On Mon, Feb 16, 2015 at 11:23:09AM -0500, Steve Litt wrote:

[cut]

> Hi Didier,
>
> I'll explain my motivations, and perhaps others are in my boat...
>

Since everybody seems to be on an "outing" mood, here are the reasons
why I am here :)

I fell in love with unix by reading an encyclopedia of computer
science, in the early 90s, around the age of 12 or 13. I learned the
usage of the shell and of a few dozens basic commands (including a bit
of vi) several years before I had the opportunity to actually sit in
front of a unix machine and use them. I still remember the day I was
presented with a "login: " prompt for the first time :)

Simply put, for me the unix phylosophy was just straightforwardly
winning and "right", by itself. "Keep It Simple" and "Do One Thing and
Do It Well" are concepts I didn't make any effort to understand and
digest, to the point that after so many years I consider them a
natural part of the "programmer" side of myself.

At first I chose GNU/Linux because it was readily available on Intel
machines at the time (this is what we had available at the
university), and then I gradually learned that Free Software was much
more and much better than just "well-designed software that works
well". Hence, after a few years wandering here and there and trying
almost anything, from Slackware to RH to MDK to TL, Debian seemed just
the natural choice of a GNU/Linux distro. Again, it incarnated the
good old "KISS" and "DOTADIW" principles, and the "Debian releases
when it's time" represented a severe adherence to the standards of
stability and security that distinguished (at least part of) the Unix
legacy. I started with Potato testing, and never turned back.

I have worked as a programmer, sysadmin, engineer, architect,
carpenter and plumber, but little has changed since then in my
users/admin/programmer needs: WMaker/xmonad, mutt, Emacs AND vim, gcc,
autotools, python, LaTeX and a little bit more. But all this stuff has
to stay on top of a system that I must have the possibility to study,
understand, modify, adapt, mend and destroy, if necessary. I feel that
one step at a time I have already lost control on several parts of the
system in the last 10 years or so, a reasonable price to be payed for
an enlarged and inclusive community.

But I clearly perceive the systemd-nonsense (together with some other
nonsense the Linux community has brought on board in the last few
years) both as an unbearable threat to my freedom (of tinkering,
playing and modding my OS as I wished) and as a dangerous move away
from the principles that inspired the *nix phylosophy and that brought
me to love it. If the systemd-nonsense is the direction GNU/Linux is
going to follow, then most of the fun will be over pretty soon,
believe it or not.

That's why I am here, why I really hope that Devuan will live and
flourish, and why I am so grateful to the guys that are working
behind the scenes to make Devuan happen :)

HND

KatolaZ

--
[ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ --- GLUG Catania -- Freaknet Medialab ]
[ me [at] katolaz.homeunix.net -- http://katolaz.homeunix.net -- ]
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