Mastodawn

I think I’m going to set up #Debian now. I have a huge problem with some packages conflicting and refusing to build on Arch, hindering the system update. Not cool and will take too much time to resolve for something that shouldn’t’ve even happened. I need a really boring system to base things off, as I care about software and ideas (and ed(1),) and not about drivers and systemd whatever. I just want something that is guaranteed to stay out of my way. So yeah, it’s a values decision.

I am also considering #Guix, but the stance on non-free software and the dire gaming situation is somewhat disincentivizing. No systemd and lack of slop though. Can I install Shepherd on Debian? Is Devuan a good distro? Is SysV too vaporwave with kids these days?

#Plan9 sounds fun too, especially for running in a container on a more secure system.

A.B. Murrow Jun 14

@aartaka Debian does have shepherd in it's repos for Trixie onward: https://manpages.debian.org/testing/shepherd/shepherd.1.en.html

Debian may make a flavor that has it installed and configured by default (they do sometimes do weird experiments like that), but it looks like you may be able to do it yourself too. You'd probably need to rewrite a bunch of system services though.

With the number of Debian forks there are, you might have better luck looking at stuff like Trisquel, MXLinix, Sidduction, or Debian with GNU Hurd.

shepherd(1) — shepherd — Debian testing — Debian Manpages

A.B. Murrow Jun 14

@aartaka you might also enjoy the BSDs, they're all pretty great these days.

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@abmurrow these are tempting, but drivers are hit-and-miss I heard. I don’t want to risk that. BSD coreutils though!

A.B. Murrow Jun 14

Ah, forever the conundrum. I've seen folks on here do some experimentation on that front lately.

FreeBSD has the best support, obvs, but NetBSD may surprise you! It's got more support for more stuff than you'll find in OpenBSD, though the OpenBSD install is a little smoother.

Also look at some cool stuff like Gershwin and HelloSystem in the BSD space too. They're reviving the classic MacOS human design system if that's your thing.

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@abmurrow hmmmm, these are good pointers, thank you 🖤

Mason Loring Bliss Jun 14

@aartaka You can run Debian with sysvinit and it continues to work well. Slackware is pleasant. Both will work fine for gaming.

OldCoder Jun 13

In fact, there is an entire family of Debian derivatives, Devuan, that consists of corresponding Debian upstream distros with systemd removed.

This post is being made from my Pleroma instance, running in my own Linux distro, running in a superlight container, running in Devuan 4 (chimaera).

https://www.devuan.org/

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

Ra (Freyja) (it/its)𒀭𒈹𒍠𒊩 Jun 14

@aartaka if you're looking at servers, might I offer OmniOS as a really good OS to run server stuff on?

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@freya I’m looking for a desktop OS for now, but I might have some server magic upcoming, so thanks for the recommendation!

Flora, artisanal troublemaker Jun 14

@aartaka the Devuan community is developing a reputation you probably won't like (I had a quick look at your recent posts before saying that).

If you want SysV on a boring desktop system, MX Linux is nice.

You can run ports of the plan 9 tools on Linux with plan9port. I do all of my text editing on Linux in acme that way.

If I remember correctly, you should compile plan9port yourself on Debian based systems because the package is weirdly incomplete.

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@gooseliketyping oh, MX came up twice now! Will check it out!

I’m aware of plan9port, but it feels kinda wrong to use it on a foreign system. Everything is not file on Linux etc.

Flora, artisanal troublemaker Jun 14

@aartaka yeah, it doesn't feel quite right, I know what you mean. It's still better for me to have acme and plumber where they are out of place than to not have them at all.

@aartaka @gooseliketyping +1 for MX, it checks all your boxes I think.

🎆 ٩(˘◡˘)۶ Jun 14

@aartaka Yea, that sounds like the number one reason to switch away from Arch after using it for a while. But choosing Debian because you need a specific version of something? Chances are high that it will not come from the official repos then. And then chances of conflicts in the future are as high as with any other distro.

I don't think it makes sense to recommend distros in the replies. (Although I was going to do that before I read the others and realised we're creating a random list of distro names.) You can choose one yourself (or did already).

But because I like many things about Arch so much and am glad to be back after too many years of Debian, I'd like to encourage you to give it another go. If you're re-installing anyway. Maybe make a list of packages with pacman -Q and install all of them in the new environment.

If you're looking for something without systemd, Artix seems a good choice. (I do have a problem with electron-based apps on one machine with Artix. But it's old and pretty much too slow for most of them anyway and they work fine on other machines with Artix.) https://artixlinux.org/download.php

Artix Linux - Download

Artix Linux, a systemd-free linux distribution.

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@steeph this is a very balanced reply, thank you for that!

My thoughts are of Debian mainly because it’s more batteries-included and pre-packages than Arch where you have to construct the system yourself. Both of these statements can be inverted: Arch has AUR with a huge collection of packages; and Debian might require a lot of manual recompilation if you want fresh packages.

But what matters to me is the sentiment, and the DIY sentiment of Arch I no longer share. Or, rather, I shifted the sentiment into other areas: paper computing, weird userland software, Web.

मोक्ष / untrusem ⁂Jun 14

@aartaka note :- I am definitely biased about guix.

About your concern on non-free software and gaming situation, I think both of these can be solved with https://nonguix.org. As most of the guix users including me also use it if they don't have libre hardware. Its just a channel like any other, I think I ought to write a guide on installing guix in 2026 because it's more simple now.

Nonguix / nonguix · GitLab

Guix channel for packages that can't be included upstream. Please do NOT promote or refer to this repository on any official Guix communication channels.

GitLab

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@untrusem I was a Guix user for a while (3 years? 4?) so I’m aware of both nonguix and guix-gaming-games. The approach, however, does not scale that well: I have a library of 300 games on GOG (and I’m trying to get them off there, as they nazified,) and the only way to play these games on Guix is to write, trial and error, package definitions for every single game with its own libraries and build steps. That’s daunting. So my priority here is to have a system that’s compatible with everything, including games. And then grow weird software out of that.

futurile Jun 14

@aartaka @untrusem yeah if games are the number one priority then using a standard Linux distro makes sense. Even Debian is likely to be a problem as it's slow moving - one of the other "game specific" distros might be the best option.

#guix (and #nix) are very different - I tell people to use a #vm or #flatpak if you need a specific application that's not in the #guix , #nonguix or #guixgames channels

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@futurile well, GOG games are built for Ubuntu, so it’s not too much of a stretch from Debian I think. But yeah, an eternal problem, ahah.

Kirtai 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 14

@aartaka @futurile @untrusem
I once tried writing my own flatpak definitions for GOG games. Didn't get far due to the flatpak docs though.

Klara på Kråkmakargatan ❤️Jun 14

@aartaka @untrusem

I can personally vouch for Steam and Heroic working well, haven't had to write a single package definition for a game, except for one I made for Prism Launcher. Steam and Heroic use Guix FHS containers and I haven't had any issues with the former from Nonguix or the latter from Flatpak.

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@boo_ @untrusem this does work nice if you use Steam, because it’s all in one app. But GOG games come as bundles / installer scripts. Sp they need to be wrapped into Guix packages.

Klara på Kråkmakargatan ❤️Jun 14

@aartaka @untrusem That's what I use Heroic for :)

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@boo_ @untrusem oh I see now!

simendsjo Jun 14

@boo_ @aartaka @untrusem Me too! :) I also run the games in containers, but I should really package Gamescope to avoid exposing X. Here's an example script to launch a game (my mastodon instance has a short message limit so I must use a paste service): https://paste.sr.ht/~simendsjo/05f81e457bdeab9857e0e047b5047d0bc444ee62

Klara på Kråkmakargatan ❤️Jun 14

@simendsjo @aartaka @untrusem

I'd love to see Gamescope get packaged! I remember a patchset for it was sent in to Guix but I don't know what happened to it after that. Probably worth looking into.

simendsjo Jun 14

@boo_ @aartaka @untrusem I think I found it. Predates the Codeberg migration. Someone should pick it up again. I'll keep it in the back of my mind in case I find the time.

https://issues.guix.gnu.org/70493

[PATCH 0/4] gnu: Add gamescope.

Kirtai 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 14

@aartaka @untrusem
Remember that the Guix package manager can be installed on other distros too.

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@kirtai @untrusem yes, I remember that!

simendsjo Jun 14

@aartaka @untrusem Wait, what? GOG is nazis...?

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@simendsjo @untrusem yeah, they are. They sent out an SS symbol in one of their newsletters, and their response to that was basically “it’s fine, we didn’t send it to Germans, after all!”

simendsjo Jun 14

@aartaka @untrusem "GOG intended to use a Sowilō rune, (...) meaning “sun.” However, the two adjacent characters resembled the double sigrune, which is banned in Germany, on many devices."

(...) "However, in Gmail inboxes and Outlook, these characters are displayed as two lightning bolts with a strong resemblance to the SS runes."

So it sounds like it might have been a mistake rather than nazi propaganda?

https://www.heise.de/en/news/GOG-apologizes-for-newsletter-with-SS-runes-in-subject-11321683.html

GOG apologizes for newsletter with SS runes in subject

A GOG newsletter for the game "The End of the Sun" displays symbols reminiscent of SS runes. The company regrets the error.

heise online

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@simendsjo so their public responses to critique were rather weak: https://merveilles.town/@aartaka/116726584361409827

And a response from one of the employees was even worse: https://redlib.perennialte.ch/r/gog/comments/1txlz7z/hey_gog_wtaf/opxsir6/?context=3

And why put _two_ of such ambiguous runes together?

And their forums are known to harbor a lot of righties and outright nazis. I only learned that recently, though.

Overall, it looks super shady and inconsistent.

Artyom Bologov (@[email protected])

So I reached out to GOG support to query (in a rather bland way) them about their recent Nazi newsletter message. Here’s the response: > Thank you for reaching out to us. While GOG Support is unable to provide any additional comment beyond our official communication, we understand your concerns and would like to share our official statement below: > “We would like to apologize for our recent newsletter. > We made a series of mistakes: We created an unfortunate visual association by placing the runes incorrectly, we used the wrong logo for The End of the Sun, we did not check the display of the newsletter on mobile devices - which came out worse - and we didn’t port the feedback from our German QA to other languages. > While half our email base received this email, we stopped the send-out as soon as we noticed the error. > We are now revising our review process to enforce more checks and catch these mistakes earlier. > GOG TEAM” I am not convinced. Going to shop for games on Itch, Humble, and Steam now.

Merveilles

Giacomo Leidi 6d ago

@aartaka @untrusem I've used steam for years on with amdgpu drivers. There is no need to write a package for each game, if you are a steam user you can run them in the nonguix container out of the box. Less out of the box is to use nvidia proprietary drivers but it seems to be possible with effort.

There is also a PR implementing the same for Lutris, I have been requested to add it to small-guix until it is merged so you may have some luck there as well.

Giacomo Leidi 6d ago

@aartaka @untrusem it's quite scary what you say about gog, do you have any link to understand better what happened?

Artyom Bologov 6d ago

@paulbutgold see the thread from https://merveilles.town/@aartaka/116750073568779940

Artyom Bologov (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @untrusem yeah, they are. They sent out an SS symbol in one of their newsletters, and their response to that was basically “it’s fine, we didn’t send it to Germans, after all!”

Merveilles

💙🩷💜Brett🐡🍉🐧Jun 14

@[email protected] if i was gonna try a new linux distro i would try void with musl, void looks pretty awesome

Artyom Bologov Jun 14

@brettm I can imagine musl causing problems, but recommendation noted!

💙🩷💜Brett🐡🍉🐧Jun 14

@[email protected] i have found musl is fine these days on postmarketOS, Alpine did a lot of work to upstream fixes to projects that barfed with it. Void also has a glibc version btw 🙂

Helge Rausch Jun 14

@aartaka After a month of Debian, I'm happier with it than anticipated. Everything runs much more smoothly than I was ever able to set it up on Arch. I'd say, if you want to have more time for other things, go with Debian. If you want to tinker, I'm not sure. You can do that with any distro, I suppose... 🤷 When I need a different version of something (or for isolating npm), I'm using systemd-nspawn[^1]. That is if you wanna go with systemd at all...

[^1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-nspawn

systemd-nspawn - ArchWiki