes, you are correct, and you can still choose distributions without systemd. For some platforms you can even go further and use completely different userlands like gokrazy, which attempts to simply boot into a single service on the Raspberry PI3.

        However you could also argue that you can get Windows PE which leaves out most of the crap you don't want. The problem there however is that Windows programmers tend to have used every obscure feature there was. You'll still have programs using VBX components. You'll still have programs using OLE and DCOM. Developers simply aren't disciplined enough to not use new features dangling in front of them.

        1. jake Silver badge

          Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

          Not sure what your point is. WinPE and gokrazy are hardly general purpose desktop computing environments. Devuan is. In fact, the only difference between Devuan and Debian is that one uses systemd, the other doesn't. If you are trying to suggest that a distribution without systemd is somehow crippled ... Well, don't even go there as you'd be very, very wrong.

        2. Ole Juul

          Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

          There really is nothing available which is perfect. However, I agree with the title as do many other people - at least in principle and feel. I note that a lot of *BSD users are Linux refugees who've not liked the Windows-like direction of Linux distros in general. You may disagree with the choice of BSD but the sentiment is common.

          1. naive

            Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

            I could not agree more. Only this year I implemented 15 NetBSD systems for customers, instead of Linux.

            It is such a liberating experience. To live without all this complicated stuff they implemented in Linux, not only systemd, also basic issues like configuring network cards gives one the same Voodoo feeling as dealing with windows does.

            In NetBSD one can do all in /etc/rc.conf and /etc/rc.local, what you type is what you get, that has always been the idea behind Unix. In NetBSD rm is rm, and not a "are you sure" question.

            Since NetBSD allows me to build compact and effective solutions for most customer demands, I can only laugh at the path downhill Linux is going. It would interesting to analyze who hijacked a good idea to turn it into an overly complicated dragon of complexity and an implied massive attack surface.

    2. DrXym

      Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

      "even by doing exactly what Microsoft did wrong 20 years ago, like binary log files and highly opaque service management."

      Binary log files are actually there to make the system more secure since they store more data, index data, rollover properly, detect corruption and tampering through signing. If you want text files in addition to or instead of binary it is a simple matter of reading the man page to enable them if you so desire.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

        "Binary log files ... detect corruption"

        by becoming unreadable and therefore useless.

        "and tampering through signing."

        If you're concerned about tampering log to a remote host. That's a problem that was solved years ago.

        "If you want text files in addition to or instead of binary it is a simple matter of reading the man page to enable them"

        Not quite so simple. One of the times you really need logs is in diagnosing a system that's not booting properly. In such circumstances an original text log is readable by booting from another medium and your binary log probably isn't; how far behind current was the translation to text and how do you know?

        Systemd: bringing you problems you don't need to solve problems you don't have.

      2. HieronymusBloggs

        Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

        "If you want text files in addition to or instead of binary it is a simple matter of reading the man page to enable them if you so desire."

        The problem if you don't want binary logging is that it can't be removed, only redirected. Corrections welcome if I'm wrong.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

          If you wish to see logging in free text as well as binary, install rsyslog and the binary logging will be duplicated into /var/log/messages (or the equivalent)

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

            "If you wish to see logging in free text as well as binary, install rsyslog and the binary logging will be duplicated into /var/log/messages"

            Why not do things the other way round, default text, binary an option for those who want it?

          2. Apprentice of Tokenism
            WTF?

            Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

            If you wish to see logging in free text as well as binary, install rsyslog and the binary logging will be duplicated into /var/log/messages (or the equivalent)

            Oh really? Wanna see a prime example about the clusterfuck that systemd, journald and all the abominations that come with it are? Here ya go (copied from a real system running rsyslogd):

            +++++ snip +++++

            May 8 09:28:05 foobar clamd[1147]: Database correctly reloaded (6278511 signatures)

            May 8 09:28:36 foobar packagekitd[2145]: PARENT proccess running...

            May 8 09:27:16 foobar rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="8.4.2" x-pid="940" x-info="http://www.rsyslog.com"] rsyslogd was HUPed

            May 8 09:28:36 foobar rsyslogd0: action 'action 14' resumed (module 'builtin:ompipe') [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/0 ]

            May 8 09:28:36 foobar rsyslogd-2359: action 'action 14' resumed (module 'builtin:ompipe') [try http://www.rsyslog.com/e/2359 ]

            May 8 09:28:58 foobar systemd[1]: Reloading.

            +++++ snip +++++

            Why there is a log line that has a time stamp in the past is completely beyond me and I do not want to hear any "yap yap it is rsyslogd's fault! yap yap".

            What I do know though is that I would never have had this with good old plain text logs. So please stop telling all this bullshit. I am so sick of it.

      3. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Thumb Down

        Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

        "it is a simple matter of reading the man page"

        RTFM noted, not appreciated.

      4. wayward4now
        Linux

        Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

        Amazing all the down votes you got by merely giving good information. That says much about the anti-systemd folk.

        1. GreenBit

          Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

          Don't you think people are entitled to their own opinions without someone making snarky demeaning insinuations about their personal character? Just saying.

    3. Warm Braw

      Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

      binary log files and highly opaque service management

      I'd agree with you about the opacity of the service infrastructure (what are all those svchost processes actually doing?). However, binary configuration files and binary log files are inevitable: most of the world does not speak English and a bug chunk of it doesn't use a language that can be represented with the ASCII character set. Text belongs in the localised user interface: saying it's somehow "more convenient" to have the computer parse, or serve up, English is just a form of cultural imperialism.

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

        "However, binary configuration files and binary log files are inevitable"

        No they bloody well are not!

        If, as you seem to think, that English is some imperial conspiracy then why do we not program in binary? Why do all major languages use it? Why is it the most common language in the world (mostly as the 2nd spoken choice)?

        And if you need to translate binary to/from some local readable format, why not translate English/ASCII in the same way? Fundamentally providing a language-agnostic system is very hard work and you then lack any simple way to interact with it for development with just a text editor.

      2. jake Silver badge

        Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

        You call it "cultural imperialism", I call it lingua franca.

        Like it or not, just as Arabic drove early science, Latin (Koin Greek, Aramaic, et al) drove early Christianity, Deutsch drove later science (etc., I won't continue. You are quite welcome), American English is the lingua franca of tehintrawebtubes.

        Trying to make it otherwise is probably similar to swimming against the Boston Molasses Disaster.

        1. PNGuinn
          Trollface

          Boston Molasses Disaster @ Jake

          And note that this is a moving target.

          'Merican is rapidly giving way to Indlish and Chindlish.

          Advice from your former masters: Learn to play cricket - it's the only way.

          Or realise the error of your ways, say sorry and return to the fold. Downside - you'll have to replace POTUS Trump with PM TM.

          Hmmm - Joke or troll icon - Methinks I'll go for the latter.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: Boston Molasses Disaster @ Jake

            I play cricket. And rugby. And snooker. I drink bitter. I even have O and A levels, and spent my first two years of Uni at Kings College ... I've lived roughly 20% of my life in Blighty.

            Bit late to "return to the fold", methinks ;-)

      3. Bronek Kozicki

        Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

        @Warm Braw I call BS. UTF-8 character encoding of text files is both long established and universally supported in Linux, so you can have national characters in text without resorting to binary format.

        1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

          Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

          UTF-8 is great, but please don't be a muppet like the systemd lot and have your program crash if a non-UTF-8 character is used in a *comment*...

        2. Warm Braw

          Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

          you can have national characters in text without resorting to binary format

          You can, but it then makes no sense to someone from another cultural background

          providing a language-agnostic system is very hard work

          It isn't really that much more work - you simply need a level of indirection to allow language-neutral tokens to be translated appropriately to the locale. You could even provide that in a common system that applications could share. Rather like Windows, MacOS, ...

          American English is the lingua franca of tehintrawebtubes

          This is just a circular argument. If you have to speak some level of American English in order to work with computers, then only people that speak some level of American English will work with them. That hasn't solved the problem.

          why do we not program in binary

          The last time I looked, executables were architecture-specific binaries, not human-readable. A compiler translates one into the other and there's no reason at all why the compiler cannot compile a local variant of a programming language (eg АЛГОЛ 68) in exactly the same way that a local variant of a configuration file can be compiled into a culturally-independent one. There's a fuller list of non-English programming languages in the usual place.

          1. jake Silver badge

            Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

            It hasn't solved the problem because the problem clearly doesn't actually exist in the real world.

            1. Bronek Kozicki
              Coat

              Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

              Any time I see pathetic attempts to use localized resource files with ID in place of actual readable message I am thankful my parents started teaching me English when I was a child.

              The only good programming language with "Polish" in it is RPN. And it's not even a language.

              (mine is the one with Polish passport in the pocket)

          2. HieronymusBloggs

            Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

            "A compiler translates one into the other and there's no reason at all why the compiler cannot compile a local variant of a programming language (eg АЛГОЛ 68) in exactly the same way that a local variant of a configuration file can be compiled into a culturally-independent one."

            How would you apply this to a multi-national collaboration like the Linux kernel (or any other large FOSS project for that matter)? Sometimes a lingua franca is the only practical solution.

          3. Uffish

            Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

            @ Warm Braw - I think you are ignoring the facts and history behind the term 'Lingua Franca' .

            My experience of working with 'foreigners' is that British, Australian, Nigerian, American, and just about anyone's English is good enough if you can't use anything else. In other words people use their own language (Spanish, Chinese etc) where possible and English when that is not effective. Nobody seems to get upset by this arrangement except politicians and bureaucrats.

            My experience with Devuan RC1 is that you can set it to use the keyboard nationality that you want but the login page stays resolutely in US keyboard layout, which makes strong passwords somewhat fiddly to type.

      4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

        "English is just a form of cultural imperialism"

        So should programming languages be translated from English - "if", "else", "break" etc translated into your local language?

        1. Zolko Silver badge

          Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

          So should programming languages be translated from English - "if", "else", "break" etc translated into your local language?

          Actually, it has been done, with BASIC, to French: it's horrible, and unreadable. A very good candidate for "bloody Hell, did you really think this will be used ?"

        2. GrumpenKraut
          Happy

          Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

          > So should programming languages be translated from English - "if", "else", "break" etc translated into your local language?

          Believe it or not, this has been done. "for" was translated to the German "für". This at a time when everything beyond ASCII was largely an undefined minefield. Much non-hilarity ensued.

        3. Ramazan

          Re: "if", "else", "break" etc translated into your local language?

          They used to do it in the USSR, but this practice is now obsolete. So the answer is, "You can do it but eventually no one will use it".

    4. Ramazan

      Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

      "I mean Windows has a rather good kernel team"

      Maybe, even most probably it's true, but their kernel isn't so good. It's not even that the kernel itself is no good, it's its Win32 API to userland, especially when compared to POSIX.

    5. Jim 59

      Re: It's fascinating that Linux now has the same problem as Windows

      I could upvote Christian's post until my mouse key wears out.

  2. Adam 52 Silver badge

    The question I keep asking myself is if systemd is so bad, why have all the major distos except Slackware and Gentoo adopted it?

    1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

      Politics.

    2. jake Silver badge

      Easy answer.

      Children running the show. No seasoned un*x hack would look at systemd and say "This is a good idea! I want THAT!".

      1. Pompous Git Silver badge

        Re: Easy answer.

        "Children running the show."
        Hmmm... I kinda like Cinnamon Mint. Perhaps developed by very clever children, but then I'm only 66 years young meself ;-)

        I seem to recall reading that motor cars would never replace horses.

        1. i1ya
          Joke

          Re: Easy answer.

          Pomous Git, heads up! Downvotes incoming: you left pro-systemd comment on TheRegister!

          1. Pompous Git Silver badge

            Re: Easy answer.

            @ i1ya I get around one downvote for every 6 upvotes. Think how boring it would be if we all thunk the same :-)

            Frankly, I have no real idea what the fuss is about. When it comes to OSs I view things from the perspective of an end user. Does it run stable and does it run my applications? Implying I'm childish for wanting that seems rather petty. Now the downvotes will come thick and fast [evil grin]

            1. jake Silver badge

              Re: Easy answer.

              The "fuss" is that systemd doesn't solve any problems. It doesn't actually fix anything. What it does do is add complex code unnecessarily, which is totally against the entire design philosophy of un*x. I speak as both a jaded old sysadmin, and as an end user.

              Linux is stable, and runs your applications just fine without systemd.

              Note I never said the users of systemd based distros were childish.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Easy answer.

              > When it comes to OSs I view things from the perspective of an end user. Does it run stable and does it run my applications?

              The lack of downvotes on your post is probably because it's not a pro-system post, even though you seem to be thinking it is. ;)

              1. Pompous Git Silver badge

                Re: Easy answer.

                "The lack of downvotes on your post is probably because it's not a pro-system post, even though you seem to be thinking it is. ;)"
                I am neither pro, nor anti systemD. I am however quite entertained by the discussion :-)

        2. jake Silver badge

          Re: Easy answer.

          Motor cars have not replaced horses.

          1. Pompous Git Silver badge

            Re: Easy answer.

            "Motor cars have not replaced horses."
            Really?

            Late 19th C London Omnibus

            1. jake Silver badge

              Re: Easy answer.

              Yes, really. I took my Percheron & buckboard to the feedstore to purchase chicken feed just this afternoon. Or, rather Clyde (the horse) took me to the feedstore ... so no, horses have not been replaced.

              1. Pompous Git Silver badge

                Re: Easy answer.

                "Yes, really. I took my Percheron & buckboard to the feedstore to purchase chicken feed just this afternoon."
                You're a man after my own heart, Jake :-) However, just because some few of us preserve the old ways, doesn't mean that the vast majority give a damn.

            2. Ramazan

              Re: Easy answer.

              > > "Motor cars have not replaced horses."

              > Really?

              When had they started to put car's meat into суджук, махан and казы?

        3. John Robson Silver badge

          Re: Easy answer.

          "I seem to recall reading that motor cars would never replace horses."

          And look at the mess they have caused.

          Clearly we just don't know what's good for us...

          1. Pompous Git Silver badge

            Re: Easy answer.

            "And look at the mess they have caused."
            Motor cars solved the mess problem.

            "The main problem, however, was manure. A horse produces between 7 and 15 kilos of manure daily. In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced nearly 1,200 metric tons of horse manure per day, which all had to be swept up and disposed of. In addition, each horse produces nearly a litre of urine per day, which also ended up on the streets.

            ....

            Writing in the Times of London in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure."

            1. jake Silver badge

              Re: Easy answer.

              You see manure. I see next year's veggies.

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