On Fri, 10 Apr 2015 19:14:40 +0200
Anto <aryanto@???> wrote:

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

> > 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/.

I too have felt the pain, which would be absent with a
from-the-foundation sans-systemd distro like Devuan, Gentoo, Funtoo,
and maybe Manjaro OpenRC edition.

The route I've taken, so far, with experimental machines initting with
sysvinit, OpenRC, Epoch and Runit, was to remove as much "desktopism"
as possible. This isn't for everybody, but it works for me because I
never did like the high degree of "desktopism" that Xfce delivers.

The first thing I do, every time, is get rid of the display manager
(lightdm etc), so it boots to a virtual terminal, from which I can log
in and run startx. There are secure ways of doing this.

I also use Openbox, a window manager that is nearly useless as it comes
from the factory, but able to become a red hot productivity machine
with the addition of dmenu and a set of hotkeys that work for you.

My experience is that, on systemd-equipped distros on which you've
installed an alternate init, NetworkManager isn't worth the heartache
it takes to set up. Running the Wicd daemon and using the Wicd-gtk
client is an alternative that takes more keystrokes. Alternatively,
some day I'm going to create an nCurses equivalent of NetworkManager,
but not any time soon.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
http://www.troubleshooters.com/28