On 10/04/15 12:15, Paul van der Vlis wrote:
> 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.

Hello Paul,

I understand your pain as I have been there.

I managed to have everything working with Debian jessie without any
packages containing "*systemd*". I also used XFCE 4.10, lightdm and wicd
to manage the connection to my WiFi and LAN. For XFCE issue with suspend
and hibernate, I had it working by using xfce4-power-manager package
including some of its related packages and dependencies from
http://angband.pl/debian/dists/nosystemd/.

However, a few weeks ago I downgraded my PC to Debian wheezy. I thought
it is safer to use it before switching to Devuan, instead of using the
packages from Debian jessie which a lot of them are dependent on
systemd. I think it is very likely that a lot of other packages will be
made dependent on systemd in the near future. So my PC is now using the
packages from Debian wheezy and wheezy-backports. It was quite a pain to
downgrade all necessary packages like downgrading glibc 2.19 to 2.13. Of
course I can only use XFCE 4.8 because of this.

About Synaptic, I only use it for easy searching for packages. But for
package installation and upgrade, I usually use apt-get as I thought it
is safer. In any case, I think administration type of packages like
Synaptic, GParted, etc., must only be executed with root privilege. So
they should be launched with gksu in desktop. For Synaptic for instance,
what I did was to copy /usr/share/applications/synaptic.desktop into
~/.local/share/applications, and then edit it to change
"Exec=synaptic-pkexec" into "Exec=gksu synaptic".

Cheers,

Anto