Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

Let's suppose that you don't want to use systemd, but you do want to use Debian.

No, let's back up a step. Let's say you don't want to use GNOME3, but you do want to use Debian as a desktop system.

In that case, you would simply install KDE or XFCE or LXDE, or just have a display manager of your choice start the window manager of your choice. There are lots of choices and Debian considers them all first-class citizens. Nobody gets upset when you say "I don't like running KDE, what are the alternatives?" If you say "It looks like xterm has a new dependency on gtklib, what's up with that?" your bug report will be addressed.

But if you say "I don't want to run systemd, it seems to have been installed by mistake" what you get is:

   systemd is the future, you should run it.

   why are you so rude? systemd is the default init. Get used to it.

   it's not that there are lots of people who object to systemd, it's all the same people being loud and repetitive.

and

   it's all settled now, so any attempt to object is a flame.

And that's why systemd is causing such a ruckus in the Debian community: they don't play well with others.

Regardless of what ends up happening with the most popular distributions, there will always be another distro that will stick with something different or more antiquated for you to choose. You can even do it all yourself with something like Linux From Scratch. If some software doesn't support systemd, you have the choice to either avoid that particular piece of software or submit a patch to support your preferred stack. There's still plenty of choice to be had.

As someone who is responsible for a fleet of various machines, I like that going forward I'm probably only ever going to have to hassle with one init system (at least until the next big init system enters the fray). I don't even really care which one "wins", but it's nice only having to write one style of init scripts/units. I especially don't care which package contains my dhcp client or ntp server. This is stuff that, for the most part, I don't need to touch after writing an Ansible playbook for tweaking.

On the desktop side, the various organizational and technical differences between distros (in spite of efforts like the LSB) make life harder for those writing distro-agnostic software. A good example is Steam. This is one of those potential "killer apps" for the Linux desktop, yet they're only able to officially support Ubuntu during the early goings because of the variations between distros. This may change as Steam for Linux matures, but it's telling that they picked a single distro to focus on initially.

systemd being adopted by the more popular distros is a win-win. The major, popular distributions get closer together for greater interop, while the fringe distros can cater to the vocal minority who actually cares about this. You'll always have the choice to choose other distributions and other software.

"If some software doesn't support systemd, you have the choice to either avoid that particular piece of software or submit a patch to support your preferred stack."

Qualified agreement.

In Debian Testing/Jessie, a simple wm on top of Xorg can be made init diagnostic

http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/osd.html

Something a little richer that is still init agnostic requires some management. Using --no-install-recommends when installing xfce4 for instance results in a functional desktop with nice fonts and compositing, but dbus insinuates itself but can't function, and there is no automounting of drives (I use pmount) and one is left to fall back on wpa_supplicant and roaming.conf.

Depends on what you need in a desktop

PS: my 'production' laptop will run a rich desktop but my carry-round laptop for wasting time in cafes will be some kind of debian-sysvinit frankenbox just for the lutz.

What if I wanted to use Debian but with yum/rpm instead of apt/dpkg?

I don't care for systemd (I've never even used it), but it doesn't shock me that some components are just core to the distro.

Init systems and process managers are meant to be generic, even systemd has that as a goal. The biggest problem is always converting your scripts to a new scheme, unless a compatibility layer exists.

On the other hand, package managers are far more opinionated. Each distro has their own particular package format, guidelines and development practices that are made to form a coherent as possible experience. File system layout is important here, among many other things.

However, you certainly can. apt-get install yum is a thing. I'm not sure how reliable it is, though.

That would be asking for a new feature, not asking for the preservation of existing functionality.

Even so, the answer is that yum and apt have already been packaged for Debian, so can install those, install alien, and then convert deb packages to rpm packages, build a repo, and work from that. Ask around, maybe other people are interested in doing that too.

Installing rpm packages by converting them with alien to .debs seems akin to systemd's sysv compatibility layer.

I don't know what they say, but I do now they have a systemd-shim package that you can use to emulate systemd functionality when you don't use it as the init system. And the sysvinit package hasn't been removed.

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/systemd-shim https://packages.debian.org/jessie/sysvinit-core

Not that I disagree with your point, but I haven't seen a distribution support two init systems at once. It would be a nice thing to see.

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