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Llewellen

Member

From: Vancouver Island, Canada

Registered: 2018-06-07

Posts: 15  

Why Devuan?

I am an amateur Linux hobbyist currently running Debian-testing (Buster) with Enlightenment 22 DE.  I recently came across Devuan and, for philosophical reasons, find it very interesting. However, I seem to be missing the point, at least partially.

On the Devuan homepage, the main raison d'etre given for its fork from Debian is to avoid systemd and its complexities and entanglements.  Yet sysvinit, openrc and runit are available in the Debian respositories, both stable and testing. There must be more reasons that made the fork seem necessary that I don't understand.

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It is not that I am mad; it's only that my head is different from yours - Diogenes of Sinope

golinux

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 3,324  

Re: Why Devuan?

There is no reason to assume that in Debian sysvinit, openrc and runit will continue to be available or that every application won't require systemd to work.

Open letter to the Linux world

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devuser

Member

Registered: 2018-04-30

Posts: 176  

Re: Why Devuan?

Open letter to the Linux world

Wow! Great read. Don't think this can be expressed much better.

Llewellen

Member

From: Vancouver Island, Canada

Registered: 2018-06-07

Posts: 15  

Re: Why Devuan?

There is no reason to assume that in Debian sysvinit, openrc and runit will continue to be available or that every application won't require systemd to work.

Open letter to the Linux world

Thank you.  That is a very powerful statement!  As I said in my OP, I agree with the basic philosophy of avoiding systemd but I had not thought through the question as thoroughly as has Christopher and I had not considered fully that the current apparent choice of init systems in Debian may be obviated if/when more and more apps are written to be dependent on and require systemd.  Indeed, the Trojan horse that he identifies.

I will be installing Devuan ASCII on one of my laptops for a tryout.

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It is not that I am mad; it's only that my head is different from yours - Diogenes of Sinope

rolfie

Member

Registered: 2017-11-25

Posts: 1,174  

Re: Why Devuan?

Well, the one reason for me to switch to Devuan is that I can use the same setup for decrypting luks devices as it was possible until Wheezy. I understand it, I can setup a script for each device individually, no issues. In terms of speed I do not see any advantage in systemd.

Regards, rolfie