The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Considered HARMful]

I'm coming around to this viewpoint too, but what's people's opinion on the long-term prospects of non-systemd distros? Is it already too late, particularly on the desktop?

Install™ Gentoo©.

Seriously, it's still using OpenRC (with systemd being an option). Which, obviously, has its own problems, but at least isn't systemd.

Question to Arch users: is there any choice on init system in your distro?

 

[Kosher Dill]

Install™ Gentoo©.

I will as soon as I finish hunting this snipe and fetching a bucket of prop wash.

 

[Coolio55]

windows 11 is now Google Stadia the OS Running in Javascript
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Fucking hell. I didn't think that was at least for another five years. How long until they only sell dumb client PCs?

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

I'm coming around to this viewpoint too, but what's people's opinion on the long-term prospects of non-systemd distros? Is it already too late, particularly on the desktop?

Devuan is fine.

I don't know. systemd infection is a huge problem. There would be plenty of justification for targeting systemd distros and their developers with massive DDOS attacks to reduce the amount of work actual human developers have to do to reverse their infections, if that could be done cheaply. These scum have no right to impose their filth on the human race.

 

[Ahriman]

The video he's referring to:

I don't see it as bad as he says. Valve and their SteamOS is a push in the right direction, Linux will finally hit the mainstream.

 

[419]

Question to Arch users: is there any choice on init system in your distro?

Arch is systemd-only and, while maybe possible, I can imagine it'd be a fucking nightmare to switch to a different init system on a regular Arch install.

That's where Artix comes in.

 

[Isam]

what's people's opinion on the long-term prospects of non-systemd distros? Is it already too late, particularly on the desktop?

I don't think it's too late, there are still projects and developers who avoid locking themselves into the systemd ecosystem. But desktop software, I think, is the most at-risk of becoming dependent on systemd through elogind and other subcomponents.

systemd infection is a huge problem.

I agree entirely, The criticism of systemd not limiting itself to handling init used to be countered with "but you don't have to use component x, it's optional", it always ran hollow to me. Today systemd has branched out far and its trying to become the main operating system: a desktop manager might implement screen locking through elogind because it's easy and quick, but elogind is a subcomponent of systemd so to use that desktop manager you now need to run systemd as init.

Question to Arch users: is there any choice on init system in your distro?

Not Arch proper, but as @419 mentioned Artix is a systemd-less fork. Obarun which I'm using is also a fork of Arch, but unlike Artix it aims to use the Arch repositories instead of working towards a complete break.

 

[Kosher Dill]

But desktop software, I think, is the most at-risk of becoming dependent on systemd through elogind and other subcomponents.

Seems like a lot of it is already dependent on systemd's interface, if not the binary itself. If I'm understanding correctly, that's the approach Devuan is taking, they remove/replace systemd itself but keep libsystemd0 and libelogind0.
Running an rdepends on libsystemd0 on a not-very-customized Devuan desktop install, I see a lot of important packages which need it via libelogind0, such as Emacs, Samba, Tor, PHP, Xorg, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Erlang, Docker, CUPS, network-monitor, and naturally Pulseaudio.

Given that there will almost certainly never be enough developer support to create and maintain completely systemd-less forks of all these packages (and that the original developers will probably keep adopting new systemd features willy-nilly), is the battle already lost at some level?

 

[AmpleApricots]

Seems like a lot of it is already dependent on systemd's interface, if not the binary itself. If I'm understanding correctly, that's the approach Devuan is taking, they remove/replace systemd itself but keep libsystemd0 and libelogind0.
Running an rdepends on libsystemd0 on a not-very-customized Devuan desktop install, I see a lot of important packages which need it via libelogind0, such as Emacs, Samba, Tor, PHP, Xorg, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Erlang, Docker, CUPS, network-monitor, and naturally Pulseaudio.

Given that there will almost certainly never be enough developer support to create and maintain completely systemd-less forks of all these packages (and that the original developers will probably keep adopting new systemd features willy-nilly), is the battle already lost at some level?

I can say from experience that most of these packages link into systemd components optionally, as I have used most them on gentoo and I certainly don't have anything systemd installed. It might also be that some default configuration thing the distro does just requires systemd as soft dependency in order to make the software work in all ways the distro maintainer intended, but not as hard code dependency on the software in question, as for example I can't imagine there's anything in Emacs or Tor that *requires* systemd, although I can imagine they probably prepack at least the Tor package with some systemd init script. Also if emacs has a GTK3 frontend now it could be that GTK3 depends in some part on dbus which in turn might be built to depend on systemd. (No idea if dbus does at all, don't have it installed either)

A source based distro like gentoo is powerful. You can choose these dependencies at compile time and you can also apply your own code patches directly to every package. I for example have a code patch applied to my local GTK3 build which removes the dbus dependency which only is required for accessibility functions I do not need. Binary distro maintainers cannot realistically offer you this kind of flexibility and my (admittedly limited) experience with binary distros has shown that trying to introduce such custom built packages is usually a recipe for disaster and difficult to maintain at best. It's not all about ricing with gentoo, at all. It's more accurate to call it a meta distribution.

I posted it before somewhere but systemd is the brainchild of Red Hat, which has tried to turn Linux Userland in a monolithic windows knockoff for ages now. IBM now acquired them and honestly, they're even worse. IBM did that walled-in-can-only-use-our-components proprietary bullshit already before Linux existed or anyone knew who Steve Jobs was so Red Hats business model is right up their alley. Nothing good ever comes from corpos. If it does then it's purely incidentally. They don't have a philosophy or values beyond making money.

 

[Overly Serious]

 

[⠠⠠⠅⠑⠋⠋⠁⠇⠎ ⠠⠠⠊⠎ ⠠⠠⠁ ⠠⠠⠋⠁⠛]

Seems like a lot of it is already dependent on systemd's interface, if not the binary itself. If I'm understanding correctly, that's the approach Devuan is taking, they remove/replace systemd itself but keep libsystemd0 and libelogind0.
Running an rdepends on libsystemd0 on a not-very-customized Devuan desktop install, I see a lot of important packages which need it via libelogind0, such as Emacs, Samba, Tor, PHP, Xorg, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Erlang, Docker, CUPS, network-monitor, and naturally Pulseaudio.

Given that there will almost certainly never be enough developer support to create and maintain completely systemd-less forks of all these packages (and that the original developers will probably keep adopting new systemd features willy-nilly), is the battle already lost at some level?

Possibly. That being said, the real problem is the continuing expansion of the systemd wavefront as it infects ever more systems.

Gangstalking Lennart Poettring would be one way regular Linux users could fight back against this problem.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

And then some other tightass potentially worse than poettering will step in. Someone worse always comes around.

We just need to laugh in his face and the faces of people like him until they rush their surgery appointments.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Gangstalking Lennart Poettring would be one way regular Linux users could fight back against this problem.

So, who's going to take one for the team and find his Seeking Arrangement, Grindr, Fetlife, and Inkbunny accounts?
"Looking for some D in my System"

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Okay, so I can't find a good explanation regarding the differences between Arch and Debian. Anyone here care to give an explanation a retard can understand?

Also any thoughts on SteamOS?

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

Okay, so I can't find a good explanation regarding the differences between Arch and Debian. Anyone here care to give an explanation a retard can understand?

Also any thoughts on SteamOS?

Arch is a rolling release distro. That means that it will usually have the most up-to-date versions of packages. The flip-side of that is that new versions of packages might not play nice with each other or with the way you've set up your system, so breakage is not uncommon. Debian, however, is known for being slower to update. You may not have the newest versions of packages, but you can be reasonably sure that an update isn't going to break things. This makes Debian much more suitable than Arch when stability is important, for example on a server.

The other big difference, which is more apparent when you have more experience with Linux, is that the overall design of Debian is more complex than Arch, but hides the complexity. Arch is simpler in design, but it doesn't hide as much from the user. Arch won't hold your hand to the extent that Debian will, but being a simpler system makes it easier to understand how the different pieces of the system fit together, if you care to learn. The learning curve for Arch starts steep but plateaus out, while Debian's starts flat but ends in a brick wall.

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

Arch is a rolling release distro. That means that it will usually have the most up-to-date versions of packages. The flip-side of that is that new versions of packages might not play nice with each other or with the way you've set up your system, so breakage is not uncommon. Debian, however, is known for being slower to update. You may not have the newest versions of packages, but you can be reasonably sure that an update isn't going to break things. This makes Debian much more suitable than Arch when stability is important, for example on a server.

The other big difference, which is more apparent when you have more experience with Linux, is that the overall design of Debian is more complex than Arch, but hides the complexity. Arch is simpler in design, but it doesn't hide as much from the user. Arch won't hold your hand to the extent that Debian will, but being a simpler system makes it easier to understand how the different pieces of the system fit together, if you care to learn. The learning curve for Arch starts steep but plateaus out, while Debian's starts flat but ends in a brick wall.

Thanks for the response. I appreciate.

I'm just trying to see if I should go try a different distro. I've been playing with Mint and I honestly despise it. Yeah I didn't expect it to be exactly like Windows and I've sperged a bit here about it, but it honestly feels like convenience is at the bottom of the list for Linux and its devs.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Another practical consideration in Arch vs Debian is the package manager. Arch uses its own thing called "pacman".
The details aren't important, but if you're planning to use any closed-source binary packages you should be aware of how they're distributed and whether you're going to have trouble installing it on a system they didn't package it for.

EDIT:

I'm just trying to see if I should go try a different distro. I've been playing with Mint and I honestly despise it. Yeah I didn't expect it to be exactly like Windows and I've sperged a bit here about it, but it honestly feels like convenience is at the bottom of the list for Linux and its devs.

I've been playing around with Debian (and/or Devuan) using LXQT as the desktop, and I'm enjoying it. Maybe try that or something along those lines?

 

[Spasticus Autisticus]

Thanks for the response. I appreciate.

I'm just trying to see if I should go try a different distro. I've been playing with Mint and I honestly despise it. Yeah I didn't expect it to be exactly like Windows and I've sperged a bit here about it, but it honestly feels like convenience is at the bottom of the list for Linux and its devs.

Without knowing what exactly you don't like about Mint, it's hard to say what you'd like better. Mint is known as one of the more newb-friendly distros out there.

 

[steel-eel]

I have officially taken the kubuntu pill and I am lovin it so far. I do know upgrades are hell so I might hop to opensuse (or debian/q4os but most likely suse) in the future but that's my only hop I am planning. Pretty comfy and a lot of software works wayyyy better than they did in windows. I even had an easier time transferring photos from my phone.

 

[teriyakiburns]

Also if emacs has a GTK3 frontend now it could be that GTK3 depends in some part on dbus which in turn might be built to depend on systemd. (No idea if dbus does at all, don't have it installed either)

it's possibly related to udev. systemd used to rely on udev libraries for some of its function, but as udev was incorporated into systemd a few years back, that library code has been shifted over to libsystemd0, reversing the relationship.