Debian Fork Threatened

[TWPonKubuntu]

It seems that the systemd controversy has reached the level of a call to fork Debian.

This may not mean much to the average "user", but could split the community of core developers.

The basic conflict is the claim that systemd is a [serious] deviation from the "Linux design philosophy" which has been stated as: "Do one thing and do it well".

Read more here:

http://debianfork.org/

Various reporting threads and blogs:

http://www.itworld.com/article/28359...f-systemd.html

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Fork-...n-462598.shtml

[eggbert]

systemd has been in use for what, 2 or 3 years now? Lots of other distros are using it and the world has not come to an end. Seems like a fork would be a futile effort, as the world is going to keep turning just fine.

[dibl]

Well ... this IS Linux, isn't it? Since when is a threat to fork a problem? It seems to me that every major advance in the OS or one of the DEs brings out a small but noisy crowd of folks who want to go back to the good old days and good old ways, and sometimes they do. The systemd objectors started out on a theory that it was technically flawed, and when that was proven to be untrue, they had to switch to a philosophical objection. Personally, while Unix was certainly a wonderful standard for OS design in its heyday, I'm a little surprised at the notion of holding up Unix as the gold standard for computer system initialization in the year 2014. Kind of like criticizing a 2014 Dodge RAM truck for being unreasonably complex, as compared to my 1975 D100.


EDIT: Here is an intelligent assessment of the threatened Debian fork by the guy who actually did fork siduction from sidux/aptosid in 2011.

[claydoh]

And if Debian allows for swapping init systems, a port is rather moot.

[TWPonKubuntu]

And if Debian allows for swapping init systems, a port is rather moot.

My take on systemd is that it is not amenable to such flexible design. If an app or plugin were hard coded to the systemd api, then the init system swap would fail. Yes, that would be bad design, but it may be an artifact of systemd usage. I hope this will not be the case, but history tells us that stuff happens...

[claydoh]

There is this proposal, which if possible to implement, would allow for choice. Dunno what that would mean for maintaining Gnome in Debian, though......

[GreyGeek]

A fork is not a danger. It will give the two philosophies a chance to duke it out. In the end, the better one will prevail and merge the useful parts of the lesser one into itself. Besides, IMO, development needs to slow down a bit and give bug hunts, utilities development and half finished GUI interfaces a chance to catch up.

Look what happen when someone got tired of RPM and formed Dpkg. Or was it the other way around?

[dibl]

More factual, intelligent discussion of the issue is here.

[TWPonKubuntu]

@dibl
Thanks for that link, it does put the problem in perspective.

[GreyGeek]

Sure does, even with its useless "hate speech" invective.

[woodsmoke]

LOL TOTALLY EXTRANEOUS TO THE INITIAL PURPOSE of the thread, but the very second that I opened this my jaw didn't drop it hit the desktop.

http://debianfork.org/

Not that these guys are the ones but the website, yes website, that I BUILT to advocate for my Calypso menu system was setup VISUALLY just like this one!

And what were ALL of the comments that were made ...........they did not even DEIGN to go past the first few lines to actually SEE the appy working..........

Becuase my website was too.............LURID!.... lol

Guess that is what one produces when one is ........um.........passionate about something! LOL........Luridityiousness! lol

woodtooluridsmoke lol

[GreyGeek]

Wikipedia has a pretty thorough article about systemd.