HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

mmaglis · 2020-02-05 13:21:20

I just came across this announcement from the Hyperbola project to re-base itself on BSD.

https://www.hyperbola.info/news/announc … d-roadmap/

citing the following reasons:

Linux kernel forcing adaption of DRM, including HDCP.
Linux kernel proposed usage of Rust (which contains freedom flaws and a centralized code repository that is more prone to cyber attack and generally requires internet access to use.)
Linux kernel being written without security and in mind. (KSPP is basically a dead project and Grsec is no longer free software)
Many GNU userspace and core utils are all forcing adaption of features without build time options to disable them. E.g. (PulseAudio / SystemD / Rust / Java as forced dependencies)

To what extend does Devuan project or members of this forum share the same views on these topics?
Would re-basing Devuan on BSD derived kernel a viable or indeed a desirable move?

Last edited by mmaglis (2020-02-07 19:38:58)

bgstack15 · 2020-02-05 14:08:01

I am not an expert, nor do I have any say in what Devuan does as a community. As I understand it, Devuan exists as a systemd-free fork of Debian. Debian uses the Linux kernel (primarily), so that's what Devuan will use.

The idea of using Rust in the kernel sounds really scary to me, if only because of the fast-moving nature of that project/language. I compile Waterfox (based on Mozilla Firefox) on a regular basis, and half the time, the project fails to compile because it has not been updated yet for the latest version of rust, or it has been updated and my distros (not just Devuan) are not yet up-to-date on Rust packages.

I think the switch of Hyperbola to a BSD base is amusing, because Project Trident is switching to the Linux kernel (Void Linux distro) from FreeBSD (TrueOS). But I'm glad all these projects feel that the switch is feasible.

HevyDevy · 2020-02-05 14:41:15

I think we are in for a long wait to see if hyperbola can pull this off, their road map to completion is a long way off yet and a lot can happen in the time frame they have set themselves.

As long as devuan is a fork of debian, re-basing Devuan on BSD derived kernel is not going to happen unless there are some folk out there who are able to do this. I dont speak for the devuan team i just see this question as too complex to undertake given the roadmap devuan is on.

mmaglis · 2020-02-06 09:04:00

I guess such a re-base would have to track a Debian GNU/kFreeBSD distribution.
But that is not even officially supported (dead?) from Debian.

Nevertheless, what is the view on the reasons cited for HyperbolaBSD?
What other ways could be taken to address them if not a "drastic" fork of a BSD distribution?
I feel some of the reasons are important to the Devuan community as well and I would like to know your views or of any existing discussions on these topics.

Camtaf · 2020-02-06 10:59:59

I think, if they were to consider a BSD, NetBSD would be a better choice, as I think they would be happy to work with the team to achieve their objectives. Devuan is now 'established', so I don't see it happening any time soon.

HevyDevy · 2020-02-06 13:37:13

I believe re-basing Devuan on any bsd, whether it be netbsd or openbsd etc would be missing the point of Devuan entirely? Why would the developers waste so much of there time and effort getting devuan where it is now only to fork off into bsd territory? Makes no sense if you ask me. If you want to use a bsd, use netbsd, openbsd etc etc.

yeti · 2020-02-06 22:33:50

HevyDevy wrote:

I believe re-basing Devuan on any bsd, whether it be netbsd or openbsd etc would be missing the point of Devuan entirely?

Nope!

In your words: Debian is missing the point of Debian!

Debian aimed at being the Universal Operating System providing a similar userland on different architectures and even kernels. Debian/Hurd and Debian/kFreeBSD seem to be the last remembered survivors of this goal now barely living in some intensive care units somewhere in a hidden ivory tower.

So porting a De??an sibling to e.g. the NetBSD kernel, just would revive the old dreams.

—▷ https://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/index
—▷ https://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/alpha

HevyDevy · 2020-02-07 09:28:51

yeti wrote:

HevyDevy wrote:
I believe re-basing Devuan on any bsd, whether it be netbsd or openbsd etc would be missing the point of Devuan entirely?
Nope!
In your words: Debian is missing the point of Debian!
Debian aimed at being the Universal Operating System providing a similar userland on different architectures and even kernels. Debian/Hurd and Debian/kFreeBSD seem to be the last remembered survivors of this goal now barely living in some intensive care units somewhere in a hidden ivory tower.
So porting a De??an sibling to e.g. the NetBSD kernel, just would revive the old dreams.
—▷ https://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/index
—▷ https://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/alpha

Ok fair enough i see what you mean, maybe what I should say is it might not make much sense in the way hyperbola is switching over to openbsd as the base and to do something similar with debian and devuan (just focusing on rebasing devuan on a certain bsd and dropping support for linux). As i understand it, hyperbola will phase out linux in the future, not something debian or devuan would be doing being a universal operating system. Besides those links show they have abandoned all such efforts in porting bsd's so the point is rather moot. Hypothetically, if a team of talented devs were to undertake such an endeavor then this might not be a moot point.

Last edited by HevyDevy (2020-02-07 09:30:31)

chillfan · 2020-02-14 02:06:56

IMHO..

I think they have a point there but I don't think there's room for BSD kernels to be on our list of goals right now.

I think having a libre port of a BSD distro is a good idea in itself because it would create a new libre OS, and I hope it works out for them.

About the the BSDs in general.. in FreeBSD binary builds often have dbus and pulse by default. BSD is another option, but not a real escape route.

It's better for us to just keep releasing Devuan as we have been.

Last edited by chillfan (2020-02-14 02:08:06)

mmaglis · 2020-02-15 21:25:06

chillfan wrote:

It's better for us to just keep releasing Devuan as we have been.

By sharing the information on HyperbolaBSD I wanted mostly to provoke some discussion on the reasons cited by Hyperbola project for their decision; more than the use of a BSD kernel as a viable alternative for Devuan.

Re-reading them (and the thread) after some days, made me realise that the problems that Hyperbola, and many in Devuan, are facing, are not just related to specific misbehaving software packages. It looks to me it is a general trend in the free software world: forcing adaptation of software or features without any option to alternatives or the ability to disable them.

IMHO, this is not something a distribution can solve alone downstream. One would need to not only deactivate some features, but re-engineer/fork an increasing number of problems in an increasing number of projects to continue to support choice and alternatives.

This is a cultural trend permeating a lot of projects and is changing the world of free software as we knew it. It is the effect of commercial interests and the influence they excercise on so many vital projects for their commercial needs and targets. That is not necessarily a problem by itself. Deliberately excluding others and choice or simiply ignoring the wider community of individual volunteers and users or even smaller commercial contributors is a problem. They are often degrated to just unpaid contributors from being the valued users/customers or members of the volunteer based free software projects.

But I believe not all is lost; far from it. We, the free software users and volunteers, produce the work and can pressure all these upstream projects to change. We must also initiate and contribute to forks and alternative projects when this proves to be the easier or necessary path.

Camtaf · 2020-02-16 10:47:36

Hmm, I think what you are meaning is the reliance of certain software in other software, such as a reliance on pulseaudio, or parts of the systemd infrastructure, that being the case, I'm with you all the way. Freedom is being eroded by the 'back door'.

Someone will have to rewrite the source code to not include the 'evils' that most(?) people don't want, then compile & package it for the end user.

pcalvert · 2020-02-16 13:06:11

HevyDevy wrote:

yeti wrote:
So porting a De??an sibling to e.g. the NetBSD kernel, just would revive the old dreams.
—▷ https://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/index
—▷ https://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/alpha
Besides those links show they have abandoned all such efforts in porting bsd's so the point is rather moot. Hypothetically, if a team of talented devs were to undertake such an endeavor then this might not be a moot point.

This one is not dead yet:
https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/

Check the mailing list archive and you'll see that the mailing list is still active.

Phil

mmaglis · 2020-02-16 18:59:01

mmaglis wrote:

forcing adaptation of software or features without any option to alternatives or the ability to disable them.

By this I do mean hard-coded dependencies in software, but it goes beyond this. Pushing for agendas and platforms, setting default core system software that re-define what GNU+Linux is, without considering interoperability to others. Their interest is to dominate the Linux world with their platforms, tools and architecture.

mmaglis wrote:

It is the effect of commercial interests and the influence they excercise on so many vital projects for their commercial needs and targets.

I believe this article from Forbes expresses it in more detail: The Impact Of The Tech Giants On Open Source

HevyDevy · 2020-02-17 09:52:12

pcalvert wrote:

HevyDevy wrote:
yeti wrote:
So porting a De??an sibling to e.g. the NetBSD kernel, just would revive the old dreams.
—▷ https://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/index
—▷ https://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/alpha
Besides those links show they have abandoned all such efforts in porting bsd's so the point is rather moot. Hypothetically, if a team of talented devs were to undertake such an endeavor then this might not be a moot point.
This one is not dead yet:
https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/
Check the mailing list archive and you'll see that the mailing list is still active.
Phil

Someone needs to clean up the dubious spam posts on those lists.

Last edited by HevyDevy (2020-02-17 09:54:21)

Kelsoo · 2020-02-19 12:39:22

mmaglis wrote:

mmaglis wrote:
forcing adaptation of software or features without any option to alternatives or the ability to disable them.
By this I do mean hard-coded dependencies in software, but it goes beyond this. Pushing for agendas and platforms, setting default core system software that re-define what GNU+Linux is, without considering interoperability to others. Their interest is to dominate the Linux world with their platforms, tools and architecture.
mmaglis wrote:
It is the effect of commercial interests and the influence they excercise on so many vital projects for their commercial needs and targets.
I believe this article from Forbes expresses it in more detail: The Impact Of The Tech Giants On Open Source

The power of the multinationals is the reason we have systemd and it's ilk. Debian would back in the day have supported multi inits as a matter of course. To support user choice. Now they can't compete against the corps. RedHat simply can gain the system by chucking more devs at it. It may be a free-software package but volunteers simply can't keep up with the work required to maintain user choice. I believe in 10 years time assimilation in all but name will be complete. (This is the main reason I don't run Devuan as my main system.) There needs to be somewhere for distros to go when this happens.

We also see a rise in anti copyleft from the big corps. Show me a big 7 that uses copyleft by default where they have a choice. This is about the same thing. Control and power. The only time I see big corps using copyleft is where they don't want other big corps to not share the code!

I think Hyperbola recognise this and simply don't try and kill them selves chasing rainbows. They just drop non-free packages and packages that try and obfuscate no matter what they are and try and work on the things they can do. They choose their rainbows carefully like the firefox, where they maintain the iceweasel-uxp packages. It's easier to maintain that than try to keep fixing each new "feature" firefox either inserts or removes. That said I think their plan to fork OpenBSD is very ambitious and I'm not sure it can be realised. I hope they succeed but have my doubts.

mmaglis · 2020-02-19 15:29:40

Kelsoo wrote:

I believe in 10 years time assimilation in all but name will be complete. (This is the main reason I don't run Devuan as my main system.) There needs to be somewhere for distros to go when this happens.

I am not sure I fully understand your argument here.
Do you mean you do not run Devuan because it will be assimilated in 10 years?
Do you mean Devuan is too close to the "evil" or too small to undo the "evil"?
Where do you see distros going to when this happens?

Kelsoo · 2020-02-19 18:49:48

mmaglis wrote:

Kelsoo wrote:
I believe in 10 years time assimilation in all but name will be complete. (This is the main reason I don't run Devuan as my main system.) There needs to be somewhere for distros to go when this happens.
I am not sure I fully understand your argument here.
Do you mean you do not run Devuan because it will be assimilated in 10 years?
Do you mean Devuan is too close to the "evil" or too small to undo the "evil"?
Where do you see distros going to when this happens?

I mean I think Debian will be assimilated and therefore most other distros will be not much more than a RedHat clone in 10 years time. That will make Devuans work even harder, or as you put it "too small to undo the "evil" I'm not saying I think Debian is evil. Quite the contrary I really care about it. I'm saying it's being forcibly shaped by outside forces and that have their own interests at heart.

I use a couple Devuan Derivatives. I have installs of Exe GNU/Linux and Gnuinos and use Refracta live CD's. I really hope they can keep going but would rather put my meagre efforts into something not dependent on Debian in-case my fears come true.

Of the "Big" distros only Gentoo seem to offer any sanity. Heck they even support systemd while trying to remain non-dependent on it, which in my view is what Debian should be doing. Fingers crossed Devuan can ultimately merge back in to Debian and restore some sanity.

Guix may offer some refuge. Seems to be getting very popular and like Gentoo as a source distro offers options.

Slackware can't cope with Gnome and I can see them struggling with KDE.

I'm taking the belts n braces approach I'm going small. I still use Dragora 2.2 (way to old) and Hyperbola mostly while I wait for Dragora 3 to actually get out of beta. It will have TDE to try and remove it's self from the ever increasing growth of corporate upstream power, and fetches and builds packages from source or prebuilt by the community like Arch Linux AUR. There are no community repos yet qire the package to fetch packages was only built this morning!

Dragora 3 has the init scheme divided into 2 parts to make it more reliable.
1 Process number 1 (sysvinit) is limited to manage the stages for boot and shutting down the system, but nothing more.
2 Supervisor service (Perp) The control of services is done using Perp only. This way if the service supervisor dies the system should still run.
http://b0llix.net/perp/

Anyway fingers crossed Debian and Devuan find some common ground

yeti · 2020-02-19 19:30:10

1. Hitchhiker 3: wrote:

(41) ''I thought,'' he said, ''that if the world was going to end we were meant to lie down or put a paper bag over our head or something.''
(42) ''If you like, yes,'' said Ford.
(43) ''That's what they told us in the army,'' said the man, and his eyes began the long trek back down to his whisky.
(44) ''Will that help?'' asked the barman.
(45) ''No,'' said Ford and gave him a friendly smile. ''Excuse me,'' he said, ''I've got to go.'' With a wave, he left.

I think it's too early for last orders. Instead we just should continue to use Devuan.

Kelsoo · 2020-02-20 02:56:07

Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul, Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

HevyDevy · 2020-02-20 05:15:39

Kelsoo wrote:

Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul, Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

Preciousssss

Job · 2020-03-04 22:43:28

I have a lot of respect for FreeBSD specially. I have it installed on a second box. If I could do all I do with Devuan on FreeBSD I will probably have the later on my main box.

Not because I am using Devuan but, this is the best distro/OS out there right now.

FreeBSD has a great sound package in OSS but it's giving me a torrid time while pulseaudio is very playable. Yes, I know I can install pulseaudio on FreeBSD but why if OSS is there.

bimon · 2020-05-09 02:25:19

What do you think about following OpenBSD criticism?

https://web.archive.org/web/20200509022 … enbsd.html

Nili · 2020-05-09 06:04:18

bimon wrote:

What do you think about following OpenBSD criticism?
https://web.archive.org/web/20200509022 … enbsd.html

There is none 100% safety system as the life we live is not 100% guaranteed by countless factors.
In my opinion, Linux critics are even worse than those of Windows, especially on some prestigious tech-forums that are quite weird.

Meanwhile, Linux list it is even longer, consumers still use it.

The question wasn't addressed to me, but I am also giving my 2 cents.

As a BSD newbie , i really don't care that much anymore. I do as much i can to do my duties without being paranoid at all.
There are holes everywhere, from hardware to software. One issue will be closed another one will come out.

Use what makes you feel better and don't live for the other's eye or criticism. Criticize yourself if you want to or ignore by using something else.

yeti · 2020-05-09 06:09:51

Nili wrote:

There are holes everywhere, from hardware to software. One issue will be closed another one will come out.

We totally are in the complexity trap and should rethink what we really need.
You want everything?
Then you get every bug too!
It is that simple.

Nili · 2020-05-09 06:16:32

yeti, Absolutely correct in two words.

The officially official Devuan Forum!

#1 2020-02-05 13:21:20

HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#2 2020-02-05 14:08:01

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#3 2020-02-05 14:41:15

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#4 2020-02-06 09:04:00

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#5 2020-02-06 10:59:59

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#6 2020-02-06 13:37:13

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#7 2020-02-06 22:33:50

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#8 2020-02-07 09:28:51

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#9 2020-02-14 02:06:56

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#10 2020-02-15 21:25:06

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#11 2020-02-16 10:47:36

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#12 2020-02-16 13:06:11

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#13 2020-02-16 18:59:01

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#14 2020-02-17 09:52:12

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#15 2020-02-19 12:39:22

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#16 2020-02-19 15:29:40

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#17 2020-02-19 18:49:48

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#18 2020-02-19 19:30:10

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#19 2020-02-20 02:56:07

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#20 2020-02-20 05:15:39

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#21 2020-03-04 22:43:28

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#22 2020-05-09 02:25:19

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#23 2020-05-09 06:04:18

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#24 2020-05-09 06:09:51

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

#25 2020-05-09 06:16:32

Re: HyperbolaBSD Roadmap relevance to Devuan

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