In my opinion he doesn't need to go.  He might need a talking to, but to me it's not really clear as to who was actually responsible.  To me at least it appears that the (three?) main devs knew about this prank and are now being rather silent.  I personally don't use/read twitter, don't care about twitter - the apology, the explanation even, for this just needs to be an announcement on the project's main page.  Clear up the confusion - "we were not 'hacked', it was an April fools joke which backfired", etc.  Hoping it just blows over is insulting, it feeds the trolls and damages the project's reputation even more. £0.02

It reminds me of the kernel.org breach of 2011 (one of the the incidents which led me on the path of abandoning Linux altogether).  Rather than an entirely transparent and honest approach, there was what could be called a "cover up" or a "whitewash", coupled with a period of "radio silence".  The people ordinary running Linux, in many cases, running a business or running something mission critical on it were simply shut out, while the kernel devs hastily cleaned up their mess behind closed doors.

That's not the example to follow.

When I did the logo for the DUF forum, I had to use a similar font, as recommended in the project's wiki, as the actual font used in the original logo is proprietary: https://www.bertholdtypes.com/font/laud … /standard/

It's quite a disappointment to see such an iconic "branding" reduced to an Adobe brush and a proprietary font.  On the plus side, the red diamond i dot is at least original... maybe...

I would say that Debian ceased to be the "free software zealot OS" quite a number of years ago.  I don't quite get why "DFSG" is given so much importance, but that's another story.

Think of gnome project, freedesktop.org to name just a few.  Then consider Red Hat/IBM, Canonical, SUSE, Debian project, et al - all of that is very systemd entangled and it can only get worse...

It's all gone very corporate very quickly in the last decade or so.  Corporations are pulling the strings, paying the developers, paying the bills, etc.  That includes the Linux kernel itself, via the Linux Foundation.

Distributions like Slackware and Devuan are doomed to being a downstream which have to take this, adapt it, package it and distribute it.  The 'BSDs have it little better.  Lennart Poettering once described "BSD" as "irrelevant".  That's probably quite a true statement from his perspective and as a Red Hat employee.  Anything 'BSD derived is not a Red Hat product and a potential competitor in the making.  But it's true mainly because anything 'BSD derived is a tiny fraction of a percent of the server market.  It illustrates that the big corporations funding free software development don't care about "the little man".  It's not such a huge leap from "BSD" to "Devuan" or other niche distributions in terms of perceived irrelevancy.

Again with the 'BSDs as an example - they build small, well put together, base operating systems, which are focused on servers and the specific needs of certain types of users (who are usually developers) - for example you might find OpenBSD running as an "appliance", e.g. a NAT firewall/router or you may come across a FreeBSD or DragonFly box as a file server...  it's inconceivable to some in the Linux camp, that many running these OS don't install much from ports and often don't run X.  For these "veteran UNIX admins" UNIX was and still is a server OS.

But if one wants something close to "the Linux experience" on these platforms (i.e. a desktop) one is faced with installing pretty much the same freedesktop.org shit, X11, toolkits, etc, etc, that you'd find on a Linux system.

The *BSD porters have to workaround the specific "Linuxisms" to get things to work.  Even then they have a repository of software nowhere as extensive as Debian's with lots of missing functionality.

Eventually due to lack of man power and time one of two things will happen:

1) They will stop maintaining the port
2) They will introduce the piece of software they had previously been excluding - to make their job easier.

So, eventually this will get much more difficult, as you're dealing with upstream developers whom for the most part really don't share the anti systemd ideology of this project and other similar projects (and certainly couldn't less about any 'BSD).  If some downstream obscure Linux distribution or OS suffers, that's their problem.  This is a big departure from when developers used to write software which was designed to be built from source, to be portable, to be "POSIX" code, etc.

We've already seen the above happening...

You're asking me for "verifiable" facts, I'm asking you for the facts with respect to any upstream developers of major components who are actively avoiding "systemd entanglement" and still building portable software for *NIX systems / and/or are planning to keep doing so for years to come?  I only see *BSD developers doing this and they are swimming against the tide as well.

Devuan has the difficult option of pushing back, or staying in it's corner - that's the point ESR was making (in his unsubtle way), ruffling feathers in the process.  It's up to the Devuan project to decide on that one.  I'm not adverse to either idea - I use an OS which has opted to stay in it's corner, time will tell on that one...

As golinux has insinuated - I really have no business here, that's true, but can't say the same for another one of golinux's insinuations, i.e. that I'm somehow trolling (and should be ignored!).

But as I don't use Devuan and don't plan to, I have to admit that whilst it's been fun at times, my time here is up and I really have nothing more to add.  It has been good to be in an environment where all of the defects and obvious problems with systemd are recognised - the same cannot be said elsewhere, where the typical apologists shout the loudest.

I sincerely wish all of you and the Devuan project well.

Well ok...

etc...

Which preceded ESR's fairly predictable exit...  not due to his taking offence might I add, but he has obviously concluded that participating here is a waste of time.

Again, the defensive stuff...

I cannot see how a user coming to this site, making a first post, stating that he wants to use Devuan, that he wants to avoid systemd and then posting some critique, can be considered a "flame thread".

My point is that we all derive certain things from a post.  I have derived something different from his post to many of you.  I personally don't see the post as "that big a deal".  Kalolaz replied admirably, with real reasoning and explanation of the goals and aims of the project, as did a few others.  golinux - as ever - went into the usual kneejerk defensive mode... (too much time on FDN does that to people, they see trolls under every bridge).

I'm actually here in the somewhat vain hope of seeing an actual substantial contribution from golinux, rather than the typical ideological claptrap...

I got tired of reading golinux's funny troll posts (most likely posted when bored or having a bad day...) over at FDN (de facto official Debian forums).  I have to say that having a Devuan project member (and admin of this forum) "stationed" over there to "spread the word", as it were, is a sound strategy.

Footnote: golinux and I have a long and mostly amicable history so I know who I am chiding. 

But, many here seemed to miss the points he was trying to make...  I'm glad you mentioned Linus Torvalds - a history of some rather outstanding assholery, yet people tend to sit up and take notice if he has something to say about the kernel and just overlook all that.

On the old FDN Debian forums, there were many "assholish" posters and their posts were often, though admittedly not always, worth reading...  the style is one thing, the content something else.  With some of these technical types, you often have to filter through the "attitude" to get to what's important.

Users coming from pre systemd Debian, should not need things sugar coating.

I found the pertinent points in his post - i.e. the firmware situation and replied to those.  Others were simply wounded by the criticism and posted their rebuttals.

You can see his main point in fact - that if Devuan does not "outcompete" the Debian/Ubuntu/systemd side of things, then it becomes almost irrelevant.

To go further, if I want a system-less Linux, I can install from a plethora of systemd free distributions and operating systems - so why bother with this one specifically...?

e.g. I can install Slackware or SalixOS or a 'BSD which will allow complete systemd avoidance.  There are even a few other systemd-less Debian derivatives.

If Devuan is just going to adopt the "if you don't like it you can fuck off" approach, it's going to remain very, very niche - "competing" with the likes of OpenBSD or NetBSD rather Debian or Red Hat.

The current approach is playing into the hands of Debian project, Red Hat, Poettering, Canonical, et al as this will forever remain a niche with no significant funding/backing - forever reliant on Debian as an upstream and just being dismissed by the project - which as an upstream has the power to make things, not impossible, but cumbersome, laborious and complicated for "derivative" distributions like Devuan if it so chooses.

If you want to know what happens to such projects, just read about when OpenBSD couldn't pay their electricity bill, when NetBSD nearly went under for good - or perhaps more significantly what has recently happened in terms of Slackware's revenue stream...

Devuan doesn't need the massive corporate backers (who tend to end up pulling the strings...), but surely attracting some smaller entities and individuals can only be a good thing?

The main difference is that they are in ports.  So they are not actually part of OpenBSD's base system and not developed by the project.  People can choose whether to use them or not.

In essence the ports system of any *BSD is what amounts to "almost all the crap you get with a typical Linux distribution".

It's probably important to note that:

1) Many OpenBSD developers/users don't install any of it, or just very little (same applies to any 'BSD).
2) Many OpenBSD developers/users don't run X or care about audio, etc.
3) Many OpenBSD developers/users use a different OS altogether as a desktop, as they don't subscribe to the "GNU ideology" / Linux fanclub, whatever you want to call it.

I currently use Iridium, have been doing so for well over 12 months, but I will probably switch back to seamonkey or firefox at some point soon.

Iridium has been good, but I have a growing problem with the "chromium base" and it's dominance of the web browser market - a bandwagon which Microsoft have now jumped on as well in rebasing their Edge browser on it.

In terms of the UI/configuration options, firefox seems to be intent on aping the horrible chromium style.  That's not a good strategy.

As far as I know there is no dependency on pulseaudio with quantum.  I am running it on OpenBSD and I have no pulseaudio installed - and no alsa in fact.

If you perceive that statement as a "threat", you're clearly an even bigger idiot than I had first assumed.

Just stop making an even bigger ass of yourself and run along and play with your FreeBSD.

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."

------------------------

Well OpenBSD have not ported the reverse engineered nouveau driver, nor does there seem to be any interest in doing so, but that's not to say that it's been expressly prohibited.  There is the nv(4) driver which works for some, for some older hardware (which hasn't been removed), but that's about it.  In all other cases it's the VESA driver or buying supported hardware (hint: as is often the case with any OS).

It's worth noting that FreeBSD haven't ported the Linux nouveau kms driver either.  There was an effort, as I recall, about a decade ago which stalled and there has been little or no interest ever since (partially because there is the well maintained vendor BLOB and partially due to lack of interest/developer time).  I remember reading that early non kms xf86-video-nouveau did kind of half work at one stage as I recall, probably around 7.0-release (just a little before I first started using FreeBSD).

nouveau has been recently ported to NetBSD however and has been enabled by default since 8.0 release.  So some progress and now a real possibility of future cross porting to other 'BSDs (if someone wants to do it).

The nvidia proprietary UNIX (BLOB) driver is available to a particular OS entirely at the discretion of nvidia corporation - so is therefore a moot point and not worth further discussion.

Even if the BLOB were on offer, the OpenBSD project would not sign any NDAs and not permit the loading of the BLOB as a kernel module regardless, as that would be completely at odds with the objectives, history and goals of the project.

Whether pulseaudio is bad or not, it's a very different situation to systemd.  The main difference is that it was written as *nix software rather than "Linux proprietary", like systemd.  So it can be installed and run on e.g. the 'BSDs, Illumos, even macOS.

It can be avoided - any software which supposedly depends on it can be recompiled to use an alternative sound system / server.  Many people confuse the choices of distribution maintainers and new defaults with "hard dependencies".

The real story of why pulseaudio got such a bad reputation, is down to Ubuntu about 10 years ago.  They, as ever, released a half baked implementation which caused many users a lot of grief at the time.  Even Poettering described it at the time as the "software which breaks your sound" or some such thing.

Citation needed.  I would really like to read about pulseaudio with respect to what you're describing...?  Seriously what has Poettering been up to now?

You didn't mention firefox...?

Wayland is from the X11 developers (X.org) and released under the MIT licence (as with X11), so what is the problem?

What are these "components"?  Citation, links, etc...?

Nonsense statement.

Another nonsense statement.  Most real UNIX are still proprietary.

As an OpenBSD user, I can assure you that chromium, pulseaudio and other software which you may find objectionable, can be installed from ports.

I'm glad you brought this up.  I have been banging on about this for years and only come up against blinkered ideologues - essentially people who don't want the firmware because Debian (or GNU) said it's "non-free".  Debian only introduced this silly policy in the Debian 6 squeeze release (2011'ish?), before that you got the firmware as standard and your hardware worked, for the most part.

I understood recently, from another thread here, that Devuan may just install all the firmware - and one user was not particularly happy about that.

Debian treats the binary only firmware images as non DFSG compliant software - the same way it treats Linux binary non free packages (i.e. the "we'll just leave this non-free repository here and pretend it's not part of Debian...  even though we have tons of the developers busily packaging non-free stuff so as to be indistinguishable from free stuff" silliness).

The big difference of course is that the firmware images are not Linux binaries and are never touched if you don't own the hardware.  If you do own the hardware, then presumably you want to use that hardware?!  That hardware is probably already loaded with proprietary firmware in the shape of the BIOS/(U)EFI, video BIOS, CPU microcode, etc.