Debian fork! will it effect your distro.
 

How will a Debian fork affect you.
See
http://slashdot.org/index2.pl?fhfilter=debian

It took me some time to realize that the same person that screwed up my Audio setup has now caused a fork in Debian.
It is said by some he has received backhanders from the M company, certainly Red Hat has so what is it all about.
Comments welcome.

Pointless publication. No information and no analysis. All it is, is an announcement of the hopeful Debian fork, which is old news. If their goal is to be a source of information, when publishing something new about an old issue, it should be an in-depth article analysing the progress or lack thereof. I hope those people are not being paid for their work.

Slashdot is only useful for finding little bits of information. If you want the whole story you must read more widely than the 3 or 4 lines provided by slashdot.

If you read the actual debian fork webpage they are trying to crowd fund the work. Last time I looked, earlier today my time, they were at the huge total of $380, yes only one zero.

What will we end up with? Yet another Debian but without any systemd. Problem is systemd is only the default like Gnome is only the default in Debian. The hysterics about the TCs choice is beyond a joke. Debian has provided users with more, yes more choice but made one choice the default. Those who don't like that choice are free to use a different setup, those who don't want more choice are welcome to use other distros.

Am I to understand they want to fork the entire distro over systemd? People really need to let go of the past, that is sad and a total waste of time. They are up to 1500 bucks though not including bitcoins. Curious to see if this actually succeeds.

Wouldn't it be easier to just to write a simple script or a how to on swapping systemd for the ancient dinosaur that is sysv? At least easier than an entire fork.

Systemd is one facet of a shift in Debian's development philosophy. Systemd is the catalyst, but unlikely the only reason.

Obviously not. If it were that simple, fewer people would be angry and there would be no desire for a fork.

Not worthy of comment.

* I am not defending the project. I think it is a waste of time, but the project should be criticised for real issues.

It won't effect my distro and I like systemd just fine.

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I haven't considered Slashdot to be a good news site for at least a decade. I'm not even going to click the link.

I've always been an old school linux type person. But the linux operating is moving forward and we may have to move with it if we want to continue using linux. If people are unhappy with systemd, then switch to the BSD's or find a linux distro that is still using the init system. PclinuxOS still does.

You are old school (UNIX philosophy and software freedom), but you are also new school (Windows-style integration and lack of choice). Looks like your flag flows in whichever direction the blows.

Continue using the system, regardless of what changes are made, even if one does not like the changes. That sounds like brand loyalty. Like whatever is offered, as long as the fashionable label remains unchanged.

Sure I like the old school unix philosophy and the software freedom, it was the best, but what can I do? I'm just a linux user. I'm not a developer nor have control of its implementations or it's philosophy.

Like it or not, linux distros are using systemd or gradually moving in that direction. If I could code, I would create my own linux distro and avoid systemd and other binary blobs. For now, all we can do is avoid distros with systemd and reminisce the old days.

You left out the third option: move on to greener pastures. For those who like the new Linux or do not care about the changes, continuing to use it and be happy doing so is logical. Those who do not like current developments are not obliged to continue using it. There is a choice; use whichever system one is comfortable with, be it philosophically or ease of use (from each person's perspective).

Most Linux distributions were running Sys-V. Why do people feel there choice is being taken away if those same distributions go systemd?

It is not correct to assume that everyone is complaining about "choice" being taken away (although some may).

Many users never conciously "chose SysVinit", but it is what has been in use and what a great depth of skills, methods, knowledge and useful tools are built on and depend on.

Being forced to change to another init, especially one that is not built on the same design philosophy, has a real tangible cost while providing no compelling benefit for many such users.

So while choice for the sake of choice may be a consideration for some, it is cost vs benefit of a forced change for others. In that context, if the choice to remain with SysVinit were retained there would be no problem - but it is not, hence it is "forced".

My distribution is Slackware. It is unburdened by systemd, and I am very much hoping that Devuan will help keep it that way.

The danger is this: There is a loudly-proclaimed narrative that systemd is inevitable, is everywhere, and is being adopted by everyone. If software developers begin to believe this narrative, they may well assume that any Linux target platform will also be a systemd platform, and introduce hard dependencies on systemd.

If must-have software packages (like firefox, vlc, or apache-httpd) introduce hard dependencies on systemd, developers of distributions without systemd have a choice: Either do more work to excise the systemd dependencies from the package, or adopt systemd.

Udev is a good example of this. Systemd was largely ignored until udev introduced a dependency on systemd, and then many distributions adopted systemd so they could use the latest releases of udev.

The Gentoo developers took on the burden of excising udev of its systemd dependencies, and a subgroup started a side project: eudev, a fork of udev which does not depend on systemd.

Gentoo does not use eudev, but several other distributions do, to avoid systemd: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-7648392.html

Devuan used eudev from day zero. One of the very first devuan subprojects in Github was devuan-eudev: https://github.com/devuan/devuan-eudev

Udev is just the beginning, though. If too many projects take this path, distribution developers will be hard-pressed to keep systemd out.

To prevent this from happening, that narrative must be countered with strong, visible demand from users that software developers support both, Linux/systemd and Linux/classic targets. If they believe there are many non-systemd users, they will provide the option of using their software without systemd.

Devuan is a big step forward in making that demand well-publicized. It flies in the face of the narrative of systemd ubiquity, and in a loud way. I hope it succeeds, and is very successful, and has many users, and provides the basis for many derivative distributions.

I dearly hope this, because I really want Slackware to continue being Slackware.