Debian Is Back To Discussing Init Systems, Freedom of Choice

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Debian Is Back To Discussing Init Systems, Freedom of Choice

The init system discussion is back on in the Debian camp... A vote will be taking place in two weeks to look at preserving the "freedom of choice of init systems."..

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTgxNjM

[Guest]

Debian Is Back To Discussing Init Systems, Freedom of Choice

Sometimes I wonder how they managed to create 12 releases over 18 years.

[dh04000]

Sometimes I wonder how they managed to create 12 releases over 18 years.

Reminds me of the US congress.

[nanonyme]

Well, this proposal already has a valid counter-proposal anyway

[Sundance]

Well, this isn't necessarily a bad idea. I imagine that packages would just depend on logind-virtual and udev-virtual instead of systemd-logind and systemd-udev. But until there are solid, non-systemd implementations of those, I'm not sure it changes much.

Well, this proposal already has a valid counter-proposal anyway

Oh. Link?

[r_a_trip]

Back to square one.

**A number of init systems exist, and it is clear that there is not yet broad consensus as to what the best init system might look like.

The above is quite clearly contradicted by:

**because so much unrelated (sic) software has ended up depending on a particular init system

Software didn't accidentally end up with dependencies on systemd. Upstream is choosing to depend on systemd, as systemd is solving problems upstream has and no other low level system suite has tackled them quite as well as systemd. Upstream quite clearly has reached a consensus. (Don't claim this is because of UDEV. Upstream could have set a requirement on EUDEV just as well.)

The "this is not how we do things" crowd is tilting at windmills. systemd is filling a need, that the other hodgepodge and incomplete low level system suites aren't. More and more userspace projects are opting to make use of the functionality that systemd provides.

This has shifted far out of the init system territory, so long ago already. Init is but a teensy part of it and the real meat on the bones is the unified, low level plumbing that the systemd suite provides. Upstreams are interested in systemd for the login facilities, for the clean process-management, for the possibility to run on a rootless display system, for the future sandboxing options and possibly a unified software distribution solution, etc. Upstream doesn't care that systemd-init comes with the package, because it is the most uninteresting part of it.

Ultimately it doesn't matter how Debian decides this. Upstream says systemd is a dependency. If Debian rejects the GR, they will save themselves a boatload of work rewriting and patching for other init systems + low level plumbing. If they accept the GR, packagers will be very busy patching for anything Debian decides to offer as low level ways to manage the system.

[demosthenese]

Choice was never a problem for the last 18 years - it was sysV or sysV. Why is having the choice of a plethora of init systems so important now?

As for the "the burden of effort required to change init system becomes too great" -- so instead we will impose an ongoing burden on package maintainers to support sysV, systemd, upstart, openRC... Yeah that makes sense. I mean it's not as if some packagers are aren't already struggling to keep up with upstream.

Multiplying the number of available init systems also multiplies the number of bugs to squash, and requires package maintainers to have test systems running each init system.

If systemd doesn't pan out, then the one time pain of moving away is better than the ongoing mess of supporting all the alternatives.

[schmidtbag]

Seriously? They're doing this NOW? After a (what seems to be) year-long debate over which init system to use, and then transitioning to systemd in STABLE? Seriously debian is screwing up left and right. They used to be my favorite distro, but now I would prefer Windows or Mac over Debian. I'm taking it off of my dad's computer as it's causing problems every other week now and I'm fed up with it. A co-worker of mine is also getting serious issues every other week - unrelated ones. I myself have encountered problems on my work computer (which also runs debian) but I've been lucky to not have something break in the past month. None of these systems are running sid.

It just really annoys me how debian prides itself in stability, yet my cutting-edge Arch setup has been running stable (on an overclocked system) for roughly 2 years straight with only 1 significant hiccup along the way.

[dh04000]

Well, this proposal already has a valid counter-proposal anyway

Continues to sound like Congress!

[pingufunkybeat]

It just really annoys me how debian prides itself in stability, yet my cutting-edge Arch setup has been running stable (on an overclocked system) for roughly 2 years straight with only 1 significant hiccup along the way.

I've been running Stable for the last 4 years (Squeeze, then Wheezy) and haven't had a single hiccup in all this time.

The only minor issue was that the plasma widget for controlling Network Manager crashes occasionally, but that's an upstream problem, you can just restart it.