
Devuan Jessie 1.0.0 stable release - walterbell
https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-jessie-announce-052517
======
tannhaeuser
Congrats for following through on Devuan. I'm guessing it took _a lot_ of
resolve to make this happen.

Should we be worried about the fact that it took over two years to untangle
systemd from Debian with respect to Linux in general?

In case someone from the Devuan project is around, what alternate init system
should maintainers be targetting now for Devuan? OpenRC, classic SysV init, or
something else?

~~~
Aissen
> Should we be worried about the fact that it took over two years to untangle
> systemd from Debian with respect to Linux in general?

The time it took says nothing about the difficulty of the task. It could be
very hard with the best hackers working on it full time. It could be the time
it takes committees to reach a consensus.

Even if it _was_ that hard, is it because systemd is so entangled with the
system? Or because it makes maintaining a distro so much easier ?

~~~
appleflaxen
> says nothing

you're point is well-taken, but I think it says _something_. It just doesn't
_necessarily_ mean that it's a messy, entagled system which is deeply
integrated and hard to isolate.

but it does point, circumstantially, in that direction.

~~~
blubb2k
It might also point into the direction that the people behind Devuan have
never worked on a distribution before and needed quite a bit of time to figure
out how stuff works.

------
ckastner
I never understood why the Devuan developers could not just contribute their
work to Debian directly. Yes, systemd had become the _default_ init system,
but the idea that other developers would oppose contributions that would do
nothing but improve interoperability is just absurd.

To me, this whole "we're forking Debian" thing just feels like a strongly
emotional opposition to systemd, not rational solution to the init system
problem.

~~~
frodob12
They were told to by debian. They argued for as long as they could while
debian was still 'their' distribution to change the direction systemd would
take it. It was clean that wasn't going to happen. Final response; "If you
don't like it you can always fork. But you'll never release anything."

So now they have forked and they have released. So now their splitters. Cake
and eat it types, what can you do?

~~~
ckastner
> They were told to by debian.

I don't follow. Are you saying that representatives of the Debian project
refused to collaborate with the Devuan developers with regards to improving
init system interoperability?

~~~
parent5446
I mean, I think the comment was pretty clear, and that sounds like exactly
what they said.

~~~
blubb2k
What did "Debian" say exactly? Can you link it?

Or are you just stating what you imagine "they" might have said? :)

~~~
AdieuToLogic
This[0] PCWorld article quotes two Debian list email posts which may clarify
what "Debian" said.

From one of the email[1]:

    
    
      So, this vote effectively gives systemd the win
    

And the other[2] shows the result of Debian voting on the topic.

0 - [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2854717/meet-devuan-the-
debia...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2854717/meet-devuan-the-debian-fork-
born-from-a-bitter-systemd-revolt.html)

1 - [https://lists.debian.org/debian-
ctte/2014/02/msg00338.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian-
ctte/2014/02/msg00338.html)

2 -
[https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_initcoupling/results.t...](https://vote.debian.org/~secretary/gr_initcoupling/results.txt)

~~~
blubb2k
So, to quote the subject of [1]: "call for votes on default Linux init system
for jessie" Note that it says "default", not "only".

Where does that support the claim that Debian would oppose people working on
sysvinit support?

~~~
AdieuToLogic

      Where does that support the claim that
      Debian would oppose people working on
      sysvinit support?
    

In the body of the other[2] email where 'Option 2 "Support for other init
systems is recommended, but not mandatory"' was selected by the Debian
community. Once this path was chosen, while it theoretically isn't opposition,
in practice it was only a matter of time before non-systemd init systems would
become increasingly difficult to use in a systemd-leaning distribution
(sysvinit or otherwise).

As Manfred Eigen said:

    
    
      In theory, there is no difference
      between theory and practice. But,
      in practice, there is.
    

(source:
[https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/manfredeig211444...](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/manfredeig211444.html))

------
throw2016
It's great that they have released and it's important there are options so
users are not locked-in to a single init.

We need to do more to ensure projects do not create lock-ins especially
gratuitous ones from single companies that make it difficult for people to use
for instance Gnome without systemd.

This kind of lock-in can only lead to bad outcomes and make developing future
alternatives and improvements more difficult.

Also its time Systemd defines a scope and decouple and brand any additional
functionality beyond an init differently so it makes it easier to inter-
operate and pick and choose both for users or distributions. Or you have
distributions like Debian for instance voting for an init system but getting
all the externalities that were not voted for ending up becoming defacto
choices.

------
piokoch
I am not Linux admin, but I've been using Linux managed by others on servers
for many, many years and I have a question: Is that 'systemd' thing is so
crucial and important to devote so much effort to create brand new Linux
distribution.

I have only vague picture what systemd is doing, I can imagine that there
could be something better (as always in IT), but is this really _that_
important?

~~~
mhd
For most users, it wouldn't matter anyway, and I'd argue that that's true even
for a lot of the sysadmins. But the argument had a few layers more. Quite a
few people agreed that the current init system wasn't exactly the bee's knees,
but disagreed on what to use to replace it (systemd, upstart, heck, even
Apple's launchd).

There was a rather vocal group that didn't actually care that much about the
specific implementation either, but but wanted something in the "Unix spirit",
i.e. consisting of a more modular base of small components. Systemd pretty
much fails that test as much as humanly possible without being J2EE.

And it all ended with a bad debate on the Debian mailing list. Can't remember
all the details, but the Grand Poobahs were accused of acting a bit too grand.

So it wasn't just about the technical merits themselves, but also about
philosophy and policy.

~~~
rbanffy
As a dev/sysadmin, systemd is barely noticeable when you think if it as an
init system. When you look at the cool tricks it can do, it's more like its
part of the OS than something living on top of it, providing services you'd
expect a kernel to provide (albeit not a very Unix-like one, which is what
makes people so mad about it).

It's a large and complex beast, doing a lot of different things that make
sense in a modern server environment.

~~~
petre
Ask my users if Apache failing to start on openSuSE because of systemd and
lack of ServerName resolution is "barely noticeable".

~~~
detaro
What did systemd do wrong to cause that? Mess up DNS?

------
partycoder
Some things that need work:

\- The logo. Logos are very affordable. I would consider revisiting this logo,
buying a new one or organizing a contest. Believe it or not, many people use
t-shirts with the Debian logo and I assume that's some source of revenue
stream. I do not see myself wearing a Devuan t-shirt with this logo. Right not
it looks like a logo for a UFO cult or some cheap Internet cafe.

\- The information on the landing page should be organized to emphasize what
is important for each type of experience. e.g: dividing it into info for
users, info for prospect contributors, info for existing contributors, and
donation (what and how to donate, and what is done with donations). Try to
interleave these roles less and summarize more.

Then, I would like to understand what the key differences are with Debian,
also what specifically does "control over your system" mean?

~~~
walterbell
Any recommendation on logo designers?

~~~
partycoder
A friend commissioned a logo through a website where you get proposals from
multiple artists. He had the chance to buy a fantastic logo for a very
affordable price. I don't know the name of this website but my HN family here
surely knows. Someone?

------
ianai
If I just read wiki correctly, they set out with the goal of removing systemd
and then kept systemd?

~~~
merlincorey
Statement from the OP:

> Devuan is about choice. We think people should be able to choose whether to
> use a GNU+Linux system with or without systemd.

> Devuan decided to fork not only the base distribution, but also its
> governance, because Debian has made it difficult to avoid systemd as init,
> entangling the system with unnecessary dependencies and did so despite
> widespread community concern. We encourage potential Devuan users who wish
> to install systemd to use Debian’s installer, Debian’s packages and Debian’s
> mailing lists, all available directly from Debian’s mirrors.

~~~
jhkaghjkga
So they now officially recommend Debian to people who value true init freedom?

~~~
i336_
No,

> _We encourage ... users who wish to install systemd to use Debian._

------
flevo
Great to see they are making headway. Wonder about the long term
sustainability though, as more and more software such as GNOME3 DE lists it as
a dependency

~~~
aerique
There's also Linux life without Gnome. I hope this means more people will try
out alternative window managers.

~~~
belorn
Could always use the Window manager that is included in the X-Server source
code package: TWM. It's dependencies is basically the X-server.

~~~
herewulf
If you have ever used TWM, then you would know that the 'T' stands for
Terrible. Fortunately, there are lots of lightweight WMs that are far better.
Personally, I use tiling WMs (namely XMonad at the moment), so I could really
care less what GNOME, KDE, et al are up to. However, I realize most people are
accustomed to stacking WMs and expect something similar to what is provided by
proprietary OSes with a similar amount of eye candy as well.

~~~
teddyh
Hey now, no need to resort to name-calling. In fact, the “T” originally stood
for “Tom”, but the name was later changed so the “T” stood for “Tab”
(referring to its then-default look of window titles as little tabs on top of
windows).

Furthermore, it is _not_ terrible. I’ve used TWM for more than 20 years. It
worked perfectly fine for me when I started to use it, and it still does so
today, so I have not seen a need to switch.

------
johnnycarcin
It's likely that I missed it, but I can't find anywhere that talks about how
many packages deviate from Debian. I love what they are offering but I also
want to make sure that the ease of use I get with Debian continues with
Devuan.

Can we assume that any packages that are not Gnome related from the Debian
repos are in the Devuan repos?

~~~
herewulf
This video[0] (dated Nov 29, 2016) says 381 forked packages. That's not nearly
as bad as it sounds because many individual software projects are divided up
into multiple packages.

For example, libvirt[1] produces 9 packages consisting of: libvirt-bin,
libvirt-clients, libvirt-daemon, libvirt-daemon-system, libvirt0,
libvirt0-dbg, libvirt-doc, libvirt-dev, libvirt-sanlock.

The video is rather interesting for learning about how the project came about
and how it works in general.

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMvyOGawNwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMvyOGawNwo)

[1]: [https://git.devuan.org/devuan-
packages/libvirt/blob/master/d...](https://git.devuan.org/devuan-
packages/libvirt/blob/master/debian/control)

------
keithpeter
Devuan Jessie with Wicd on a Thinkpad X220. All just works. Enables the non-
free repository (iwlwifi drivers installed out of box) if that matters to you.

------
softwarelimits
Does anybody know how many people are working on this and how many people are
working on the security team?

~~~
bkor
The major contributors are listed here:
[https://devuan.org/os/team/](https://devuan.org/os/team/). Either they don't
mention packagers specifically or they don't have a lot of them.

They didn't fork too many packages, so security handling should be fairly
easy. They plan to offer support for a longer period than Debian. I don't
think they'll be able to based on my experience contributing to a slightly
bigger distribution (e.g. maybe 30-40 packagers) whom are lagging behind on
security updates.

------
sethammons
The website needs some work. I could gather they were a fork of Debian, but I
couldn't find​ the benefits. I had to come to the HN comments to learn about
the systemd controversy. Less important, the mobile experience was not good on
Android Chrome. When scrolling, the logo visibility toggles and the page
content jumps.

~~~
appleflaxen
at the very bottom of the page it addresses it:

> Devuan is about choice. We think people should be able > to choose whether
> to use a GNU+Linux system with or > without systemd. > Devuan decided to
> fork not only the base distribution, > but also its governance, because
> Debian has made it > difficult to avoid systemd as init, entangling the
> system > with unnecessary dependencies and did so despite...

but you're right that it makes sense to put it in a more obvious location,
given that it seems to be the reason the project exists.

~~~
sethammons
thanks; I missed that

------
doener
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14419189](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14419189)

------
arca_vorago
Nobody wants to hear this, but I have strong suspicions NSA worked with Red
Hat to make systemd their backdoor of choice for Linux systems, and I highly
praise efforts to offer diversity in in it land regardless if I'm right or
not.

