Ask HN: Are you using a non-systemd desktop Linux distro? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are you using a non-systemd desktop Linux distro?

4 pointsjohnnycarcin6 comments

I'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).

I'm hesitant to go with one of the forks just because I don't want to end up with a distro that is dead/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'm not sure I'm up for the maintenance work on my primary laptop.

Is anyone out there using one of these options on a daily basis (graphical desktop, large package repo, good hardware support)? What's your impression so far? Should I just give in and learn to live with systemd?

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/ which handle all the compiling and packaging for you, leaving you with a ready Slackware package to install.

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

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.

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.

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.

Yep, Gobolinux.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com