Debian User Forums

GarryRicketson wrote:The thing of it is, the Debian developers and others went around in circles for quite some
time, arguing about this issue, and it is all very well documented.
It all was very controversial, but it is over, the decision was made and Debian now uses systemd, As far as I know, there are no plans to change the decision that was made.
Debian will continue using systemd, and there will not be any easy way or other option for using sysV init, in the Debian releases.
So, a group of Debian developers, decided to no longer work on Debian development,
but start a new "fork", called "Devaun"
Here on this forum , it is Debian users, not Debian Developers, if you are not a troll, and
genuinely want to know about the future plans for Debian, you should ask them:
https://www.debian.org/contact
=========================
https://www.debian.org/devel/
===
https://lists.debian.org/devel.html
It probably would be better to use:
https://lists.debian.org/users.html
First, then maybe someone will point you to a better source, that is
fact, and not rumour,... a few developers do follow and read the users list.

Instead of listening to rumours, or starting a very controversial topic on forums, where "rumours"
and more rumours about the rumours are abundant, actually, many forums just close and delete any new topics, on this,... it is old history. Occasionally "trolls" do pop up, and try to start yet another "systemd" topic, generally with the same sort of comment "I heard this some where ",.... bla bla.

First of all, thanks for the references.

Sorry if the thread was not appropriate to this forum, I did not intend to create this controversy.
I made the mistake of putting this thread here, okay, but that's not why I have to call troll or use sarcastic comments.

@GarryR: it's not a question of "fixing" the image. The image that I originally uploaded to postimg was tiny--only 68-x-68 pixels. But the "thumbnail" created by postimg was nearly 4x that size.

I mean, yeah, they are the ones providing free hosting and all, but still, dramatically enlarging an image while calling it a "thumbnail" seems pretty brain-damaged.

It does seem odd, Maybe they have it (the thumb nail size) pre set in some way, If it was a large image
, say 600 x 600, it would be a "thumb nail" that is what ever value/size they use
IE: 300 x 300,... however since yours was only 68 x 68, it would appear almost 4 times
larger, because it included the thumb nail tag.
I wonder what happens if you did not use any "thumb nail", I would expect it to
show as the same size, 68 x 68,...
I am not sure about "post image", how they do the thumb nails,...a search will
tell me that, ... (to be continued )


The above was a large image , aprox 600x800
below a small "avatar", and I used the "thumb nail" option,
indeed it makes it bigger

============
This is the image, with "no resize" option

and that is correct, it is the size it should be. The actual size is 54x64 (aprox)
======================
It is kind of weird the way they do this,...

GarryRicketson wrote:This is the image, with "no resize" option

and that is correct, it is the size it should be. The actual size is 54x64 (aprox)

Huh. I always use the "no resize" option. (If I want an image resized, I do it myself prior to uploading.)

I find myself increasingly disenchanted with postimg. They made some sort of change recently that broke a bunch of older images I'd posted. And now this.

To paraphrase an old saying, "'Free' image hosting sites are only free if your time is worth nothing."

Snake94 wrote:It is true that sysV is very old and I understand that you are looking for alternatives, but maybe openrc would have been a healthier option from my point of view.

As you said

but it is not debian and does not have debian support/developers

Debian is unrivaled in being a complete system. For instance I've just been trying out FreeBSD and its pkg (similar to apt ... that pulls down pre-built binaries) is nowhere near as good as Debians. Frustratingly so, to the extent its not really viable and you have to adopt the compile everything stance (ports). Nor is their service model (upgrades etc.) any good, resulting in more likely having to rebuild from scratch sooner or later (and try and remember all of the tweaks etc. you'd applied (and considerable time/effort doing all of that)). The flexibility and functionality of Debian is fantastic and systemD may very well help improve upon that further - perhaps for instance at some point a choice of browser being just a service that you can activate/deactivate as desired ...etc.

Go with the root I'd say https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/ ... ee1210.jpg rather than those that ride on the back of a giant.

I fell into Debian after having left XP (after a number of years of having used that) back in 2014 when Windows pulled support, and after having tried a vast range of "Linux distro's". Personally I'm content to use older versions of programs as my needs are relatively light and I like the rock solid stability, so I just stick with oldstable (main respositories only, no contrib nor non-free) and my system is better IMO than any of the alternatives (single provider, fantastic range of programs, easy to manage, solid and secure). I have little understanding of init and background programming etc. and from a front end view I saw little if any difference between Debian and Devuan (systemD and sysV). SystemD works very well as far as I'm concerned. Nice additional features such as systemd-analyse blame showing all the startup timings, or even the 'plot' parameter that produces a nice svg image of those timings. Its through its early years phase and is well set to mature (get better) with time.

Have a think about what the others that ride off Debian's back will do when more of its repositories are aligned to systemD. Either they can try and replicate their own repositories and perhaps be like FreeBSD (a poor reflection), or take whatever alternative they deem fit, that likely will have considerably less manpower behind that (not have debian support/developers).

As far as Debian goes you cannot select an init by default, it uses systemd, BUT you CAN change the init system by installing the package you want, let it be OpenRC, runit, sysv, upstart (?), etc there are some good tutorials on http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

dasein wrote:
To paraphrase an old saying, "'Free' image hosting sites are only free if your time is worth nothing."

Recently the scores [if not hundreds] of images I've hotlinked through Photobucket since the early 2000s have 404'd [or 403'd?] since they changed their ToS. Mind you, in some cases this is probably a good thing.

ruffwoof wrote:

Snake94 wrote:It is true that sysV is very old and I understand that you are looking for alternatives, but maybe openrc would have been a healthier option from my point of view.

As you said

but it is not debian and does not have debian support/developers

Debian is unrivaled in being a complete system. For instance I've just been trying out FreeBSD and its pkg (similar to apt ... that pulls down pre-built binaries) is nowhere near as good as Debians. Frustratingly so, to the extent its not really viable and you have to adopt the compile everything stance (ports). Nor is their service model (upgrades etc.) any good, resulting in more likely having to rebuild from scratch sooner or later (and try and remember all of the tweaks etc. you'd applied (and considerable time/effort doing all of that)). The flexibility and functionality of Debian is fantastic and systemD may very well help improve upon that further - perhaps for instance at some point a choice of browser being just a service that you can activate/deactivate as desired ...etc.

Go with the root I'd say https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/ ... ee1210.jpg rather than those that ride on the back of a giant.

I fell into Debian after having left XP (after a number of years of having used that) back in 2014 when Windows pulled support, and after having tried a vast range of "Linux distro's". Personally I'm content to use older versions of programs as my needs are relatively light and I like the rock solid stability, so I just stick with oldstable (main respositories only, no contrib nor non-free) and my system is better IMO than any of the alternatives (single provider, fantastic range of programs, easy to manage, solid and secure). I have little understanding of init and background programming etc. and from a front end view I saw little if any difference between Debian and Devuan (systemD and sysV). SystemD works very well as far as I'm concerned. Nice additional features such as systemd-analyse blame showing all the startup timings, or even the 'plot' parameter that produces a nice svg image of those timings. Its through its early years phase and is well set to mature (get better) with time.

Have a think about what the others that ride off Debian's back will do when more of its repositories are aligned to systemD. Either they can try and replicate their own repositories and perhaps be like FreeBSD (a poor reflection), or take whatever alternative they deem fit, that likely will have considerably less manpower behind that (not have debian support/developers).

I do not agree on FreeBSD, it is true that pkg is not comparable to APT, APT is much more mature and efficient (but of course pkg is quite new compared to APT) but it works pretty well, you do not have to compile Nothing from the ports unless you want to install a package with specific options.

It is true that debian tries to cover more since it also maintains the packages, but still FreeBSD seems to me a more unified kernel + userland OS, and after all also maintain the ports.

Snake94 wrote:It is true that debian tries to cover more since it also maintains the packages, but still FreeBSD seems to me a more unified kernel + userland OS, and after all also maintain the ports.

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO88 ... -port.html

In FreeBSD, anyone may submit a new port, or volunteer to maintain an existing unmaintained port. No special commit privilege is needed.

FreeBSD is pretty much just a cli. Whilst that might be secure when you start adding packages/ports to that the pre-built binaries can be incomplete, wrong versions or conflict with other packages and the collective set lacks any real 'authority'. Debian DOES cover more, and manages things much much better.

ruffwoof wrote:

Snake94 wrote:It is true that debian tries to cover more since it also maintains the packages, but still FreeBSD seems to me a more unified kernel + userland OS, and after all also maintain the ports.

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO88 ... -port.html

In FreeBSD, anyone may submit a new port, or volunteer to maintain an existing unmaintained port. No special commit privilege is needed.

FreeBSD is pretty much just a cli. Whilst that might be secure when you start adding packages/ports to that the pre-built binaries can be incomplete, wrong versions or conflict with other packages and the collective set lacks any real 'authority'. Debian DOES cover more, and manages things much much better.

True, debian keeps all the packages of its repos, but freebsd is a complete OS: kernel + userland.

Anyway I do not want to detract from this thread and turn it into a "debian vs freebsd"

Snake94 wrote:I just want to ask if debian has in their plans to change init or at least give to choose during the installation that init wants to install.

Debian doesn't, but you'll be quite happy here:
https://devuan.org/
http://www.slackware.org/
https://www.dragora.org/
http://gentoo.org/

deborah-and-ian wrote: Debian doesn't, but you'll be quite happy here:
https://devuan.org/
http://www.slackware.org/
https://www.dragora.org/
http://gentoo.org/

Also I believe systemd is disabled by default in MX Linux.

You could use live-build to build a customized Debian live CD/DVD that uses sysvinit instead of systemd. It won't be totally systemd-free, though, because some systemd packages must be pulled in to satisfy dependencies. It wasn't easy to do (in Debian Jessie), but I figured out how to get around the obstacles I encountered.

pcalvert wrote:You could use live-build to build a customized Debian live CD/DVD that uses sysvinit instead of systemd. It won't be totally systemd-free, though, because some systemd packages must be pulled in to satisfy dependencies. It wasn't easy to do (in Debian Jessie), but I figured out how to get around the obstacles I encountered.

Thanks, it seems interesting that method, although for that I would prefer to use devuan.

deborah-and-ian wrote:

Snake94 wrote:I just want to ask if debian has in their plans to change init or at least give to choose during the installation that init wants to install.

Debian doesn't, but you'll be quite happy here:
https://devuan.org/
http://www.slackware.org/
https://www.dragora.org/
http://gentoo.org/

an easier transition to Slackware could be SalixOS. https://salixos.org/
Or just jump straight into Slackland http://www.slackware.com/

HuangLao wrote: an easier transition to Slackware could be SalixOS. https://salixos.org/
Or just jump straight into Slackland http://www.slackware.com/

Good information, thanks. At some point in my life I want to get into Slackware, I don't mind if it's in ten years, but it's a geeky intention of mine. I hadn't heard of Salix, it looks like a good go-between. I'm very happy with Debian for the foreseeable future.

Lysander wrote:
Good information, thanks. At some point in my life I want to get into Slackware, I don't mind if it's in ten years, but it's a geeky intention of mine. I hadn't heard of Salix, it looks like a good go-between. I'm very happy with Debian for the foreseeable future.

Most welcome...i mainly run Slackware/Salix and Debian (Debian to keep my eyes on systemd). Feel free to ask me questions either here, or over at linuxquestions.org or https://forum.salixos.org/ . Most of the info people have heard about Slackware is either blatantly false or was true in its earliest versions. It is no harder then Debian and with some respects easier.

HuangLao wrote:

Lysander wrote:
Good information, thanks. At some point in my life I want to get into Slackware, I don't mind if it's in ten years, but it's a geeky intention of mine. I hadn't heard of Salix, it looks like a good go-between. I'm very happy with Debian for the foreseeable future.

Most welcome...i mainly run Slackware/Salix and Debian (Debian to keep my eyes on systemd). Feel free to ask me questions either here, or over at linuxquestions.org or https://forum.salixos.org/ . Most of the info people have heard about Slackware is either blatantly false or was true in its earliest versions. It is no harder then Debian and with some respects easier.

Interesting, I'll hold you to that, thank you. Watch this space [or those ones].

EDIT: Had a go with Salix live Xfce. It's the sort of thing that I could definitely get my head around, and enjoy the learning curve of, but I don't have the time to do so at the moment. Sound didn't work off the bat, a lot of software I use was not in the repos [e.g. Inxi, Screenfetch, Neofetch, Audacious and Chromium I couldn't find through gslapt package manager], and I would have to look into compiling some things. I'm sure it's doable, but not at present.