
Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable release - claudiojulio
https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/ascii-stable-announce-060818
======
Freak_NL
Apparently the name 'ASCII' fits into their scheme of using minor planet
names¹ for each release. Kind of a confusing name though. I wouldn't want the
connotation of “limited to a few characters only” for an operating system.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3568_ASCII](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3568_ASCII)

~~~
cpmouter
Who's going to think a fork of Debian in 2018 is "limited to a few characters
only"? Don't be ridiculous.

~~~
synotna
Forks are created for all sorts of crazy reasons. Perhaps someone has emoji
creep via Unicode?

------
qiqitori
Endorsed by Bruce Perens:
[https://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12212820&cid=5675...](https://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=12212820&cid=56758364)

------
tannhaeuser
Is there a meta-init system of sorts that you could target as package
developer and then have it generate sysvinit, systemd, bsd rc artifacts for
you?

~~~
TimWolla
I am not aware of such a thing, but SystemD supports the "legacy" SysV init
scripts out of the box. This feature is required for certain Debian packages,
as not all of them ship with proper SystemD units, yet.

see: [https://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/debugging-systemd-sysv-
ini...](https://www.turnkeylinux.org/blog/debugging-systemd-sysv-init-compat)
[https://www.systutorials.com/docs/linux/man/8-systemd-
sysv-g...](https://www.systutorials.com/docs/linux/man/8-systemd-sysv-
generator/)

~~~
JdeBP
Its name is systemd and Devuan does not permit lovers of init freedom to use
it.

* [https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pkgweb-query?search=sys...](https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pkgweb-query?search=systemd-sysv&release=ascii)

* [https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=stretch&searchon=na...](https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=stretch&searchon=names&keywords=systemd-sysv)

And in any case, the unit files that it auto-generates are (alas! from
necessity) too generic to be completely useful, because they have a one size
fits all approach that does not really work fully for anything.

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233581/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/233581/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/394191/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/394191/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/387314/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/387314/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/386876/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/386876/5132)

~~~
bionoid
> Its name is systemd and Devuan does not permit lovers of init freedom to use
> it.

I don't understand your tone here. The Devuan project is ~150 packages on top
of Debian that aim _specifically_ to remove the systemd dependencies. "Init
freedom lovers", as you put it, can still use Debian, no?

~~~
JdeBP
When you read the headlined article and other announcements you will
understand that it is not how _I_ put it.

------
JdeBP
Dated the 18th of August 2006, I see. (-:

Also, the WWW site announced in the release defaults to the previous release
in its listbox.

Devuan compared to Debian:

* [https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pkgweb-query?search=run...](https://pkginfo.devuan.org/cgi-bin/d1pkgweb-query?search=runit&release=ascii)

* [https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=stretch&searchon=na...](https://packages.debian.org/search?suite=stretch&searchon=names&keywords=runit)

------
Walkman
My day job is to build a custom operating system with systemd. Here are my
thoughts about this:

\- The amount of stuff systemd is doing for you is insane. For example, I just
learned the other day how the systemctl stop command works; first you can send
any signal you want to the process from a script (ExecStop=), then if that
fails and the process is still running, systemd takes over, sends SIGTERM,
waits for a bit (TimeoutStopSec=) then sends a SIGKILL, optionally handling
child processes. I wonder if every single of your shell "init script" handle
shutdown that nicely...

\- I hear this complaint over and over, but systemd is NOT a monolith, you
don't need to use every component. I have a system only with systemd as init,
systemd-timesyncd (because I prefer it over ntpd) and that's it.

\- It has bugs, yes, every software has bugs. We even hit multiple of them,
and some of them was fairly unpleasant and hard to find, but it can be known
after a bit of digging, because development is on GitHub. Also I'm fairly sure
your shell scripts don't have any bugs in them...

\- Shared knowledge. I never heard this argument, but you can jump to any
other system and understand what's going on immediately if everyone uses the
same init system. This is a huge advantage. Fragmenting the landscape with
programs which inherently do the same thing just a bit differently is just a
bad idea. I also hate split of talent and split of energy. Also, why on earth
would you change to another init system ever? Or why would you ever change to
an init system you don't know?

\- Boot time is way better with systemd. With sysvinit, there is no
parallelization. You have runlevels and that's it. I never used more than
three, but I use multiple targets (own custom target also) with systemd,
because it's easy and you can finally name them and debug them and see the
dependency chain for every target.

\- Sometimes we need to dig in to old sysvinit scripts and it is a terrible
experience. It has still a lot of stanza-like parameters IN COMMENTS (LSB
headers). Great idea...

\- Systemd DOES NOT break backward compatibility. It can use existing sysvinit
scripts. Actually it even default to those if there is both a .service file
and init script.

\- "One of the critical reasons against systemd concerns the lack of
portability to other Unices, and the associated risk to see Linux-based
systems detach from the UNIX world."

Anyone seeing the irony here? :D

\- Man pages of systemd are quite nice! It's easy to learn from them. You
don't even have to google, just check out the relevant man page.

I never understood systemd hate, but I guess it comes from ignorance and lack
of willingness to learn about modern system design. The people who made the
fork are just a bunch of hissy kids or stuck in stone age who are lazy to
learn a new system IMO.

~~~
craigsmansion
> Also, why on earth would you change to another init system ever? Or why
> would you ever change to an init system you don't know?

My sentiment exactly, but weren't you building up an argument in favour of
SystemD?

> \- Systemd DOES NOT break backward compatibility.

No, sometimes it just breaks and leaves you staring at a black screen. If the
magical fix appears to be chrooting into you installation from a liveCD and
reverting to sysvinit every time, at some point you are going to want to do
that upfront.

I don't blame SystemD for existing, or people for using it and being happy
with it, but I do blame Debian for defaulting to it when there was no reason
to do so at that time other than "mainstream appeal".

>\- The amount of stuff systemd is doing for you is insane.

Yes.

~~~
Walkman
> My sentiment exactly, but weren't you building up an argument in favour of
> SystemD?

Fair point LOL :D

> >\- The amount of stuff systemd is doing for you is insane. > Yes.

The emphasis is on FOR YOU, so you don't have to do it, which is a good thing
IMO.

