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Comment by sylware | Hacker News Reader

Finally with init system alternatives or do they still shove systemd down our throat (if so I'll stick to devuan gnu/linux instead)?

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Finally? Debian has always shipped sysvinit and a bunch of other less-used init systems.

I cannot find install images without systemd and with sysvinit.

Do I miss something?

That's because systemd is the default. You can choose sysvinit during installation

https://wiki.debian.org/Init#Changing_the_init_system_-_at_i...

One one hand I am thankful for the fact that this guide exist. On the other hand, I am getting strong HHGTTG vibes [1] from them: "you can choose sysvinit as long as you follow a complex set of steps that's likely to go wrong detailed inside a hard-to-find package".

Maybe I'm asking too much, but for me "official" support would mean that I can do it from the installer directly, no terminals and chroots required.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/40705-but-the-plans-were-on...

Or post-installation. Basically install sysvinit-core, copy inittab to /etc and reboot (systemd can then be removed/autoremoved/purged according to taste).

Allright, I may not need devuan gnu/linux in the future since I can choose at installation time the init system on debian.

But it seems the efforts to actually restore the compatibility of some components with sysvinit is from devuan, not debian. May be wrong again.

Those are steps in the right direction. But I stay alert: I know that sysvinit experience could be actually desastrous on debian compared to devuan. Not to mention the debian "default" is systemd: we all know how critical is the choice of the "default" on the long run, that's why I may still go to devuan.

> But it seems the efforts to actually restore the compatibility of some components with sysvinit is from devuan, not debian.

Don't blame Debian if the Debuan contributors fail to send their patches upstream.

This is not what I recall which was strong resistance to raw blockade.

Well, it seems it did not last.

You have it backwards: Devuan shoves sysvinit down your throat, whereas Debian is the one that supports alternatives

Devuan does exactly what it says on the tin. If that suits you, use it, otherwise you are free to not use it. It follows that since nobody forces anyone to use Devuan, nothing is being shoved down throats.

Yes, I was only copying the hyperbolic language of the parent commenter.

That's one of the reasons I don't like Debian. All this old cruft for compatibility with stuff nobody should be using. Just embrace systemd, jesus.

Actually, on my custom elf/linux distro, I have neither systemd nor sysvinit.

But one is grotesquely and absurdely bigger and kludgier than the other one, so this is more about choosing the lesser evil...

systemd is the superior init system.

Its superiority in kludge and bloat is not a matter of discussion, we all know that.

How did you came to that conclusion? In my experience, sysvinit comes with less bloat, and hangs randomly much less than systemd. I've worked with both old debian (sysvinit) and current centos (systemd) systems, and if I had a problem with init, it was always with systemd. If something related to disks or user login sessions fails, with sysvinit most of the time things proceed promptly, while with systemd, you're in for a waitfest/eternal hang.

Systemd seems to be propelled by distro packagers and developers, but for admins/users, it's not that great.

Because it works and writing init files with startup dependencies is cumbersome.

Sysvinit also works. How is writing init files cumbersome? Writing startup dependencies is easy - there is the Required-Start header in the ### BEGIN INIT INFO block where you put the required services.

Because of the stuff you just mentioned. I don't know if a process has started (status could be wrong), don't see the output. Also you enter a dependency hell with this type of info block.

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