Hello,

I have a customer who wants a laptop without systemd, and I found that
interesting enough to help with it. I am using pure Debian Jessie, I
don't want packages from unknown sources, or old packages.

First I did a normal install with systemd and an XFCE desktop, then I
installed sysvinit, I rebooted to sysvinit, and I removed systemd.
Like on the without-systemd wiki:
--------
apt-get install sysvinit-core sysvinit sysvinit-utils
reboot
apt-get remove --purge --auto-remove systemd
echo -e 'Package: systemd\nPin: origin ""\nPin-Priority: -1' > \
/etc/apt/preferences.d/systemd
--------

This removed too much. It e.g. removed lightdm and task-xfce-desktop,
what I could reinstall without problems.

It also removed some software what I could not install anymore, like:
network manager, hplip, Policykit, gvfs-daemons, colord, packagekit, udisk2.

That network manager was removed was a problem, but it was easy to use a
static network configuration in /etc/network/interfaces. Next time I
would first install an alternative for network manager before removing
systemd. I am using WICD now.

Getting WICD working with a cable was easy, but it was not easy to get
wifi working. Maybe this was because of the strange wifi adapter in the
lapotp, not sure. Some hints after installing the firmware:
rfkill list        # with me, there was a software lock
rfkill unblock all # to unblock software locks
iwconfig           # to find out the wireless device
ifconfig wlan0 up  # for me, the wireless device was not enabled
iwlist wlan0 scan  # you should see wireless networks now

After that, I have configured WICD using the GUI, I have never used WICD
before, I first did not find the configuration. It's behind an arrow in
the top right. You have to tell WICD what's your wlan device, in my case
this was "wlan0". After the configuration I had to restart the WICD
daemon before it saw any wifi network. Then it worked fine, even after a
reboot.

HTML5 video did not work for some reason in Iceweasel, after installing
gstreamer1.0-libav it worked.

Options for suspend and hibernate are grey in XFCE, so you cannot use
them. They need policykit, and policykit needs logind.
I've made an starter on the screen what uses sudo to give the command
"pm-suspemd" to bring the laptop in suspend state.

It seems that you can use logind without systemd as init, but logind is
in the systemd package. So you could install the systemd package, but
not systemd-sysv what makes systemd your init. I did choose not to
install the systemd package, but maybe it's an option.

Synaptic did not start as a normal user, only as root. I think all GUI
programms what need root permission will not work.

The result is an interesting laptop, most things are working.
Maybe I will find some problems in the future.

I've looked at the Cinnamon desktop too, but it was not installable
without systemd.

With regards,
Paul van der Vlis.


--
Paul van der Vlis Linux systeembeheer, Groningen
http://www.vandervlis.nl/