Re: forks, derivatives, other distros - what are you thinking/doing
On Wed, 05 Nov 2014 09:32:57 -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> If you're unhappy with systemd (and it's associated ecosystem), and/or
> with the directions that it's taking Debian (and/or large portions of
> the Linux ecosystem):
I don't actually know how unhappy I am with systemd. I do know it seems
to be causing a lot of churn in Linux, and I don't much like churn. I'm
a bit inclined to try and sit it out until things stabilize. My server
is sitting on the shore by using wheezy, but having jessie on my laptop
puts me in the rapids.
> 1. What are your issues, reasons for doing so - general and/or specific?
I've had trouble with passwords in the network-manager starting a few
months ago. I tried a few other wifi connectivity tools, and ended up
with wicd. What was different about wicd was that (i) it worked, and
(ii) it was independent of systemd. I don't know whether the
introduction of expansion of systemd had anything to do with my problems.
I've started to have trouble mounting the NTFS partition on my machine
from Linux. No problem doing this in Windows, of course. I used to be
able to mount it from the file manager after entering the root
password. Starting a month or so ago, the file manager would
tantalizingly show me the partition but refuse to let me mount it because
I didn't have the proveleges. Finally, it stopped even showing me that
partition. Of course I cann still log in as root and mount it from the
command line, copy any files from it, and chown them to myself. But it
is unnecessarily awkward. I understand systemd had involved itselg with
permissions. Could this be relevant? I have the same problem with usb
sticks -- having to be root to use them. Again, I have no idea whether
the architecture changes caused by systemd has any relevance to this, but
the general level of paranoia that is starting to exist makes me
suspicious, perhaps unjustly.
> 2. What are you considering, evaluating, or otherwise thinking about?
What I've done is removed systemd from my system, though I still have
systemd-shim and libsystemd0, and systemd and libsystemd-login0 are
absennt but still configured. Still, although systemd-shim is not
systemd, it serves to accomodate other system components that have been
addapted to systemd, and so systemd still has indirect influence on my
system.
I never use the current gnome anyway, and I've already replaced gdm with
lightdm, so dumping systemd wasn't a really big deal.
I plan to wait out the chaos with or without systemd until things settle
down. Who knows? Maybe systemd will actually work reliably someday!
There may be some apparent settling down as jessie enters code-freeze and
becomes stable. I do worry about testing going much crazier than usual
after it spawns a stable jessie next year.
Of course if systemd continues to execresce into the rest of the system,
it will be a long wait.
If the siuation becomes intolerable, I may switch to one of the BSD
kernels, or another distro entirely, such as funtoo, gentoo, or back to
the slackware that I started using Linux with more than a decade ago,
back when it was distributed on a CD but the installation instructions
still told me to use floppy disks. Remember those days?
> 3.What other options/initiatives are you aware of that you've discarded
or
> otherwise are not considering, and why?
I'm not going back to Windows, OS/2, or DOS. Except maybe in emulation
for really ancient legacy applications, such as Zoombinis.
-- hendrik
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