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"A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Debian

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
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HuangLao
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#21 Post by HuangLao »

Image

Next people will say the article was about Slackware that year they came out with a non-systemd version.

pcalvert
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#22 Post by pcalvert »

/tmp wrote: I'm focusing on making the system independent of systemd.
That rules out Debian then. However, you may want to consider doing what I did. 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. If you use Debian Jessie as your base, it will be fairly easy to convert those systems to Devuan Jessie in the future, should you choose to do so.

The systemd packages my Debian live CD contains are:
libpam-systemd
libsystemd0
systemd
systemd-shim

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golinux
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#23 Post by golinux »

pcalvert wrote:The systemd packages my Debian live CD contains are:
libpam-systemd
libsystemd0
systemd
systemd-shim

Phil
And my Devuan only has (for the moment):
libsystemd0.

If there were more people rebuilding packages to remove the unnecessary dependencies, that could be removed too.
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#24 Post by /tmp »

golinux wrote:
This story, "Nine traits of the veteran Unix admin," was originally published at InfoWorld.com.
And that was in 2011 long before the fork when we were all happily using Debian.
Fair enough; I was basing this off of something someone offline had mentioned to me in conversation.
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#25 Post by /tmp »

HuangLao wrote:Image

Next people will say the article was about Slackware that year they came out with a non-systemd version.
I enjoy your use of ad-hominem instead of sound judgement; your contribution is greatly appreciated to the sum of human knowledge.
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#26 Post by HuangLao »

/tmp wrote:
HuangLao wrote:Image

Next people will say the article was about Slackware that year they came out with a non-systemd version.
I enjoy your use of ad-hominem instead of sound judgement; your contribution is greatly appreciated to the sum of human knowledge.
you're most welcome Lennart. as someone who has been around since some of the earliest days of Unix im sure others will agree the later part of your comment. :mrgreen: Actually, it was less ad-hominem and more argumentum ad verecundiam, but I digress and leave you with ad rem. Oxford will be your friend now.

Wheelerof4te
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#27 Post by Wheelerof4te »

OP, why don't you explain to us what is the point of this thread once again? What do you want with this?
Maybe then we will avoid trolling and off-topic talk. Surely that will be in your best interest, no?

deborah-and-ian
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#28 Post by deborah-and-ian »

If the point is to have a stable foundation, then I don't think you could go wrong with either. On the one hand, Debian might still have a few system quirks, which are understandable as this init system is much younger than sysvrc and also does a lot more than just the init part. On the other, Devuan might still have a few quirks with offering replacements to software which depends on systemd or making sure that their alternatives work as intended -- since it's, well, still a young distro. But I think that both distros value the tenets of offering a stable, "don't break what's running well" sort of system.

But that's not the only point, right? You're educating people about open source software and, if they can't run Gnome or other software on Devuan properly, then they might miss out on a very popular piece of software.
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#29 Post by golinux »

deborah-and-ian wrote:You're educating people about open source software and, if they can't run Gnome or other software on Devuan properly, then they might miss out on a very popular piece of software.
Of course whatever is 'popular' if it's the default (with an eye to lock-in down the road). That plus, Linux users these days are more 'submissive' than they used to be . . .
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#30 Post by deborah-and-ian »

golinux wrote:
deborah-and-ian wrote:You're educating people about open source software and, if they can't run Gnome or other software on Devuan properly, then they might miss out on a very popular piece of software.
Of course whatever is 'popular' if it's the default (with an eye to lock-in down the road). That plus, Linux users these days are more 'submissive' than they used to be . . .
Oh, golinux, making a conspiracy of everything. And as a true conspiracy theorist, you're apt at putting words into my mouth I never intended with my post you've quoted. No words were uttered about the alleged default state of Gnome. It is however a popular desktop environment and, like it or not, beyond your hobbyist use of Linux, Gnome and KDE enjoy a wide use in e.g. companies or organisations which already use free software. Knowing your way around a Gnome desktop is not a futile lesson to teach then.

There is also nothing about submission there, but the students should be free to explore all possibilities and then make their own choice. Small tip: If you want to get people to Devuan's side, then maybe calling them submissive (or ridiculing them in other ways) just because they're curious about software you wouldn't use is the wrong way of doing it.

Education about free software should be free in its ideas as well. Posing your conspiracy theories about Red Hat, Gnome or systemd as the only truth is dangerous and limits the choices of others to find out about other opinions. Your approach is IMHO very toxic and anti-social, which is why I hope /tmp will take a more diplomatic and mature way to teach their students.
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Funkygoby
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#31 Post by Funkygoby »

Shall I add my modest contribution to this otherwise splendid discussion.
About the BSD, FreeBSD is not always the best choice. It is good for server where hardware is not exotic. It's also the only BSD who have nvidia attention and receive their proprietary driver.
For laptops (thinkpad above everything else) with no nvidia, OpenBSD seems to be the best choice.
I don't know the rest. I wouldn't recommend PCBSD, what is hard in FreeBSD is also hard in PCBSD.

It's not clear what you want to do with those laptops. A locked workstation or a computer your students can tinker with? Do you want the students to learn the mainstream stuff (linux), grow a unixy knowledge with a more concise system (OBSD have easy conf files, wonderful doc).
Are you trying to prevent the breaking up of Debian with laptops-equipped students?

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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#32 Post by Caitlin »

Sounds to me you're installing Linux on a wide variety of hardware brands, some of which may be lean on resources. And that those who get these machines will be looking for support, either from you or directly from the user groups.

I believe you want a distro that is widely in use, with a friendly, well-established support base for those without a lot of technical knowledge.

May I suggest Ubuntu.

Caitlin

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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#33 Post by kedaha »

Caitlin wrote: I believe you want a distro that is widely in use, with a friendly, well-established support base for those without a lot of technical knowledge.

May I suggest Ubuntu.
I once installed Ubuntu on an elderly friend's laptop and it gave nothing but trouble; I got fed up with his "support" telephone calls. Once I'd installed a stable Debian DE on it, the calls ceased.
I've installed Debian on quite a few computers which are in use by non-technical users who do not stray from typical desktop use; for example, I installed, configured and now periodically update my father's system over the network, via ssh.
Running a desktop system, once initial configuration and software installation has been carried out, is a piece of cake, There is absolutely no reason why any knowledge of systems administration —beyond a few elementary things— should be acquired by the kind of users referred to @userprofile. In my workplace we have the Mate Desktop environment on 5 computers which are all used by users whose only experience is Windows.
A Debian desktop—which is poles apart from a Debian server requiring considerable technical expertise—can be run by anyone.
If you are going to recondition old laptops, then consider pre-installing Debian as, for instance @debian.org/distrib:
Buy a computer with Debian pre-installed

There are a number of advantages to this:

•You don't have to install Debian.
•The installation is pre-configured to match the hardware.
•The vendor may provide technical support.
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deborah-and-ian
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#34 Post by deborah-and-ian »

+1 on kedaha's reply. Ubuntu might make installing some 3rd party software that isn't found in the repos easier, but in the long run, I'd also rather install Debian/Devuan on a newbie's system, just because the support questions will be fewer, unless you haven't made sure that all initial manual setup work has been done.

Debian is especially great for systems that are just installed and not constantly tinkered with. And if you don't go crazy on backports and 3rd party stuff, upgrades are smooth sailing -- moreso than on Ubuntu. Add to that the fact that Debian more clearly separates ethically challenged software.
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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#35 Post by arochester »

Seems to be nothing about the OP now.

...Wandering? Wandered?...

Might get locked.

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Re: "A House Divided...": Preventing the breaking up of Deb

#36 Post by kedaha »

arochester wrote:Seems to be nothing about the OP now.

...Wandering? Wandered?...

Might get locked.
Rather than locking it, better just to mark it as [SOLVED] since, wandering back to the OP
/tmp wrote:With that being said is it better to work within the system of Debian GNU/Linux or pour efforts into a fork like Devuan?
It's entirely up to /tmp to choose whether "to work within the system of Debian GNU/Linux or pour efforts into a fork like Devuan" but if he chooses the latter, then this is not the right forum for further discussion of his project.
But is wandering offtopic offtopic in offtopic? :?
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