operating systems without systemd

[Linadian]

Giving PCLinuxOS Mate and LXDE versions a test too, already tried the Mate, it's actually not too bad, I'm giving it second place in my Debhat alternatives list. The only real problem I have with PCLinuxOS is it's aimed at n00bs, has tons of GUI tools and settings which I personally don't need. I'm still leaning heavily towards Salix Xfce because it 'feels' the most like a Debian Xfce install. PCLinuxOS's repository has plenty of refined (tweaked to 'blend' really well with PCLinuxOS) apps to offer, all 3 DVD apps for example (DeVeDe, Bombono and DVDStyler), pysolfc was already installed and working in the Mate edition.

My conundrum:

PCLinuxOS (Mate)=will fit on a CD, stable, can be a little bit dated at times but very little maintenance (almost none) required, being rolling is a plus, lots of popular apps in their repository (you'll want to change the icon set, see below), tons of GUI tools for n00bs.

Salix (Xfce)=small ISO download but won't fit on a CD, DVD required, also rolling after install, can be more up to date (apps installed through Sourcery), very lean and fast, has a 'just enough' apps/tools policy, a bit less repo apps options than normal, a few packages refused to compile and install with Sourcery (DeVeDe and Bombono installed fine, DVDStyler did not, nor did pysolfc), nothing of huge importance but it still sucks a little (there are other solitaire apps, I'll live, lol), binaries almost always install without problems (in general, any distro). Binaries are limited but other apps available through Sourcery, which is easy to use but a roll of the dice if your chosen app will get installed or not (Sourcery has a tendancy to nag for dependencies installed through Gslapt, but unlike single instance apt in Debian, you can have both of them open and go back and forth between them).

I only recently discovered pysolfc and I really like it, not only that, DVDStyler is handy to have as a 3rd option to DeVeDe and Bombono, also liking the idea of a headache free install (PCLinuxOS will auto install a proprietary video driver if it can, Salix uses the GPL for live and install), although I'm not a huge fan of Mate (prefer Xfce), it's gtk, btw, the 'elementary' icon set is available in the PCLinuxOS repo as an install (as opposed to downloading the elementary icon zip from github and manually copying to /usr/share/icons), the default icon set are ugly as sin in the Mate version of PCLinuxOS, you'll want to change them right away, unless you like a minimalist European-ish look, they're strange looking indeed.

Bottom line, PCLinuxOS Mate is like having Stella (old Gnome 2.x) on your machine but way more tweaked, modern and pretty, with more supported and available apps (the only readily available transcoder in Stella is Handbrake, yikes), the only plus for Stella in this head-to-head, it'll install on a fakeraid. Stella is basically frozen in time and based on CentOS/Redhat 6.6 (NO systemd), which does rub me the wrong way a little, the whole idea is to run from Redhat, not embrace it, old version or not.

Edit: After reading my own post several times (lots of proof reading, lol), I'm going to put PCLinuxOS Mate as my Debhat replacement frontrunner, it's polished, way more apps, rolling and stable, I may not even bother 'testing' PC-BSD, it wiped an old storage drive without warning me during a recent install attempt, this is NOT ok. Besides, ZFS is a handful to deal with.

[runfrodorun]

I just wanted to add my 2 cents that I'm really happy this discussion is happening. The GNU ideology has seemed to show that KISS is the way to go when writing software, and an init system should be no exception. I think if we want systemd to go that's going to take a collective effort to use distributions/kernels that do not support it or will not adopt it, otherwise package maintainers will probably become lazy and not bother to support other init systems. It's been a really political takeover of linux and I'm very upset about it I hope debian realizes that it's not too late to create a new init system or move to another one before it's too late.

[oswaldkelso]

Mate is all geared up for systemd so you need to be sure it will still run without it or your wasting you time

[mmix]

thanks for the info.
so is there some list about DE without systemd?

--
PS: to avoid such lockdown(vendor-lock) scheme,
i am using dwm/openbox/plan9port.
in LMDE, using cinnamon, not sure how far going on.

[Linadian]

Mate is all geared up for systemd so you need to be sure it will still run without it or your wasting you time

Thanks for that info, will have to look in to it, and there's always the PCLinuxOS LXDE version, it too is gtk, I've tried LXDE before and I know my way around it, I just prefer Xfce. If PCLinuxOS stays non-virusd, they'll have to drop their Mate version if Mate caves to virusd too.

Maybe I'll give PC-BSD Xfce another shot, this is depressing the $#1+ out of me.

Edit: FreeBSD 10.1 released! Release announcement here, read specifically the dvd1 section:

This contains everything necessary to install the base FreeBSD operating system, the documentation, and a small set of pre-built packages aimed at getting a graphical workstation up and running.

There's a separate DVD for UEFI users, I have my machine set to legacy BIOS on purpose. FYI, dvd1 has Xfce and KDE packages included, Distrowatch's package list here. I like this, this is good, downloading now.

Edit 2: What Texstar (Bill Reynolds of PCLinuxOS) said about systemd (December 10, 2013) here in this forum post.

[fruitofloom]

thanks for the info.
so is there some list about DE without systemd?

Not exactly DE, rather software in general, but you might want to look anyway:
http://www.debianuserforums.org/viewtop ... ac99c261e6

Also the actual testing release of refracta.

[thenewguy]

thanks for the info.
so is there some list about DE without systemd?
in LMDE, using cinnamon, not sure how far going on.

The Lumina desktop is developed for BSD so it'll never be tied to systemd. It has been ported to Linux so whether you're running a Linux distro, OpenBSD or FreeBSD the Lumina desktop should work.

[Linadian]

thanks for the info.
so is there some list about DE without systemd?
in LMDE, using cinnamon, not sure how far going on.

The Lumina desktop is developed for BSD so it'll never be tied to systemd. It has been ported to Linux so whether you're running a Linux distro, OpenBSD or FreeBSD the Lumina desktop should work.

Thanks for that, PC-BSD has Lumina as an install choice. I'm waiting for PC-BSD 10.1 to be released, FreeBSD 10.1 was just released so it won't be far behind. Just a tip to anybody trying PC-BSD, do yourself a favour, open your case, disconnect the drive(s) PC-BSD is NOT being installed to, PC-BSD's installer has a tendency to do whatever it wants sometimes, and if possible, use the UFS file system, I've been reading ZFS can be a bit of a resource hog, etc.

[twoflowers]

@linadian: For PCLinnuxOS there's a TDE build, too: https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/LiveCDs

[thenewguy]

If you're installing PC-BSD then there is no UFS option, they are ZFS only since several PC-BSD utilities assume ZFS is present. You could install FreeBSD with UFS and then install all the PC-BSD packages if you wanted.

However, there really isn't any reason to do that, ZFS is not a resource hog. I've been running it for years on machines with less than 2GB of RAM. In fact, I run a bunch of old used-to-be-desktops-now-file-servers with 1GB of RAM or less and they all are running with ZFS. Based on my experience you can run PC-BSD with Lumina and ZFS then the operating system will run smoothly on machines with 2GB of RAM.

[fruitofloom]

Tell me as soon you find an OS which can run with 512 MB RAM, or less.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Tell me as soon you find an OS which can run with 512 MB RAM, or less.

System requirements

Arch Linux should run on any i686 compatible machine with a minimum of 64 MB RAM. A basic installation with all packages from the base group should take less than 800 MB of disk space. If you are working with limited space, this can be trimmed down considerably, but you will have to know what you are doing.

[RU55EL]

Tell me as soon you find an OS which can run with 512 MB RAM, or less.

Puppy Linux - but you were probably expecting this answer.

[fruitofloom]

Tell me as soon you find an OS which can run with 512 MB RAM, or less.

Puppy Linux - but you were probably expecting this answer.

Humor doesn't seem to work well ...
My point was that 2 Gigs is anything but low. Obviously that opinion is slightly old-fashioned.
I wouldn't hesitate to run any OS out there on a machine with 1 Gig of Ram.
Well: to say it more clear, to me a Gig sounds like quite comfortable.

But thanks for your answer, my fault not being clear. Puppy is fine too, of course.

[fruitofloom]

@Head on a stick:
I had a now broken laptop with 64 MB and 4 Gigs of harddisk.
It ran fine as long CLI only, GUI was a bit ... well: you can imagine. Not really fun.
Debian, of course.

I'd still call 128 too little.
256 is fine, as far it's me
384 and it starts being fun.
512: outstanding, but gnome and kde can give a wee bit of trouble
1 Gig: whatever you want.
More than that: pointless.