On Thu, Jul 14, 2016 at 02:24:31AM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
>
> What I did (that was documented on the OpenRC conversion page) sufficed
> to prove that common claims about deep and pervasive systemd-dependency
> problems in Debian 8 have been vastly exaggerated (I list in detail the
> ones that actually exist). Also, I show that it's trivial to make
> Debian 8 run just fine using one of the four other packaged init systems
> -- with high confidence the other three also work great, and also nosh
> (compatible third-party package) -- as long as you don't need
> NetworkManager, a couple of packages from five bloatware DEs, the
> GNOME-oriented metapackage for HPLIP, and a couple of miscellaneous
> obscure apps (such as daisy-player).
>
> That is not, in itself, a systemd cure for _all_ of Debian-stable. Some
> people through bad judgement like NetworkManager ;-> , and through
> equally questionable judgement wish to install the entire kitchen-sink
> suites of GNOME, MATE, Cinnamon, KDE, or Razor-qt. Moreover, other
> irksome dependencies may arise, though (given release policies) very
> likely not until Debian-stable is Debian 9 'Stretch' at the earliest.
>
> To be sure to be able to keep the DE freaks happy, as well as to ensure
> ability to deal with future annoyances, more is required -- such as
> repos of fix-up packages. Yours, mine, Devuan's, whoever's.
>
> This is what Siduction and Aptosid already do, to run a Debian-variant
> community based on an enforced policy, in their case 'we will further
> stabilise the package stream in Debian-unstable'. Which works great, by
> the way.
>
> There are numerous ways to enforce a local (or limited-interest) policy
> on a distribution's offerings. That is one of them. I list in my
> OpenRC conversion page a number of ways to overcome dependency problems:
> find a third-party repo's package that's built better, rebuild the
> package locally using dpkg-buildpackage or debuild (i.e., using
> different build options), make a new package using debhelper and
> upstream source code. The results of any of those can then be
> republished as part of a package repo.
>
> A number of people getting together and pooling their third-party repos
> for that purpose would be closely analogous to Siduction and Aptosid's
> repos that fix-up Debian-unstable.

I upgraded my main system from debian wheezy to Devuan jessie recently.
I find it extremely convenient that I don't have to do all that
pinning and selecting particular packages and checking whether
they covertly invoke systemd.

I'm sure I'm not the only user that appreciates the work Devuan has
put into this so that I don't have to.

The only thing I've lost is the display/login manager gdm, which I
don't really miss enough to install an alternative. startx works just
fine. And it's simpler.

...
...
>
> Percentage of Debian 8 packages you can use of you don't want systemd
> around (again, unless I've missed any) is thus:
>
> (43671 - 97) / 43671 * 100 = 99.77%


That's probably the reason why amprolla works so well.

-- hendrik