@nixCraft It really has been taking a very wrong direction for quite some time. Lots of bloat and unnecessary components, poor standards, etc etc.

Apparently OpenRC is a really good alternative, but it comes at the catch that a lot of stuff is built to call systemd a dependency and will claim it can't work without it. *Sigh* Hopefully all this will result in a general switch away from that hot mess and proper support from everything for, well, anything else...

@nazokiyoubinbou @nixCraft blegh! this type of dependency on something that should be totally independent is a sign of structural failure, i suppose..

i've been a debian fanby for the longest time but maybe it's time to look into other distros. can anyone recommend me which are the most "mainstream"/well-maintained non-systemd distros?

@bazkie @nazokiyoubinbou @nixCraft Devuan is Debian with an alternative init.

Antix provides multiple init implementations.

FreeBSD is not hard if you are used to Debian.

@distrowatch @bazkie @nazokiyoubinbou @nixCraft I've had an excellent experience with MX, which recently reinstated their classic dual-init support: https://mxlinux.org/blog/mx-25-dual-init-setup/

Now it's dual-init by default. My favorite Debian-based distro.

@nazokiyoubinbou @distrowatch @bazkie @nixCraft The distro supports both. As you can see in the linked post you can easily remove either, but you can also pick and choose at every boot, for any purpose (troubleshooting, dev, debug, etc). MX is a decidedly pro-user distro.

In the same vein, you can use flatpaks, snaps, appimages, debs, containers, whatever, if you so choose. It's quite flexible but not (IMO) overwhelming.

Still, of course, not everything for everyone, it might not be for you.