I'm not convinced that the removal of Eich led to Mozilla's downfall, the decline of firefox and the rise of google chrome. It's just a symptom of a larger problem.

When chrome first appeared, it's important to take a few facts into account. At that time, both firefox and IE were still contenders, mobile computing was still in the early phase, and google were funding mozilla, as is still the case. Despite the funding, google employed aggressive marketing in a global campaign and used its growing dominance of the web to engineer firefox out. Coupled with that, key people at Mozilla, steered the project onto the rocks, whilst commanding large salaries and diverting funding away from firefox and onto side projects. So indirectly, google pay them and they in turn move the focus away from the project which is suppisefly being funded.

xenocara is OpenBSD's build system for x.org and not a fork of x.org ...

https://www.xenocara.org/

"It is not a fork"

So all the talk about that is largely pointless.

@zapper, If the developer of xlibre is a fascist, that should make no difference to you. Unless you live in a makeshift shelter in a forest and grow and hunt all your own food, never see a doctor, use any medicine, etc, then fascists could be involved in the supply chain of everything you use and consume on a daily basis.

Also, claiming someone is a "fascist" without providing reliable citations to back that up, is pretty much slander - and not so different from the tactics employeed in so called "cancel culture". Some supposedly very "woke" individuals tried that approach with Theodore Ts'o several years ago. "Useful idiots" abound, waiting to do the dirty work of big corporations, while believing they are fighting the good fight for social justice.

On the other hand, I doubt the gnome project are fascists - yet they spout the same woke nonsense as all other "Big Tech", because of course they are bankrolked and controlled by the aforementioned. If you are in fact "left wing" as you seem to claim to be, then the first step to enlightenment is gaining the understanding that "woke" and similar is a massive contrived smokescreen of indentity politics nonsenese, which skirts around the real problems in this world, to provide a devisive distraction to the electorate. While anyone is focused on the woke agenda, they will miss the bigger picture, while they are focused on the politics of free software development they may as well live in a cave. Most of the notable FOSS projects which started out as small hobby projects and embodied what free software was supposed to be about are now owned / controlled / funded / staffed / all of the above, by Big Tech. Even Microsoft is a player - who would have believed that 20 years ago? That ship has already sailed. Railing against, the admittedly deplorable, gnome project, is tantamount to raging at the sky.

We can argue over semantics all day and I mentioned Steam Deck already. There have been earlier attempts and you can't assume it's the final product.

I assumed Proton was based on WineX, as codeweavers were involved in it's development, but it indeed appears this is not the case. The point being however that this is all about Windows games running on Linux. That doesn't challenge point about Windows being the primary platform.

"Pay per play" is the wrong term, I admit... I'm referring to any of the modern platforms such as xbox or steam, but couldn't think of a better term. I'm old enoughto remember buying games on 5 1/4" disks.

Proprietary Steam platform? Proprietary games?

"...you're probably fine with running Windows SpyOS too."

Unfortunately Microsoft control PC gaming. A few native Linux ports and Steam's utilisation of "proton", which is a proprietary Wine variant (look up codeweavers and winex) doesnt prove otherwise.

If you think Valve are in the business to sell proprietary games on an OS that makes up only a few percent of the PC desktop/laptop market, and less than one percent of the PC gaming market, then I can only suggest that you do a little more research.

Valve's Steam platform is all about DRM and "pay per play". It's a proprietary platform designed to serve needs of big corporations - not users. It only runs on Linux, as a testing ground for a "console" of sorts...  Valve, as with MS, are not interested in desktop Linux users.

Ironically the only real competitor to xbox is playstation - and guess which OS their OS is based on?

Oh no, I haven't missed any points: Much drama about nothing at all. I just watch through the glass/bars. The only point I'm missing, is why the point needed proving. Your joke in the thread was enough.

@mrnhmath, you might care if they set their lawyers on you - and you're the low hanging fruit they will go after. Making a desktop called gnome/2 isn't a problem - but once you try distributing it, your problems will begin. You may be outside of the US but your methods of distribution may not be.

Getting out enough is quite important.  You can sit behind a screen most of the time and that can be enough for some.

My work means I'm sat at a computer (actually three computers...) most of the day. When I get home I try to do other things - same at the weekend. I have two kids, so we might go to the park, but not as often as we should - the weather doesn't help.

For single people, getting out means you might run into those other single people.

If going out to bars/clubs isn't for you, then you could get yourself enrolled on some kind of course. Failing that I suppose there are dating sites, less stigma attached to that these days. It's difficult these days to get talking to people. "Social media" seems to have made people more antisocial.

I would say that it's verging on the pedantic, to equate those, or indeed mailing lists, to "social media"...

"Social media" should play no part in the development of a computer operating system. Debian may have made their decision for political reasons - but probably shouldn't have had a presence there in the first place. I don't personally see any need for the Devuan project to react or respond to this. Just seems like typical hysteria from the kind of person who contributes nothing, but feels that everything needs to have some kind of "community".

@Ron, let's be clear here: I referred to "right wing nuts" - at no point targetting you or mentioning you by name or inferring anything about you personally.

Then in post #85 you proceeded to personally attack me, unprovoked, quoting and reacting to just that statement of mine. You were triggered and you seem to have a "personal vendetta".

You were indeed triggered by that comment, you responded with a personal attack and then you went to great trouble to unearth an old post, advising others to refer to it, to seek to justify your reaction - so yes that does raise questions about you and your motives.

I would say that you have jumped to conclusions.

My first paragraph was in reply to you. Nothing in the next two paragraphs was directed at you at all. I apologise if that wasn't clear.

The existence of derivatives or "tinkering" is never a problem for any Linux distribution. I had pointed out that the project spawned some of these early on, but not gained enough core developers to work on the distrbution itself. That's not the same as saying the derivatives aren't wanted or are part of the problem. It means there are a lot willing to do personal hobby distro respins, but few available to get more involved. I believe there are a number of factors as to why this is the case - in no shape or form are you, or those involved in similar endeavours, to blame.

The idealogues have done far more damage here over the years than the distro respin hobbyists. Whilst the distribution is perceived to attract and accomodate such people, it will struggle to find new maintainers and developers willing to participate. Most people will work on a software project if they believe there is technical merit in doing so Not because they like the politics, or hate MSor Red Hat, or believe there is corporate conspiracy to destroy Linux using systemd.

These forums, official or not, are a big part of the "visibility" of the Devuan project and while conspiracy theorists and e.g. right wing nuts are tolerated here, it will be assumed  that the project itself endorses those people and their views. Like it or not, that's the world we live in.

One thing the project should make very clear is that it will not invest time and effort removing systemd files from "upstream" packages - and this needs to be a bold statement. Giving in to those who want a "sterilised" system for ideological reasons, rather than technical ones is a doomed philosophy. If certain users can't understand why harmless unit files will not suddenly come to life and install Lennart Poettering in your distribution, then that's not something the project should cater for.

One earlier poster in this thread posted a very apt "guest bedroom" analogy, when it comes to systemd related cruft.  They were of course drowned out by the noise of a certain kind of poster.

As with any distro forums, we see these posts from people who know next to nothing about how a Linux distribution is developed and maintained - or indeed about free software in general. To them Devuan is an "anti" activist movement and this site, a platform like any other.

The "systemd cleansers" are also the same kind of individual who angst over non-free firmware and despite every explanation, still want it removed if ony for some "feel good".

It all amounts to: "I don't undedrstand this, so it must be something nefarious".

If I were to do a grep of the FreeBSD ports tree for "systemd", I'm sure there would a fair few hits.  No FreeBSD user that I know of cares and let's see if you can guess why.