I don't think you have to sell "systemd is bad" to most of us, especially old timers (I probably started on Red Hat 5 somewhere around 1998.). The idea of using binary files for configuration and logs is antithetical to the general concept of Linux. Unfortunately a lot of distros use it. https://itsfoss.com/systemd-free-distros/
I've got experience, but I don't have time for tracking down that many low level problems these days. I have other things to do. On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 5:19 PM Csaba Toth <csaba.toth...@gmail.com> wrote: > Our mileage varies greatly. Just this week I'm installing a new laptop. My > stance is that I never want to do a dist upgrade and getting stuck with old > packages for years. I want to get updates in small little bytes at a time, > so I was loogin for rolling distros. I've been rolling with Devuan (ceres / > daedalus = equivalent to sid) for the last ~5+ years, and unfortunately I'm > succumbing to the systemd cancer this time and giving a try to Debian Sid. > I like the concept of having things out of the box, so for example I was > rolling with Ubuntu Studio before Devuan, it was Xfce based and a lot of > software. I've tried siduction, because for some stupid reason Sid doesn't > have a live install CD, I cannot undertsaand why, whereas Siduction offers > things out of the box, comes with Xfce choice and also doesn't want to > force a swap partition on my SSD (unlike Sid installer). > > My disdain for systemd is multi-fold: 1. The way bugs are treated even > upsets kernel developers, 2. Poettering's view of CVEs is a tell-tale sign > 3. I've been through an unrecoverable server fault because a bad sector > happened in the f-ing binary prorprietary log area of systemd and it caused > the kernel to not boot, and we could even fix the file because it's binary. > Unbelievable, that was the straw that broke the camel's back for good for > me. UNIX had figured this out for how many decades: gz + logrotate and you > have both the advantages of text logs and compression! Unfortunately some > packages like snap depend on systemd, and systemd interleaves with the > whole architecture so much now (like a cancer metastasis) that I cannot > install snap on Devuan. Maybe one day. I'm not too much of a fan of having > two package management systems either (1. native dpkg / apt + 2. snapcraft > on top of that like Ubuntu is gravitating towards) + I want a rolling > distro so I went back to the roots: Debian. Then I can control more where > I want to leverage snap and mostly rely on native package manager system. > > Out of the box distros take up more space, but nowhere near Windows: the > new laptop's new Windows 11 Home took up 72GB space (this included a ton of > vendor specific software though). I decided to finish the install so I can > perform a BIOS update because the new UEFI is so picky that 9 out of 10 USB > boot sticks don't boot. Anyways, now the WIndows is cloned and nuked. I > wish I could buy that laptop with no OS for $100 less (but that's just a > dream, I'm even happy I could find a candidate with Ryzen + Radeon, because > it's as rare as diamond dust and even if it's not Intel+nVidia). I was > researching laptops like System76, Purism, or Framework, but currently I'm > still using the highest performance laptops for software engineering tasks. > One day I'm craving Purism or one of the mentioned brands. > > One more thing for Debian, Ubuntu, and anything with dpkg / apt: I've just > come across nala which I'll try. https://christitus.com/stop-using-apt/ > I didn't have too many problems with apt per se, but I'll try nala. > > The whole installation procedure is pretty preposterous BTW. Siduction was > not able to install grub at the end (saying it didn't have enough space, I > reused the ~380MB EFI partition of Windows - of course cleaned), I had to > chroot, weed out some EFI temporary variable dumps to make it succeed. > After reboot my user wasn't in the sudoers. The first apt upgrade had > conflicts, I resolved those and then it saw off the branch it was sitting > on: it had both lightdm and sddm installed, I needed to select (after a > research it seemed it's sddm, but then during the install it restarted > something which killed the GUI process tree. Then the DM didn't come after > reboot. I could have fixed it but I went for Sid. Sid had trouble either > mounting the EFI or the root partition as a part of the installation steps. > I had to babysit it and chroot yet again. I'm happy I can get through these > with 20+ years of Linux experience but this is very very far from getting > into the mainstream. Maybe Pop_OS! and other distros are more usable out of > the box, however in my case I needed the freshest kernel and cloning the > firmware git repo and installing newest firmware binaries manually + of > course update initramfs to get my laptop working (for basic functions such > as wifi, screen brightness and similar), and I'm not 100% out of the woods > yet. > > > On Wed, Aug 24, 2022 at 1:14 PM Paul Boniol <paul.bon...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> As previously noted, I've got some issues with my current Linux desktop / >> home media server. I had been going with a Ubuntu based distro because I >> used to use MythTV, and there used to be Mythbuntu that had it largely >> ready to go. (FYI once you had MythTV working, there were many posts >> telling of woes if you ever upgraded.) >> >> Now that I'm looking at doing a fresh install, and no longer use MythTV, >> I don't think there is any influence to remain with a Ubuntu based distro. >> >> I've been thinking about going back to an RPM based distro might be nice, >> because apt can't tell you what processes need to be restarted after a lib >> update. Though I do appreciate the Ubuntu LTS system where I'm not forced >> to upgrade every couple of years to continue getting updates. (And have no >> experience with rolling upgrade systems, e.g. Tumbleweed from openSUSE >> which was new before I got into MythTV.) >> >> Anyone care to share their thoughts on the current distro landscape? >> >> Paul >> >> -- >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "NLUG" group. >> To post to this group, send email to nlug-talk@googlegroups.com >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en >> >> --- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "NLUG" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAL9PgS0dAHZf8eNBFSqDKPSitDnFrGb%3DjZhtonmtNd-3FoS_Eg%40mail.gmail.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAL9PgS0dAHZf8eNBFSqDKPSitDnFrGb%3DjZhtonmtNd-3FoS_Eg%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To post to this group, send email to nlug-talk@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en > > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "NLUG" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CA%2BKhHxKwmfv3s71mCdYNyckGDCkoqgfmoKB1VbL82QCFEybuNA%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CA%2BKhHxKwmfv3s71mCdYNyckGDCkoqgfmoKB1VbL82QCFEybuNA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To post to this group, send email to nlug-talk@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nlug-talk?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NLUG" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to nlug-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nlug-talk/CAL9PgS2ydEyQdBrVvxqq9JFijgh89H4xMzEBfeThHJ%3Dkje3Mxg%40mail.gmail.com.
