
Ask HN: Are you using a non-systemd desktop Linux distro? - johnnycarcin
I&#x27;m looking at running Linux again on my laptop and have been researching some of the non-systemd distros that are out there. It seems like the only viable options are the stable distros that require a lot of manual compilation (gentoo, slackware, etc), or distros that have forked from other popular distros but are still in an early phase (devuan, Arch OpenRC).<p>I&#x27;m hesitant to go with one of the forks just because I don&#x27;t want to end up with a distro that is dead&#x2F;unsupported in a year. The distros like gentoo and slackware are more stable in the sense that I see them being around for awhile but the idea of having to spend my time compiling everything seems a bit painful. Slackware was my original distro 15+ years ago but I&#x27;m not sure I&#x27;m up for the maintenance work on my primary laptop.<p>Is anyone out there using one of these options on a daily basis (graphical desktop, large package repo, good hardware support)? What&#x27;s your impression so far? Should I just give in and learn to live with systemd?
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pwg
Yes, Slackware.

As for Slackware, it is not a "compile everything" distro. The install disk
comes with most stuff you might want for a fairly typical desktop. For the
rest, much of that can be had by using Slackbuild scripts from
[https://slackbuilds.org/](https://slackbuilds.org/) which handle all the
compiling and packaging for you, leaving you with a ready Slackware package to
install.

~~~
johnnycarcin
Thanks for the info. I'll dig around a bit and see what life might be like
with slackware again :)

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badsock
FreeBSD isn't going anywhere and has binary packages. I've been using it on my
desktops for years with Xfce, and I'm very happy. OpenBSD is supposed to have
better laptop support, though.

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cpburns2009
Unless you have a compelling reason to avoid systemd, I think just adopting it
would be easier in the long run because most common distributions are headed
that direction.

I didn't experience any stability issues with Ubuntu when it transitioned to
systemd from Upstart (14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS). I've written simple Upstart
services and what systemd offers with its units is comparable. There is a
learning curve though.

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notalaser
I hope I'm not too late to the party: you might like Void Linux. It's an
independent distro, maintained by a bunch of very sane people, with a very
sane approach to most things.

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digi_owl
Yep, Gobolinux.

