by kedaha » 2017-08-26 08:10
I am a pragmatic Debian user and prefer to use a system which I know well rather than chop and change.
My knowledge is essentially practical: I know stuff like how to set up and configure systems, backport programs and to solve many problems by consulting the man pages and online searches; however, I know very little about systemd and how it works. Similarly I knew very little about init. Like the linux kernel, the operating system itself, the inner workings of systemd are completely invisible to me except when I use certain commands to troubleshoot services.
So I know how to make things work but I don't know much about how they work. I know that if I follow a guide to installing, for example, postfixadmin, I can get it up and running but more often than not I don't know the whys and wherefores.
My pragmatism does not extend to using nonfree software just because it works; in fact I avoid it entirely.
I am not a programmer (beyond a sprinkling of of html and the hello world program) or a developer; the only thing I can do is systems administration using bash or dash. So I don't have the technical expertise to know whether systemd is better or worse than init for me as a user,
Having said this, I would mention that I've converted an installation of "jessie" to Devuan and signed up for the forum over there. I think maintaining different options is better than a one-size-fits all approach and I hope to learn more about both init and systemd over the course of time.
I have an interest in other operating systems like the BSDs but I already have more than enough on my plate with the complexity of perfecting just my email system to up sticks and move to, for example, FreeBSD, certainly not on my server.
I think I'd have far fewer problems in using a BSD as a desktop system and I definitely would move to a BSD if I were unable to use the Open Sound System (OSSv4) instead of ALSA in Debian.
"Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member".—Groucho Marx