Re: [LUG] Systemd

On 9 December 2017 at 08:26, <lfs.mailing@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm going to try and not rise to the bait...

Wasn't bait, just an honest view from someone who's been using Debian for two decades.

People have different opinions. I don't mind that yours is different. You have clearly looked at the problem and made a choice. I did too. That they're different matters little, we each of us wanted something the other didn't. Both of us are right.

The 'vua' of devuan is anÂacronym of Veteran Unix Admins; that in itself is halfway good enough:
to my mind,

More important that the majority of the Debian group, also very experienced, not agreeing?

The split shows this is a core and deeply held belief that was not reconcilable. The great thing is that users have a choice, don't you agree?

in a production environment, the most important
consideration after security is stability.Â

That confuses me. I have something like a dozen production and two dev servers running Debian. They are *all* very, very, very stable. As in - completely stable. I don't doubt devuan is also stable; my older servers are running much the same software and, disks failing aside, I don't recall the last time I had an issue that wasn't down to misconfiguration. Certainly not for years.

I don't know how that could be improved. Some are on sysv (old) but most are on systemd. Both are stable and mature.

So call me conservative,
reactionary even, but I cannot be doing with a tool that has an
opinion on how to behave when under load.

Many would say that an OS that can prioritise tasks when it's running out of resources isn't a terrible thing. If you've ever been visited by the oomkiller fairy that seems to kill every process except the one with the memory leak until the system crashes, you might agree.Â

In a nutshell, my advice is that before making the choice between
systemd-sysV init and native sysV init, I would really get to grips
with the issues.Â They really are not trivial.Â You could always
try dual-booting while you are gathering your facts.

A fine view. I'm never against someone trying to learn things for themselves.

But... How? This isÂ a serious question. There is so much distorted information about this thorny question from both sides of the fence that it is very difficult to separate wheat from chaff. Certainly if you search for this question in the debian mailing list archives when it was discussed you will want to creep quietly away and close the door behind you.

If you know of a comparison document that is agreed by both sides to be fair and unbalanced, please do link to it to help OP.

My personal view is that systemd is here, it's been chosen, that fight has happened and been won by people who know more about what's right for Debian than I, a mere user, do. I could spend years complaining about it but it won't make a jot of difference. I think it's more productive to learn the new system and work with it.

Again, just my view, but I think Sysv lost the battle and the war. It's time is limited. It is very old software, has held back core development and more and more things will not support it in the future.

And for the OP's question - no new user should willingly choose to adopt obsoleted software over mainstream unless they have a specific reason to. They will end up having to learn both when Devuan shrinks to obscurity in a year or ten.

And while I'm nailing colours to masts, what's the policy on top
posting around here....

Few people give a monkeys.

Useful if like this you are choosing to answer specific points (although with modern clients requoting isn't always as simple as it was under Fidonet and cli based clients). The client I'm using is probably using html, an even worse sin to the old guard than layout. I will not run a separate plaintext client just for one mailing list.

As someone who's adminned communities for many many years, there are two guidelines I encourage.

1) Don't seek to deliberately offended.

2) Don't seek to be deliberately offended.Â

If a message is clear and easy to understand it has achieved its purpose. If you don't like the method, please don't seek to force your view over someone else's, it's just not polite. In this particular group, life is not as combative as many other LUGs and this encourages new users to jump right in without worrying too much if their message is constructed to a particular technical standard. That is as it should be and I'm fairly sure the majority of other users would agree.

If this group turns into yet another elitest and bombastic linux group like so many others with egos forcing pedantica and getting personally insulting about trivial points, I won't be hanging around.

And lastly, welcome.Â