Mastodawn

nixCraft 🐧2d ago

systemd lost the plot a long time ago. they stopped following the Unix philosophy and now they're busy adding nonsense like age verification. Just like Firefox, systemd doesn't understand its core user base. There are plenty of distros without systemd

@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...

bazkie 👩🏼‍💻 bitplanes 🎵2d ago

@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 @nixCraft

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

Exactly this.

Systemd has completely lost sight of its entire purpose. It should be simple, minimal, and just get the job done. It sure shouldn't become... this...

(And I too am a Debian person. I kind of don't really want to switch right now though.)

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱2d ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

This is almost entirely the problem at my end. I also have spent many years on various distros from Mandriva, to Magiea, to Ubuntu, to Garuda.

To the best of my knowledge all of those that still exist are systemd houses.

If I want to move away from systemd, it seems I have to go with off-band distros, but I still want my KDE desktop!

@bazkie @nixCraft

@bytebro @bazkie @nixCraft Turns out there are a few that are specifically designed to move away. I'm probably going to give Devuan a shot as soon as I can as it sounds like it's very close to pure Debian in every other way. They have a page listing several distros that are not based on systemd (or at least have an easy option to switch): https://www.devuan.org/os/init-freedom

Distrowatch themselves popped up to suggest it and a couple of others.

Welcome to devuan.org | Devuan GNU+Linux Free Operating System

Free GNU+Linux base OS. Devuan is a fork of Debian without systemd. Devuan provides a safe upgrade path from Debian, to ensure the right to Init Freedom and avoid entanglement.

Devuan GNU+Linux

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱1d ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

Installed it in a Gnome-Boxes VM and not impressed with the WE. It doesn't automagically recognise my screen size on boot, unlike Ubuntu, Mint, Cachy, Tuxedo, Garuda, etc, do. And the best resolutions available in the Settings screen are not even close to what is needed.

I think this one goes down as a 'work-in-progress' for now.

@bazkie @nixCraft

@bytebro @bazkie @nixCraft That's very strange. It's mostly plain Debian in regards to things like what drivers/etc are in the stock kernel as far as I know. If plain Debian works then it should.

Works fine for me, but I have an AMD GPU which is a whole lot of Just Works™ in Linux compared to others these days. (Kind of ironic that once it was nVidia for that and now they are the ones that suck at it.)

Main thing I ran into was stuff like pipewire-pulse wouldn't work with it stock. It would need something such as that MX Linux method.

Speaking of, maybe you should look into MX Linux?

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱20h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

Devuan still refuses to, or is unable to, sort out a wide-screen on boot - according to my notes this should be about 3440x1440, and it doesn't seem to be able to handle that. Hey-ho, we'll look for other alternatives.

@bazkie @nixCraft

@bytebro @bazkie @nixCraft Sounds like it's a matter of loading the appropriate driver for whatever your hardware uses? It's basically just Debian in regards to that. Framebuffer/etc stuff should work exactly the same. Exactly the same...

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱19h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

I get that, but many other distros seem to be able to work that out at the time of install. And no 'obvious' route post-install to make it work as it should. Obvs, currently, not a fan!

@bazkie @nixCraft

@bytebro @bazkie @nixCraft Not disagreeing with that. I'm just saying it's very very weird because it's literally just "Debian without systemd." So it should literally act just like Debian in regards to things like that. It's very strange.

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱19h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

I tell you what - this has all been within Gnome-Boxes. Next time I'm bored and sober, I'll have ago at installing it on VirtualBox, which I believe I still have on here...!

@bazkie @nixCraft

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱18h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

Hah! Well that was interesting - I fired up VirtualBox for the first time in a long time, then told it to create a Devuan VM, with essentially the same config that the Gnome-Boxes one had. It crashed whilst booting the ISO, so didn't even get to a Live login! Colour me as 'less than comfortable' with it, right now.

@bazkie @nixCraft

@bytebro @bazkie @nixCraft There is something weird going on.

Uh...

Just to double check, your computer is stable, right? 😆

Honestly, I have no idea. You have really bad luck or something. Sorry.

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱

@nazokiyoubinbou

Stable? Sure. It's a 2.5yr old Tuxedo laptop with 32GbRAM and 1Tb of SDD.

For each VM, I've given 16Gb of virtual RAM and 40GB of virtual HDD. The Gnome-Boxes one works, but has no clue about my graphics capabilities, and the VirtualBox one simply fails even to boot the ISO.

Most odd.

@bazkie @nixCraft

@bytebro It really is super weird. Like I think their installer is based on an older version of the Debian installer, but it's basically just the Debian installer even.

Oh well. Give MX Linux a look?

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱18h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou That one is definitely my next to look at. And thanks for the suggestions along the way, of course!

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱18h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

BTW, to save me a lot of searching, do we know what distro (if any) MX might be derived from? Some of the VM managers like to try and guess stuff based on the base distro...

@bytebro They pretty much say it all on their website. It's based on Debian Stable, but integrates some things from antiX Linux. It very much resembles pure Debian, but the change to sysvinit does mean some stuff is funky and it doesn't look like they've changed everything. (I'm going to have to manually rig up an old fashioned init-style service for cdemu for example I guess.)

BTW on your graphics issues, were you just talking about the framebuffer? Because a VM probably couldn't detect your monitor settings at the UEFI/init stuff. You'll probably have to manually specify a resolution if you want the framebuffer to not just default to whatever.

Normally the firmware gets it from the videocard which in turn gets the monitor itself, but a VM doesn't have direct access.

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱17h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

OK, as far as the graphics thing goes, I'm not sure about that - what I saw was in the System Settings, then Display, I could opt to change the screen resolution, but not a single available option actually came close to my screen. As I think I said, several other distros have just gone - 'oo that's a big screen, here you go!' or similar either at start-up or after log-in 🙂

Also as I'm (almost!) about to try MX, I'll remember the Debian roots when Gnome-Boxes asks me, thanks.

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱17h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

OMG - this is fun!

MX (under Gnome-Boxes) has a choice in the grub menu for sysvinit or systemd, which is excellent. And it instantly picked up my screen configuration, which is even better.

I can see me playing with this over the next few day, for sure.

@bytebro Have fun.

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱17h ago

@nazokiyoubinbou

It's installing as we speak. I'll sleep then play tomorrow, I think!