Debian User Forums

Posted: **2014-09-13 18:58**

keithpeter wrote:Debian was the last major distro to switch to systemd and is the only one that is preserving alternatives to my knowledge.

Gentoo! (or maybe you're not considering it "major"?)

If down the road I find systemd becoming required (or too difficult to avoid) on my Debian, I'll switch to Gentoo or one of the BSDs...

Posted: **2014-09-13 20:04**

goulo wrote:
keithpeter wrote:Debian was the last major distro to switch to systemd and is the only one that is preserving alternatives to my knowledge.
Gentoo! (or maybe you're not considering it "major"?)

Apologies! I should have said 'high volume' rather than 'major', just number of users no implied comment on 'quality'

I mean't the likes of RHEL/Fedora and the clones, SLES/openSUSE, Debian/Ubuntu/downstream distros.

A new twist on the Old School Desktop: installing cups with --no-install-recommends brings a systemd library called libsystemd-daemon0 which itself seems to have no dependencies on anything other than libc. Adding xpdf and the splix drivers gives me printing functionality and the poppler tools (pdfunite &c) which I use a lot.

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/libsystemd-daemon0

Back to edbarx's points about modularity. Why is this package a direct dependency of CUPS and not a dependency of one of the core systemd libraries if it is needed when using a systemd based init? I'll try and track that one through...

Posted: **2014-09-15 01:04**

Since the previous speakers talked a little of not-such-volume but the-most-diversity Gentoo GNU/Linux distribution, let me make good on a previous promise of mine.

timbgo wrote:Allow me to tell you that on Gentoo, quite a number of people decided to go without those multiseat.
Uninstalling dbus and *kits (to Unfacilitate Remote Seats)
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-9 ... ight-.html
But we have a few developers there that openly care for the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to the United States (such legislature is generally in all democratic countries' constitutions; for the less initiated in legalese, it's your right to privacy, secrecy, in your communications). Aarghh, this calls for a quote, and I can only promise I will try to be back to insert it here... wait...
Nope, haven't found the talk, but it's blueness, a Council Member https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Blueness

( typoes corrected, quoted text cleaned a little )
And, since we have other academics around (keithpeter:

http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/
Keith Burnett
Teaching maths post-16 in Birmingham UK.

), let me tell you more about this guy (I couldn't talk like that of a Professor, or to a Professor back when I studied at the University of Zagreb in the late 1970s, and I like this change); oh dear, do I like Latin!:

Anthony G. Basile, Curriculum Vitae
http://opensource.dyc.edu/basile-cv

Here's Anthony defending privacy:

http://blogs.gentoo.org/blueness/2014/0 ... y-or-exit/

And next link is where you can best understand what eudev is.

In particular take notice of the discussion btwn ssuominen, the main implementer in Gentoo of udev (integrated with systemd, can't be separated from it, works only when systemd is in the system), and blueness, one of my heroes in the FOSS, the main developer of eudev, the free-from-systemd fork of udev, that just you-don't-ever-notice-it works.

eudev vs udev - current user perspectives
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-9 ... rt-25.html

I have been working on liberation-from-systemd-and-associates issues since I posted here last.

But I haven't yet started writing the planned report how I managed to get my box poetteringware-free and somewhat functional, because I went and read all on the other topic that edbarx started.

And do you think I didn't end up reading all that has been discussed anew on the systemd issue on debian-devel list?

I did, but only after having read other great blogs and webpages on the matter, and viewed a few very, very important videos (of course, I viewed them on a clone machine of my somewhat successful no-poetteringware Debian master machine), videos which are very much, although indirectly, on the subject (but from a broader view, from the big picture prospective).

What I will be able to share with you on the latter matters just above, just given a foretaste in this post you are now reading, is hard to tell. I've been reading, watching, thinking, weighing people's POVs, presentations, decisions (sic!) on this Debian-break-or-not, Debian-defeat-or-some-hope-left poetteringware-imposed-or-not issue for all this a day and more hours, and it's all so profoundly in my mind, but very unsorted...

Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia
http://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr

Posted: **2014-09-15 06:53**

GNU freedom software users and developers are a very mixed crowd.

Looking back, to me, if love of knowledge is anything to be admitted among the most noble of virtues a man can possess, I am glad to remember how my first encounter with Grsecurity/Pax twin pack of programs back some three years ago, was love at first sight, just like the hatred of the NSA's SELinux, sadly holding onto the majority of GNU/Linux installations of today, was a guts feeling right from the very first encounter.

I can not tell how happy I am that my Tips page:

Grsecurity/Pax installation on Debian GNU/Linux
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=108616

has had more views in the few recent days than previously in months...

I can not tell for certain, there is more to a man's life than his own knowledge of himself, more to his words than his own mind, but I have a similarly good feelings and hopes, or gut aversion and hatred, about other programs of the realm of GNU/Linux, and at this point BSD family and other *nix have to be taken into considerations.

I have just started this my new post in this "How to avoid Stealth Installation of systemd" topic in Debian Forums talking of programs good and evil, almost morally so; but sure it' the developers that are such: it's the author's honesty or lack thereof which is reflected in his programs, just as it is the artist which is (spiritually) seen in his picture or heard in his music.

I started on morality, and lack of, in the truly honest and moral GNU ground, where things can grow; they really can't, no, in proprietary swamps and deserts; those are aberration, abomination under nice looks and guises. Only GNU/BSD/other-free-licenses, they are the sole ground for growth of meaningful human works, and the sole ground of defence in the global Orwellian society, post-Snowden time, which is ticking on us.

And I started on morality because I see the following articles as honest and moral, as truthful, the following articles which were written by someone whom my hero Professor from the previous post of mine in this topic recognized as true developer and chose his work for his newest flavor in Gentoo, this one:

Project:Hardened musl
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Hardened_musl

I am talking about articles by Rich Felker, developer whose integrity reflects in his work:

http://www.musl-libc.org/

These are the articles:

Broken by design: systemd
http://ewontfix.com/14/

Systemd has 6 service startup notification types, and they're all wrong
http://ewontfix.com/15/

I have nothing to add there, since these people are a few classes away in FOSS than me. I am a poor user fighting for his chances to securely use my conputers, poor user forced into never-ending research and finding his own technical solutions, else would have been owned.

But I did learn a lot in my quest, and I can tell other users (and I always have newbies at heart) a piece of advice here and another one there, thankfully.

On the above Rich Felker's perfect diagnose on the sick systemd program, my advice even to newbies very fresh, is: give it a read, take the little that you currently can out of it, and come back once you have grown bigger in GNU/FLOSS, that next time you read the pages of true knowledge like those, more insight descends into your spirit.

Let's now talk more of morality and immorality, of honesty and truth in the GNU/FLOSS works and societies.

Can I go straight to what even the great honest spy (being a spy doesn't have to mean being dishonest; there are moral people in every walk of life), what even the great honest spy Edward Snowden didn't know about:

http://video.fosdem.org/2014/Janson/Sun ... eport.webm

And I want to use the opportunity that Debian provides in its Social Contract:

https://www.debian.org/social_contract

3. We will not hide problems
We will keep our entire bug report database open for public view at
all times. Reports that people file online will promptly become
visible to others.

and hope that I won't be accused of copyright breach (

Really? The Surveillance Engine Terminated All My Videos
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=113059

) for taking literally down the sermon by Poul-Heening Kamp, as I will listen to that video, link further above, entitled "NSA operation ORCHESTRA Annual Status Report" on my no-poetteringware Debian box. A note. PHK is in his speech impersonating, as if representing, the NSA, "us", "we", means them in the transcription below:

Poul-Heening Kamp wrote: ...So, this is our poster boy: the Debian random number generator.

This is really beautifully executed.

This is due to {ascend in a path} [a guess, is unintelligle], you know, this gets Valgrind to complain, and I can't see it does anything sensible. You should just remove it.

And they did.

So for two years all the Debians had lousy random numbers which made bruteforcing SSL and stuff, like that...: done.

You earned a pretty good bonus.

OpenSSL is the crown jewel.

OpenSSL is the standard library if you want crypto.

Getting SSL to work against all browsers and all that stuff without using OpenSSL is very very tricky.

Reading the OpenSSL manuals or source code, is not tricky, that's close to impossible.

And that's 300,000 lines of code, so good luck with that!

The documentation is deficient and misleading, and the defaults are deceptive. They don't do what you think they do.

This saves so much money in the collection, you have no idea.

So the overall status of the Operation Orchestra. It's a resounding success.

We spend less than a third of a percent of the NSA budget.

And it'd probably cost the collection cost by something like 50 %.

It's kept most of the Internet in plaitext, and it has never been exposed (in the press).

Edward Snowden has no papers on Orchestra at all.

...[snip]...

Pls., gentle reader, go ahead, and have a listen (the link is further above now). You will understand that all the FLOSS (the GNU/Linux, the BSD as well!, other *nix distros as well!) are pretty infiltrated.

But not taken over. Not yet! I dare hope, am almost confident they never will be.

So the page where I got the link to the 2014 FOSDEM (Free and open source software developers' European meeting) conference, the page below, has a flawed title, but what can you? You live with your mistakes as well as with your successes:

Julian Assange: Debian Is Owned By The NSA
https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04 ... y-the-nsa/

(pls. also notice further in the page that Wikileaks was officially denying, and previously to reaching that point in the page I listened to Julian's in the World Hosting Days 2014, specifically for that line and couldn't really hear such explicit statement at all)

That page however is so plausible about the reasons our GNU/Linux generally being owned by some particular entity.. Of which further below.

First let me transcribe what Julian said by video link from his exile in Equadorian Embassy in London.

The video was posted on Youtbe channel: "Даниил Иваньков" (which is Cyrillic azbyka, in Latin alphabet: Danyil Ivañkov, approximately)

Julian Assange wrote: That's one of the amazing things about encryption, that somehow the Universe has permitted the type of mathematics, the type of physics which permits the resistance against unlimited coercive force: it doesn't matter how many soldiers, how many guns, how many nuclear weapons you have, if your encryption system is right, it can pass through the United States, it can effectively create a channel through a hostile country the way you can send, political... economic and political information, bringing two greater societies together, in this case Latin America and Europe.

...[snip]...

BBC Click Online presenter wrote: Now, one of the big topics here is open source and I'm wondering whether the fact that you have an open system that everyone knows how it works would make encryption more secure than a closed system.

Julian Assange wrote: Oh, we know from experience that it does seem to be the case, that there's a vast number of closed source snake oil encryption systems being spread around.

Now we know that Open Source is not entirely a solution, e.g. there was an encryption bug in the Debian's version of the SSH in the Random Number Generator which existed for years, and that was all open source.

Now it was eventually found and revealed, and it was found and revealed also because it was open source.

But the way things are done now is through backdoors. So these are backdoors designed to look like bugs.

And, you know, what is the security of the programmers who are involved in some of these open sources. Can you, when they do, I say, update their code, can you plant what looks like a bug, even a typo, that carries through?

Or, say, look at a... a system like Debian, these units, the various kinds of unit systems, look at all the packages they include. look at the upstream libraries, dependencies upon dependencies upon dependencies, and all you need to do is compromise one of those dependencies and there's a flow through and {these are getting back} [a guess, is unintelligle].

Modern systems are assembleges of incredible intellectual content which is being developed all over the world over the past ten years by many different players.

But there's an age now [a guess, is unintelligle] in CPUs, there's few, you know maybe three different securities layers in these systems.

But when you pull together thousands of packages altogether, it's pretty hard to actually resist the security compromises that are engineered by nation states.

It doesn't mean it's not worth trying, increasing the cost of owning the world.

...[snip]...

And I'd like to write more.

Don't worry, I have all the logs (taken with "... 2>&1 | tee ...", as explained previosly, and stowed away, and enough of history lines, to most likely reconstruct pretty much exactly how I succeeded in getting my no-poetteringware Debian to work).

But I might possibly first want to finish on these points about infiltration of "friends of NSA" into FOSS and also first give my review on the recent discussions on systemd on debian-devel, similarly to the first report of mine with which I started this topic. If I make all of that. It's really complex. All of it one and the same big picture, and that is what makes it all so much more harder to grasp and even harder yet to explain.

I might first need some rest. Of, if I can, normal duration. Or else go almost sleeplessly on after very short break. Don't know yet.

Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia
http://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr

Posted: **2014-09-16 12:51**

PART 1

of my insight into debian-devel mail-list "Stealth Installation of systemd?" thread in September 2014, only under various retitles

this is (if I'm not Offtopic'd or banned from the forums, not that there's any reason for it, but I have been banned for too little or false reasons).

PART 2/and more? yet to be written.

Also, take heed of what I'll tell you now: I can access mostly anywhere on the internet now, except for I can't access the links below, such as:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00087.html
and any starting with that string:
lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/09/msg
of course with the http and :// in front,
(and that state has been lasting for more than an hour on every connection).

which I anyway have all of them in Iceweasel cache, so I *can* write this post and hopefully the followup.

Just telling. Pls. do tell if the links don't point to the text reported.

################################################################################################
If anyone thinks that this:

How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014 ... ipulation/
by Glenn Greenwald

has nothing to do with these dictatorial changes in Debian Schlinux
( why schlinux? see here:
The future with Systemd
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 05#p553351
)

than they are either autodeceiving or deliberately not telling the truth.

For the latter, and to minor extent for the former, there is one word in plain English. If I had to say it to myself about myself, like those should, I'd be ashamed. So I'm being considerate.

Have a look at this derising attitude:

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00087.html

Rens Houben wrote: In other news for Wed, Sep 03, 2014 at 11:11:30AM +0200, Svante Signell has been seen typing:

Svante Signell wrote: Some food for thought about systemd:
... I thought we'd all agreed to stop bringing up tired arguments that
nobody but the "systemd MUST DIE" crowd really wants to hear anymore.

Svante Signell wrote: You might have seen this http://ewontfix.com/14
but have you seen this http://ewontfix.com/15
or this http://boycottsystemd.org/
"Open source Tea Party". That explains *so* much...

What does that explain, dear developer-and-systemd-impositioner on Debian users? Your sorrow for the United States not being under British Crown?

We could talk like that...

Rens Houben wrote:
Svante Signell wrote: Having a systemd-free option for Debian Jessie is becoming more and more
important. Otherwise (Debian) users might do as recommended in the third
link: Boycott distros that use systemd.
"If we keep systemd, people who want to boycott systemd will boycott
us." Seriously, can we stop with the circular arguments as well?

Yes, seriously, we will! Lots of users will *not* remain with systemd-only-Debian!
The circle will have an exit, and for many, dear developer-and-systemd-impositioner on Debian users.

Your only chances are hiding what is happening. But that is to greater users' outrage later! Everything comes out, eventually. Snowden, Assange, IgnorantGuru, are some of many. I hope we will know more on who and how has ruined g-NSA's Schlinux and Debian in particular.

And also read this:

Rens Houben wrote: On Mittwoch, 3. September 2014, Svante Signell wrote:
Svante Signell wrote: Some food for thought about systemd:
You might have seen this http://ewontfix.com/14
but have you seen this http://ewontfix.com/15
or this http://boycottsystemd.org/

Having a systemd-free option for Debian Jessie is becoming more and more
important. Otherwise (Debian) users might do as recommended in the third
link: Boycott distros that use systemd.
debian-devel@ is for the development of the Debian distribution, not for
ranting. Please take your rants elsewhere. It's tiring and a waste of your and
many other peoples time. But it wont change things. Code changes things in
Debian.

What ranting? You call this concerned call for reason ranting? Unbelievable.
So many users, it's true: only those that can phathom it despite of the corporate propaganda, wish for systemd-free Debian Jessie!

Despite the corporate, with all of their tentacles in Debian, propaganda, which turns around many and makes them dazed and confused as to what they even could remember and know because they learned it in previous experience, and which keeps so many plain ignorant on what is being planned with, really, their computers, but so many users' wish for systemd-free Debian Jessie, and there's a DD who cares, and you call his forsight of the certain outcome in case of sytemd-imposition, you call his few open words of care and caution ranting?

Look up the followups to that mail (not reporting those here). Rens Houben obtained even Swante's apology for having brought those links to DDs pseudo-corporate attention (because it's corporate in the shadows, Schmoogle/Red Hat/NSA, really looks like)! No, Swante, you had nothing to apologize for, and you should not have apologized.

And there was this explanation of, cough cough, Debian happy democracy happenings by Marco d'Itri.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00095.html

Marco d'Itri wrote: On Sep 03, Svante Signell wrote:
Svante Signell wrote: Having a systemd-free option for Debian Jessie is becoming more and more
important. Otherwise (Debian) users might do as recommended in the third
link: Boycott distros that use systemd.
And I strongly encourage them to do this: we aim to be universal but we
cannot reasonably fit everybody's needs.

And there Marco gives us the graph telling about (yes: as far as that complete post, eplanations afterwards come after) the democratic likes of Debian crowds:

https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php? ... beenhere=1

Oh, you can't care for everybody's needs. You'll take all the fewer that witlessly or for their windoze mentality go for the systemd (my guess: less than say one in ten), and all the uninformed, the huge chunk of the Debian population now in systemd who are uninformed, and those are now in systemd because it was imposed on them, or soone is to be imposed, without them ever having given a choice, and which are probably around nine out of ten, and you keep disparaging, pushing aside, ignoring the mostly advanced and informed who are, my guess, maybe one in ten among the Debian users. (The ratios are very approximate guesses that I gave in this paragraph.)

And of all the mix, you couldn't care for whoever don't want systemd. It's systemd-or-die attitude.

Because I don't think there is any plausible denying that the thinking in among the Debian huge crowd are in their great majority against systemd, and there are also many who plain and open don't want to even stay with Debian if there is only systemd-Debian to be

And you can't accomodate for them?

How nice and clean of you! A great DD this one! Red Hat's and Schmoogle's will sure like this one!

Luckily, a DD whom I admire for his defence of FOSS and defence of Debian Social Contract, and a member of the Debian Technical Committee who voted against systemd as default in Debian, along with Ian Jackson, replied what was due to our dear Marco.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00105.html

Steve Langasek wrote:
Marco d'Itri wrote: And I strongly encourage them to do this: we aim to be universal but we
cannot reasonably fit everybody's needs.

< link given above, not duplicated here >
Please stop using graphs showing how various teams have forced systemd onto
users' systems as if it is somehow a democratic endorsement of the outcome.
Code: Select all
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu dot com                       vorlon at debian dot org

If I have any hope left in the FOSS, it's people like Steve. And Cameron below.

Because there followed a great explanation, so pls. you people who are reading this, along with administrators who are assessing whether to maybe even throw me offtopic or ban my post, as you have done in the past, consider that I do not blame DDs as the community, just there is something wrong, probably corruption of some kind, some breaking of Debian Social Contract and Debian Free Software Guidelines, in the Debian hierarchy and in among the decision making high ranking Debianers...

And there followed a great explanation by Cameron Norman:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00109.html

Cameron Norman wrote: El mié, 3 de sep 2014 a las 4:07 , Marco d'Itri escribió:
Marco d'Itri wrote: On Sep 03, Steve Langasek wrote:
Steve Langasek wrote: >
https://qa.debian.org/popcon-graph.php? ... beenhere=1
< link repeated for clarity, although already given further above, and it is by Marco, but quoting allowed only 3 deep >

Please stop using graphs showing how various teams have forced systemd onto users' systems as if it is somehow a democratic endorsement of the outcome.
I am not sure about how the concept of democracy applies to this, but the graph clearly shows that nobody is being forced to do anything and indeed about 4000 users choose to install systemd-shim and to not use systemd.
Ok, let me explain Steve's POV. Many packages depended on libpam-systemd before systemd-shim was ever in the archive, leading to systemd-sysv being installed by a normal dist-upgrade on Sid (and, although I am not sure, testing). The alternative was often to have GNOME or Network Manager removed, two very popular packages (and the latter quite important). Even after systemd-shim was uploaded to the archive (still at logind v204 here), libpam-systemd depended on "systemd-sysv | systemd-shim". This meant that users' systems would switch init systems on a normal dist-upgrade *unless* they manually intervened and knew which package they had to install to avoid that. Finally, systemd v208 was uploaded to unstable with an unconditional dependency on systemd-sysv. All of these actions led to users experiencing a change of init system before they had taken action to change init systems, which means that the graphs are not reliable in claiming that the majority of users wanted systemd as their init system.

I can not speak for Steve, but I recognize that some or all of those actions above were called for. The final one especially (systemd v208 upload), since their was ample warning and communication (something like one or two months I think), the move was a long time coming, and systemd was chosen as the default init system by then (not true for the other two actions).

I hope that helps you understand how the graph does not depict how many users elected to use systemd as their init system.

Best regards,
--
Cameron Norman

I understand most of it, and obviously systemd was imposed. It's use-systemd-or-die Debian decisioners telling us!

One of the really sincere and honest proposals also followed on the list.

Noel Torres wrote: On Wednesday, 3 de September de 2014 16:21:31 Svante Signell escribió:
Svante Signell wrote: [...]
should be allowed, and I'm trying to find out how many of debian users
and developers are interested in working together with me on such a
solution. Best would be to have an option in the installer (hidden by
[...]
I volunteer to test this, not for contributing (I am not a programmer), for a very simple reason: I do not want my long-running servers (and those of my clients) to be rebooted for something that should be so simple as upgrading a service or applying some non-kernel security patch.

I may have (I agree I have) some conservative thinking. I've been well against network-manager messing my interfaces

I also live without that windozed and windows-looking piece of software-maybe-spyware (don't know). A Linux user should know how to issue "ifconfig eth0", and having direcories or files (can't remember now, I've lived without it since 2013) in /etc with spaces in their names, that was more than I could bear.

and I'm against systemd as well, but I really think the Unix way, when properly implemented, is the way to go. And if it does not work, make it work instead of building a dinosaur and force dependencies into it (and yes, I'm pointing at you, Gnome Debian packagers, both for network-manager and systemd).

In resume: count on me to test and check and report bugs and triage.

Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia,
http://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr

Posted: **2014-09-16 14:59**

No, the following is not for Debian-disparaging reason, but to show how things have been, sadly, swept under the carpet, sometimes, in Debian.
And...
And as an incentive that DDs don't repeat such mistakes:

Debian's OpenSSL maintainer (Kurt Roeckx) should be changed
http://www.gergely.risko.hu/debian-dsa1571.en.html
old stuff, 2008, must not be forgotten. Pls. see my previous posts in this topic, i.e. Julian Assange's and PHK's, and IgnorantGuru's recount on this story.

Miro

Posted: **2014-09-16 18:15**

So, would this situation be a legitimate reason to fork Debian GNU/Linux using sysvinit?

I love Debian GNU/Linux but if this keeps up I'm switching to FreeBSD.

Posted: **2014-09-16 18:55**

/tmp wrote:So, would this situation be a legitimate reason to fork Debian GNU/Linux using sysvinit?

I love Debian GNU/Linux but if this keeps up I'm switching to FreeBSD.

I'm not a developer to reply to that question. I still hope in a few great Debian developers to save us from these frankestein changes, brother.

I love[d] G../Linux too. Can't call it that anymore:

The future with Systemd
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 05#p553351

Sorry to have to tell the truth. I know this saddens many people. Believe me I am very sad to write that.

Miro

Posted: **2014-09-16 19:01**

Part 2

Pls., take heed of what I'll tell you now: I can access mostly anywhere on the internet now, except for I can't access the links below, such as:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00111.html
and any starting with that string:
lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/09/msg
of course with the http and :// in front,
(and that state has been lasting for more than --since first part, see the time there-- on every connection).

which I anyway have all of them in Iceweasel cache, so I *was able* to write this second part.

Just telling. Pls. do tell if the links don't point to the text reported.

#########################################################################
The titles were mostly:

systemd, again (Re: Cinnamon environment now available in testing)

upgrades must not change the installed init system [was: Re: Cinnamon environment now available in testing]

and other

There was, first, announcement of Cinnamon, the Gnome fork, here:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00111.html

Margarita Manterola wrote: ...[snip]...
cinnamon is now fully available in testing.
...[snip]...

And there followed simple questions and answers:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00130.html

Adam Borowski wrote: On Thu, Sep 04, 2014 at 02:57:16PM +0200, Margarita Manterola wrote:
Margarita Manterola wrote: On Thu, Sep 4, 2014 at 9:43 AM, envite <envite at rolamasao dot org> wrote:
Adam Borowski wrote: Does this Cinnamon for Debian include systemd ?
Yes, for Linux it includes systemd. For kFreeBSD it should be able to
work without systemd, but some packages haven't compiled yet due to
missing dependencies.
If Cinnamon can work without systemd, why is it a hard dependency?

But that conclusion is corrected and clarified by Cameron Norman:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00132.html

Cameron Norman wrote: TL;DR `sudo apt-get install systemd-shim`

You are mistaken, it is not. What I suspect happened is that something
depended on logind (libpam-systemd) and libpam-systemd depends on
"systemd-sysv | systemd-shim". This means that systems will have their
init system switched even if unneeded unless they predict the issue or
track down the dependency tree, then learn they have to install
systemd-shim (which does not exist on Wheezy, so you will have to
install systemd-sysv then another init after the upgrade). This bug
has been reported and marked as WONTFIX for reasons that have not been
fully explained (it is claimed people with init=/lib/systemd/systemd
in their kcmdline will experience breakage due to systemd-shim
conflicting with systemd-sysv, however this is actually not likely at
all according to the shim maintainer).

Which is more than I can grasp. Also because I have a sysvinit system, and have removed not only systemd, but also dbus and other poetteringware from my system. (still yet to document what I did).

I don't want anyhing systemd, not even systemd-shim. I could settle for some of the alternatives suggested in:

http://boycottsystemd.org/

boycottsystemd.org wrote: Disclaimer: We are not sysvinit purists by any means. We do recognize the need for a new init system in the 21st century, but systemd is not it.
...[snip]...
systemd alternatives include runit, OpenRC, s6, monit, perp, supervisord, Upstart and GNU dmd.

Is there or will there be place for me at all as Debian user?

I don't see that my option, no-poetteringware, will be viable. Reminder: it is on my Gentoo box, really no poetteringware, and system functional there (not much of a desktop though, but I don't care for those; it'd be great is some simple DE were there for no-poetteingware-whatsoever users like me, but not essential; essential is: privacy, but really).

But I can only follow what information I can get from where our systems are done in Debian. Means: back to debian-devel mail-list.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00145.html

Noel Torres wrote: On Friday, 5 de September de 2014 09:57:34 Josselin Mouette escribió:
Josselin Mouette wrote:> Noel Torres wrote:
Noel Torres wrote: So we are clearly failing to follow the least surprise (for the user)
path.

Should not logind depend on systemd-shim | systemd-sysv instead?
No. Systemd is the default init system. The default dependencies should
reflect that.

And from a purely functional point of view, it makes more sense to bring
by default the standard, upstream-supported, well-tested solution, than
the Debuntu-specific hack to use it with an inferior init system.

Cheers,
"Inferior" is your personal (and others) opinion. I do not think systemd being
clearly superior. It has better points that sysvinit but also worse points
(already extensively discussed). So that is not a reason to force users
install systemd when they are just upgrading their currently working systems.

So:
* standard: we chose so (against the opinion of a lot of people), nothing more
to discuss about that
* upstream-supported: not exclusive to systemd
* well-tested: not true. sysvinit is the well tested, and well known one
(including its quircks and lacks)
* superior: plain no

(This opinion was later, surely, attacked.)

If I remember correctly, Josselin Mouette was/is also one of the DDs that is preventing us users from having real so called "obsolete" FFmpeg in our systems, and it was all ready for inclusion last month. We would have been able to choose btwn FFmpeg and Avconv. Didn't happen (IIUC). Red Hat and Schmoogle must be happy!

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00184.html

The Wanderer wrote: Some, only some of the discussion that followed:

On 09/05/2014 at 03:44 PM, Cameron Norman wrote:

Cameron Norman wrote: On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 5:20 AM, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
Matthias Urlichs wrote: Thus, unless the user explicitly tells the apt{-get,itude}
subsystem not to switch to systemd (by whatever means, the
details of which I personally am not at all interested in), a
dist-upgrade should do so.
Currently, this is impossible, since systemd-shim DNE on Wheezy.

DNE=does not exist (IIUC)

But it should be possible to 'apt-get update ; apt-get install systemd-shim ; apt-get dist-upgrade', and AFAICT that should get the job done.

Alternately, it should be possible to pin systemd-sysv to "not installed", even when no such package as systemd-sysv exists - and then dist-upgrade should be able to figure out the necessary dependency resolution.

Which brings us to my issue again (and I hope other users will try and get a no-poetteringware-whatsoever system):

Will it be possible to pin down poetteringware (all of it), and install and use Debian, some basic packages, such as Iceweasel and, say, Mplayer/Mencoder and FFmpeg, less important: on some very basic DE?

I'm fighting for no-poetteringware not only for me, but for everybody, as an option in Debian.

One point I can't understand. It all worked up to now, but now there is this systemd-shim to save a user from systemd... Why can't it be viable to have a system without systemd-<whatever>, whatever=shim as well?

This fine analysis:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00206.html

Adam Borowski wrote: On Sat, Sep 06, 2014 at 11:12:35AM +0200, Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
Ansgar Burchardt wrote: Noel Torres writes:
Noel Torres wrote: So, in your POV, forcing millions of sysadmins out there to take extra pain to keep their systems running as they expect is the way to go?
I think it's fair to expect the few hundred people[1] that want to run a non-default init system to do so, yes.

[1] I can also make up numbers
Ok, so let's quantify the view of sysadmins somehow. This can actually be done in a meaningful way: let's count posts on places where technically-minded folks gather. There's plenty of minor blogs that are biased, but let's choose big sites where we can have a reasonable chance of being unbiased. I chose Slashdot and it's fork, SoylentNews.

Counting only posts above the default threshold for a non-logged-in user:

http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/09/01/1844249
(article about "Poettering's vision")

unrelated/no clear opinion: 3
anti-poettering: 10
anti-systemd in particular: 8
ambivalent: 1
pro: 0 !!!

http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/08/19/0841221
(article about systemd)

unrelated/no opinion: 12
pro: 1
anti: 15

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/09/0 ... n-my-linux
(article about systemd-caused schism)

unrelated/no opinion: 33
pro: 2
anti: 22
ambivalent: 4

That fine analysis above didn't get any of the DD pro-Red Hat poeple budge. What can?

In the followup, which is, IMO, too sick to report it here, Axel Wagner even doubts the identity of the posters on Slashdot. Gimme a break!

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00207.html

I guess I wouldn't have been able to reply this nicely to that message:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00208.html

Adam Borowski wrote: On Sat, Sep 06, 2014 at 03:02:06PM +0200, Axel Wagner wrote:
Axel Wagner wrote: Moreover, you would need to not count posts, but unique posters, which will be a very hard to get, because in a lot of flames there are people who get one spam-address after the other, when they get blocked, which would further skew the numbers towards whichever camp has more disrespectfull trolls.
That's Slashdot not 4chan. The discussion there is mostly civil, and spam-posters immediately get moderated into oblivion. If you want your posts to show up, you need an established account rather than something newly created. Heck, in the methodology I used, the threshold was high enough that even an old account would require at least one up-mod to get counted.

Thus, Slashdot post count is more meaningful than, say, counting posts here on unmoderated debian-devel.

And nothing can help those people understand (just if they were selling their skills for some grease; pretence better than of the best actors': cool, happy for the future grease, some already in their pockets; no, I'm not accusing them, just telling that they act like politicians stealing, and while stealing, talking honey and milk in alternation with threats and laws, to people; but they really couln't be just plain witless, could they?).

Here Matthias Urlichs
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00211.html
talks how "most people" ... "are OK with systemd".

More talk. But I have to bring one of the persons with "merits" for all of us not having real FFmpeg in Debian, IIUC.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00291.html

Josselin Mouette wrote: Adam Borowski wrote:
Adam Borowski wrote: Ok, so let's quantify the view of sysadmins somehow. This can actually
be done in a meaningful way: let's count posts on places where
technically-minded folks gather. There's plenty of minor blogs that are
biased, but let's choose big sites where we can have a reasonable chance
of being unbiased. I chose Slashdot and it's fork, SoylentNews.
...[snip]...

...[snip]... Snip not shown in original. That is, Josslin is talking of the Slashdot and SoylentNews count done by Adam Borowski

Excuse me? Are you trying to use the fact that you and your stupid
friends are trolling about systemd all day long in order to justify your
own rants?

And I thought you couldn’t get any lower. You have a very good shovel.
Code: Select all
-- 
 .''`.        Josselin Mouette
: :' :
`. `'
  `-

The logo should not be there. That's abuse of a fine honorable symbol, because this is hiding behind it. Red Hat and Schmoog must love her!

I too, signed underneath all my posts, I have lost terrible time trying to understand what I can do to keep my systems from poetteringware, which I hate, for reasons all around the net (reason not all around only if someone is either witless or in someone's pockets), and (which I hate) because it already cost me nerves hugely.

And I'm fighting for no-poetteringware options for all as well. Not just me.

What do you want, dismiss me as fool too? What kind of language is that? And from a DD?

She got a fine reply:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00297.html

Jakub Wilk wrote: * Josselin Mouette, 2014-09-08, 10:58:
Josselin Mouette wrote: Excuse me? Are you trying to use the fact that you and your stupid friends are trolling about systemd all day long in order to justify your own rants?
And I thought you couldn’t get any lower. You have a very good shovel.
OTOH, a hydraulic excavator must have been involved in writing your mail.

Can we now all go back to the ground level? (Or higher?!)

This mail is so polite:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00421.html

Martinx - ジェームズ wrote: Hi!
Yes, please... I vote +1 for not silently replace sysvinit by systemd, when upgrading from Debian 7, to 8.
...[snip]...
Also, the current Populatiry Contest is unfair, because it shows systemd winning, when it is being pushed.
...[snip]...
Also, providing two init systems during Debian 8 cycle (or until kFreeBSD remains around), will calm down people all over the world.
...[snip]...

But, those mentioned before, and others of their kind, will probably say that it is not representative.
That is by a non-expert user.

And here's one by an expert/advanced user.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00360.html

Samuel Thibault wrote:
Ondřej Surý wrote: Ondřej Surý, le Tue 09 Sep 2014 13:10:48 +0200, a écrit :
And I'm saying that all we have is anecdotal evidence
Our uni lab has switched to systemd, 20% of the machines do not boot.
The admin is currently looking at what the difference could be between
them to expain such a difference (same hardware, supposed-to-be same
software installation).

But I remember as I make another example in my attempt at contributing to getting users more of a chance for remaining with freer Debian, I remember how that DD wrote previously. I hope I'll find it. It's very educational.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00343.html

Samuel Thibault wrote:
Matthias Urlichs wrote: You cannot have an MTA without configuring it, and nobody even tried to
implement auto-migration of the old default mailer's configuration to the
new one. Also, we didn't switch to a different default mailer because the
new one offered a heap of features and infrastructure which the other
lacked.

None of this applies to systemd.
This does apply to systemd too.

When I got "upgraded" to systemd on july, my system was completely
misbehaving for several reasons related to my configuration:

- I had an ISO mount in my fstab, whose file didn't exist any more,
sysvinit never complained about it, systemd just stopped at boot.
- I had several bind mounts, forming loops, which has never been a
problem for sysvinit, but it made systemd take ages to boot & shutdown
because it'd crazily bring thousands of lines in /proc/mounts, details
in #755674.
- I had tweaks in /etc/inittab to get the gettys earlier than
daemon starts, in case those get stuck etc., this does not work any
more with systemd.
- I had tweaks in /etc/inittab to have more gettys on the text console,
this does not work with systemd any more.
- I had tweaks in /etc/inittab to shutdown instead of reboot when I
press ctrl-alt-backspace, this does not work with systemd any more.

If I had tweaks in /etc/inittab to enable serial consoles, would the
upgrade to systemd kept them working? I haven't found code about this.
This is *especially* important for servers, for which that might be the
only way to access the system without having to take the bike to get to
the datacenter.

Of course, these are all bugs that could be fixed in systemd. I however
doubt we can discover (and fix) them all for Jessie, and I strongly
doubt that the first item of my list (which is more a difference of
behavior than a bug) will be ever be fixed actually.

If it ain't broken, don't break it.

On which recount there were further followups.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2 ... 00347.html

Samuel Thibault wrote:
Ondřej Surý wrote: Ondřej Surý, le Tue 09 Sep 2014 11:47:38 +0200, a écrit :
And you are saying that you can do all those tweaks, but you cannot
pin systemd-sysv to not install?
No, I'm saying that if I hadn't noticed "systemd" among the upgrades, I would have gotten all these changes all of a sudden without asking for them. That can be pretty bad for the serial console access.

And I'm saying that I don't think this is an isolated case, I believe most our users prefer to stay with sysvinit when upgrading from wheezy to jessie, at least to keep the behavior of their machine as it is, and then consider switching to systemd. Collapsing both is asking for regressions and angry users...

Are you reading this, DDs?:

Samuel Thibault wrote: ...(they already tell me bad Debian jokes about the upgrade to systemd).

You realy want to get Debian to become all the more the target of bad jokes?

And on and on it goes. Someone there is in the pockets of... This much is not being plain witless.

Time to quote IgnorantGuru...

I repeat my stance from a previous post in this topic that the title of this article below is flawed ("Julian Assange: Debian Is Owned By The NSA"). Not really untruthful, since not completely false, but neither completely right, I would certainly believe. That title was wrong tactically. Very few writers don't make such mistakes sooner or later.

The denial:
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/454246967124963328

WikiLeaks wrote:
Glyn Moody wrote: @wikileaks: a question - did you really say "Debian Is Owned By The NSA"? -
@glynmoody None of our people said this. Mr. Assange spoke about vulnerability of OS's to bribes and bugdoors in upstream components.

But most of IgnorantGuru's talk is just about right.

Julian Assange: Debian Is Owned By The NSA
https://igurublog.wordpress.com/2014/04 ... y-the-nsa/

Where reads how:

IgnorantGuru wrote: [Julian] discussed ...[snip]... how encryption can level the playing field between powerful governments and people, and about 20 minutes into his address, he discussed how UNIX-like systems like Debian ...[snip]... are engineered by nation-states with backdoors which are easily introduced as ‘bugs’, and how the Linux system depends on thousands of packages and libraries that may be compromised.

Then he recommends:

watching his 36 minute Q&A in its entirety, keeping in mind my recent warnings about how GNU/Linux is almost entirely engineered by the government/military-affiliated Red Hat corporation

That is:

Julian Assange - Q&A - 2014-04-02 (English)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFFTYRWB0Tk

He goes on to say:

Assange mentions how Debian famously botched the SSH random number generator for years (which was clearly sabotaged). Speaking of botched security affecting Red Hat, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SuSE, *BSD, and more, the nightmarish OpenSSL recently botched SSL again ...[snip]...

And he gave another recommendation, which I am thankful to have been given the opportunity to have, to learn more on the then latest matter.

For more on how OpenSSL is a nightmare, and why this bug is one among many that will never be found, listen to FreeBSD developer Poul-Heening Kamp’s excellent talk at the FOSDEM BSD conference.

and that is:

http://video.fosdem.org/2014/Janson/Sun ... eport.webm

IgnorantGuru wrote: From the start, my revelations on this blog about Red Hat’s deep control of Linux, along with their large corporate/government connections, hasn’t been just about spying, but about losing the distributed engineering quality of Linux, with Red Hat centralizing control.
Yet ...[snip]... as soon as I started using Linux years ago, I noted that all the major distributions used watered-down encryption ...[snip]... This told me then that those who controlled distributions were deeply in the pockets of intelligence networks.

And his conclusion is:

So it comes as no surprise to me that they jumped on board systemd when told to, despite the mock choice publicized to users – there was never any option.

To me, his conclusions sound plausible.

And yet, legally, if they are doing so, they are breaking the law. While my reproducing here his words is perfectly in compliance with the rights given to me as user, perfectly in compliance with Debian Social Contract, and the law, of the U.S.A. where Debian is based, and of EU where I live.

What can be done? Nothing without proof, and I have none. You can't get any proofs of mere maliciosness, let alone corruption, bribes, intimidation in matters of OpenSSL, and yet it all soooo stinks!!!

You can't get any proof of systemd and poetteringware programmers planting bugs.

A world class expert probably could, but surely with huge effort, only discover mere typoes and/or other mistakes of whichever kind, that, effectively, somehow backdoor your system; But even if you discovered those, you could not prove them to be by design.

Honest world class experts probably could uncover bugdoors in poetteringware, and such bugdoors will not be other than very likely to have been deliberately introduced, with the backdooring purpose, if such functionality of some of those bugs ends up backdooring you system...

But to discover and confirm that, we need work of honest people like Grsecurity devs, like PHK, also like some of our honest Debian devs, sorry I don't trust all, we need the work of people like those fine Finns from pages linked from IgnorantGuru's page above who uncovered the Heartbleed...

Still, even once the backdoors in poetteringware is discovered, which I'm confident it will happen, there wouldn't be any proof before the court of law. All that we would get, again, is just proof of "typoes" and "honest mistakes"!

And you can imaging who is throwing money and bying brains to create bugdoors on us. Not repeating those names.

What to say in the end of this two part recount of some of the discussions about our Debian machines of tomorrow, dear friend, on debian-devel mail-list?

Do something about it, dear reader.

I've so far really done as much as I could. I spent weeks on this, to try and contribute to preventing of these frankestein changes. I'm out of breath and exhausted and broken a little. And sad, very sad. Remember I believed in {G../Linux}, and I can't even call it that anymore.

Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia
http://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr

Posted: **2014-09-17 00:10**

Miroslav, your posts are too long, and they are repeated from the Offtopic rant. You do the movement to stop Systemd in Jessie no good service by posting like this. There is a growing movement afoot already, and from well seasoned and reasoned folks that are long time Debian users/developers. Really, there is no need to rant. Let's keep things moving in the right direction, please, and know that many Debian users feel as you do.

Posted: **2014-09-17 14:16**

buntunub wrote:Miroslav, your posts are too long, and they are repeated from the Offtopic rant. You do the movement to stop Systemd in Jessie no good service by posting like this. There is a growing movement afoot already, and from well seasoned and reasoned folks that are long time Debian users/developers. Really, there is no need to rant. Let's keep things moving in the right direction, please, and know that many Debian users feel as you do.

+1

Miroslav, I tried multiple times to read your stream of consciousness style rants, because I suspect that you can have interesting ideas to share, but I always gave up before reaching the first half of the first post.
If you want to share your thoughts, keep them short and readable and to the point. Otherwise I just assume that you don't give a **** about others being able to comprehend you.

Posted: **2014-09-24 19:51**

In time soon or later this text will, hopefully, be cleared out and finalized by me. Keep in mind if replying. These 30-ish words will be removed when that done. Why? Reasons given in text. Thanks.

I get kind of irony attacks (and I'll leave it to readers themselves to decide why) that I prefer to suppress when I get readers who report reading parts of my "rants" and declare them "too long, therefore next reader pls. don't read this", or tl;dr. Recently they mostly decided to declare how they weren't able to read more than just half of some of my posts which they decided to declare tl;dr, but what is fascinating is them needing to tell the world how obnoxious my posts were...

Why can't you then, OK, I accept you don't like to see me posting on Debina Forums, some of you... But why can't you then, OK, just quit reading my posts? End of story...

EDIT: Some of you people who occasionally expressed tl:dr attitude, I have to admit you do have some points. Not all the points. So I was unduly too harsh here, and as you can see, I'm revisiting this post explicitly to admit being somewhat at fault, esp. such as in the latests of the post previous to the tl:dr remarks above. Sorry.

However, the reasoning of my writing is mostly standing.

It is standing that for some two years during which the Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) routine that Debian developers introduced, intentionally or incompetently, left pretty much any (IIUC) encrypting by the Debian user on his Debian OS installed machine very much useless, because for those two years all Debians in the world were perfectly decryptable by not only secret services but also by most any somewhat skilled hacker.

What I wrote above, I don't know, just like I don't know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, but I believe that it does. I likewise do believe what I wrote above, and I stand by it, because two undeniable experts have, in two completely unrelated events, declared the above to have been the case.

I should hope that no Debian distro defender will rise up to defend Debian against my alleged disparaging of it, in this post, because this is a well known fact in the IT world.

Anyway I didn't post the above recount of the two experts speeches (which I also took down parts of and offered readers the transcription, which I would like to correct just a detail or two, but time, time is very very scarce here)...

Anyway I didn't post the above recount of the speeches, of Julian Assange and Poul-Heening Kamp (they are the experts who can't be dismissed and on whose expert recounts I only repeated, in my words, above), I didn't and I wouldn't be posting those and this today's post for the sake of disparaging Debian,

Not just because I still like Debian, and still need it, but because I truly hope that it is salvageable, still salvageable, it's not yet broken so much as to abandon it.

Broken in the sense of useable for privacy computing.

I'll try and explain what I mean (as if I haven't yet, but OK).

If I can't have control over my computer in the way that, be it with great effort and care, no one else can compromise the security of my computer when I go online, as they easily could on any users' Debian computers for some two years of time during which the PRNG in all Debian machines in the world was compromised in such way that NSA or FSB or any other secret service could easily and silently read anything on the computers they were interested in, and we know that mostly those agencies harvest data indiscriminately, such as that on the eff.org (can't look up the link now, but sure it can be found and confirmed what I write here) there was talk of NSA's world tap (wiretapping the whole world)...

So if I can't have control over my computer in the way that, be it that for such result great effort and care would be needed... in the way that no one can reach through whatever that I decide to encrypt and want to keep in private in my computer...

If I can't have control over my computer in such way, but instead those leviathans like Google, the giant greatest of all friends of NSA, or small leviathans like my former provider (just recently switched to a different provider) whom I undeniably uncovered in their censorship of my emails thrown to waste right after I sent them

Postfix smtp-tls-wrapper, Bkp/Cloning Mthd, A Zerk Provider
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-999436.html
(zerk in the title is for beserk, on Gentoo forums)

So if I can't have control over my computer in such way as to keep it secure and private, at least say my /home/ukrainian (replace ukrainian which whichever your regular user name is) directory... well. at least if I encrypt things in there (was decryptable by those agencies and such hackers as mentioned a few paragraphs above in this post for all the two years of the PRNG Debian bug in all Debians worldwide)...

So if I can't have control over my computer in such way, well then I can't have privacy computing with installing Debian.

Now, I have, in this topic or the neighboring edbarx's topic, expressed my fear for my privacy.

Readers, tell me, can I trust Debian? Unreservedly? (No need replying: I can't, well, I surely can't *unreservedly* trust Debian, with the facts of those two year of all Debians worldwide having been with that huge security hole.)

And yet, I repeat, it is Debian who I still hope that it is recoverable to be reliably useable for privacy computing.

However, dear all you of the tl;dr syntagma, it will *not* be salvageable if you keep sweeping any whistleblowing under the carpet, it you keep telling off posters like me, and if you don't allow freedom.

What I mean, is, tell users what happened, just like you promised you would in Debian Social Contract!

Do tell! Don't istead attack people like me who tell what is happening, or dedicate terrible time to analyze and show to other users what is otherwise kind of hidden for so many... What exactly am I saying?

What exactly am I saying? I started this topic which have had a few thousand views so far, after, and I said so, at the start somewhere (of course I'm offline while writing this, I am so sparingly online because I don't feel invulnerable online with my Debian at all!, and so I can't check it while I'm writing this), after a few days of studying discusisons held where the Debian matters get decided (well that's just one of the places, but it is the place where opinions are confronted and the ensuing desicions implemented), and that is the debian-devel mail-list.

Pls. take note of the words "after a few days of studying" in the paragraph above. I had started this topic after loong study of matters of this topic.

So, what I am saying is: Do tell what is happening in Debian! And don't attack people like me who tell what is happening in Debian, after they study for loong time to find it out, and who tell what it happening in Debian to the users of Debian.

So, I hope that Debian is still salageable for privacy computing, but, dear all you of the tl;dr syntagma, it will *not* be salvageable if you keep sweeping the truth of moves and events in Debain under the carpet and attack people like me who employ their own terrible time to find out that truth and tell it to the users of Debian.

And...

And also...

And also, all you honest and loving and truthful Debian users, and I am in particular referring to the advanced, verging on becoming Debian developers with a real say on the future of Debian, like the fine people of the neighboring topic, up until now, and currently, not very cleverly named (

) "Future with systemd"...

And also, good and advanced Debian users, Debian will *not* be salvageable if you, either of the following:

first) remain timid in these respects, instead of speaking loud and doing what you can once you see that things have started to go wrong (action there taken, as reported on the neighboring topic, and that is really comforting)

second) if you don't keep the big picture!

Do keep the big picture in your view!

It's not just systemd. And neither is it just poetteringware!

As the true expert, who evaded the most powerful agancy of the world, Julian Assange, said, it is so easy to compromise an OS... Only one program in the chain needs to be compromise and the whole OS is compromised.

And yet I stand by the claim that among the sole lines of defences left to the free world in the Orwellian age of ours is the, and I'll use the term without "GNU", which I explained is because Richard Stallman has introduced NSA SELinux in his Emacs options, but not without anything, to correct the incorrect solely "Linux" name), and yet I stand by the claim that among the sole lines of defences left to the free world in the Orwellian age of ours is:

the Debian FOSS Linux

The sole lines of defences left to the free world, as it just must be repeated: it's only FOSS, from FOSS Linux to FOSS BSD and others, all, again all of Micro$oft and all of Mac is being totally controled, no room for privacy.

And by not reducing your view to solely systemd tree in the danger forest in our story, as if the sole problem, the sole blockage and black hole on our path to getting privacy computing capable Debian, as if the sole program ruining the FOSS nature of FOSS Linux, as if the sole architecture that endangers FOSS Linux was systemd and its associates (or poetteringware by the main developer Lennart Poettering).

This goes to goulo really (I haven't seen if there have been any followups to my yesterday's very clumsy post; luckily I explained which problems were on me, should have sufficed and excused my clumsiness there:

Defeat and Hope for FOSS Linux
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... 15#p554026
):

You do need to see wider than just the bits of the program, brother. You do need to ask what the intentions are of those introducing those programs.

And that is why I lost my faith completely in Richard Matthew Stallman of the GNU.

SELinux, introducing SELinux, introducing that spyware into the world that is supposed to be free, the GNU world, is certainly not witlessness, because opening that world to spyware by Richard himself (he is in full charge of Emacs IIUC), is compromise of GNU, and could not have been done in some state of unawareness.

Look, the real intentions of programs in the panorama of bad-for-privacy programs from SELinux to systemd is surveilling, and then controling of us, users.

And there are very likely, very probably FONs in Debian, yes: in among the deciders at various levels, who consciously betray Debian, else that kind of moves would never even get as close as D of Debian, let alone get to be the default in Debian, such as the SELinux, because such was the enthusiasm that is left to be seen to must have been around at the time of instituting the Debian distro.

Tired. Will leave this somewhat unfinished. Also, those problems mentioned in "Defeat and Hope for FOSS Linux" are the big picture that you need to know and think about, dear users.

And the most important program if you want to defend yourself from surveillance and from being controled is Grsecurity.

Posted: **2014-10-10 15:45**

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... 175521593/

I'll take Godfather Vito Corleone's stance...

If they wish to poison themselves with systemd, let them. They're all hipster loving fadware coddling animals anyway, so let them lose their souls.

And as Pontius Pilate, I wash my hands of this.

Posted: **2014-10-15 15:35**

harrycaul wrote:
Corleone's stance...
If they wish to poison themselves with systemd, let them.

I wish they'd come to reason, but I don't reckon with that happening, sadly.

On another note, more saga on the betrayal of Debian values by infiltrators, who I am not an insider to know who they are, but good developers, they are not you friends! You should!

I know it from Gentoo Forums:

Why is Gentoo not switching to systemd?
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-9 ... ml#7629342

I think it is important enough to quote it here as well. I like most the line:

This is illicit abuse of process and they need to be prosecuted.

The entire message is available from:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/7/254
and what I provide here is amplifying the message by having it right before your eyes a fraction of a second sooner, or still after you disconnect, if you go offline after opening pages:

Code: Select all

Date	Tue, 7 Oct 2014 11:25:45 +0000
Subject	Debian "Administration" cancels systemd-shim to force systemd lock-in upon "users"

Gregory Smith wrote:

You could also work with uselessd, whether on the project itself or work on adapting a distro
to use it.
A few days ago the Debian administration ruled out any use of a systemd "substitute"
(cancelling its own systemd-shim project for desktop users) and now requires systemd whole
hog.

We knew that would happen. Accommodations are only a temporary stratagem with the systemd people. They are out to conquer. They need to be stopped, halted.

There has been no General Resolution amongst debian package maintainers. Red Hat has instituted a regulatory capture of the "bug squashing" committee within debian (the "Technical Committee") by having current or former (but stock holding) employees moonlight in debian and gradually gain membership in that comittie.

Once their numbers were sufficient they proceeded to file a bug report on the fact that systemd was not standard in debian.

This is illicit abuse of process and they need to be prosecuted.

Debian is an unincorporated association. It has bylaws, trade practices, and dealings by which it was governed. The RedHat associated members of the Technical Committee have illegally and in bad faith abused their positions in-order to realize financial and strategic gain for their employer.

Curiously, I wasn't able to see other messages in that thread, from lkml.org. Could be against me only, some filtering, for some error, could be wider, don't know.

Posted: **2014-10-15 15:45**

Now this was enlighening, but I has seen it comming, too. FreeBSD looks more and more attractive.

Posted: **2015-04-29 13:25**

I hate to say this, but the best way to avoid stealth installation of systemd is to switch to another distro that doesn't use it. It is sad, but true.
I really hate to say this, because after trying several distros for years, I ended up using Debian for more than 10 years now (the "testing" version). Since then, I never thought to switch to another distro... until the systemd plague hit the Debian community (some even like it).
There is no need to start another flame war about systemd and poettering-crapware in general; no need to mention his haughty messiah style either. The internet is full of it. The fact is, I decided not to use systemd - and Debian doesn't really give me the option not to use it.

For more than one year, I keep my Debian installation systemd-free, but as more and more packages rely on it, it is obvious I will not be able to do that forever. I am about to buy a new desktop computer and, under these circumstances, I will not pick Debian as my OS for that new computer. No time to cope with avoiding systemd in a distribution that defaults to it. Yes, I can still avoid it, but for how long? Latest addition in my blacklist was hplip, which depends on systemd. Now I have to find another way to be able to configure/use my printer (cups, apparently, but it doesn't support all my printer's features).
What about tomorrow? Another package will start to depend on systemd, so i will need to find an alternative, then another one, and so on. Sadly, migrating to another distro (quite probably Slackware) seems to me the best way to avoid stealth installation of systemd.

I understand Miroslav's motivation to keep using Debian while still boycotting systemd; I want the same too. But it seems futile to me. Since April 25, systemd is the default even for the officially stable Debian distro. We knew it was coming, now it's here. And, as systemd fanatics love to say blatantly, it came to stay. That would be ok for me, as long I could still have the option not to use it. But Debian does not really give me that option.

Posted: **2015-04-29 13:32**

@PAP . . . Devuan will provide a systemd-free Debian-based option. Check out Devuan on gitlab

Posted: **2015-04-29 13:43**

golinux wrote:@PAP . . . Devuan will provide a systemd-free Debian-based option. Check out Devuan on gitlab

I am aware of Debuan, but it seems it will take a long time till released and being comparable to Debian. There is a lot of work to be done, and I can only see it coming in the distant future. In the meantime, I have a few computers here, and they all need a working GNU/Linux distro, systemd-free. Sadly, that distro can't be Debian anymore; believe me, this is the most sad statement I ever made about Linux.

Posted: **2015-04-29 17:50**

PAP wrote:… and Debian doesn't really give me the option not to use it.

You mean that it is impossible not to have any trace of systemd on your system, or that, on Debian, systemd must be installed and run as PID 1 in any case?

Because although I have never tried to, I'm told that as long as one is not religious about having a few libraries installed (that do not require systemd to be in charge!), running a systemd-free system is still quite possible.

Cheers

Posted: **2015-04-29 18:17**

That depends on your definition of systemd-free, of course. I wouldn't trust even one lib not to act as a gateway to a future lockin.

Debian User Forums

How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?

Re: How to avoid stealth installation of systemd?