There are are largely unrelated topics that I'd like us to consider. Being
free to use whichever init one likes, or at least to not be forced into
systemd, is a big one, but:

1. Bootloaders! I'm personally fairly nonplussed about GRUB. It's massively
complex, and it can make it hard to do simple things. There are alternatives
out there, but for modern systems, my favourite is elilo. My laptop's
currently running a test build where it's got a root on a ZFS mirror sitting
atop two LUKS devices, and the entirety of the bootloader config is this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
prompt
timeout=50
default=Devuan

image=vmlinuz
    label=Devuan
    initrd=initrd
    read-only
    append="boot=zfs root=tank/ROOT/default"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Compare that with GRUB doing the same thing! And there are lots more:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_boot_loaders

It's be nice to see an elilo package, and equally nice to have how-to
documents showing how to set up the various bootloaders. I can tackle much of
this over time and after learning more, but I'd like to know how people feel
about it.

Anyway, this leads to potentially a much bigger topic:

2. Third-party repositories. One of the few ways Ubuntu has a moral leg up on
Debian is their seamless support for PPAs.

One of the problems with systemd is that it does too much for one project, and
its parts are entangled such that it becomes harder and harder to replace
individual pieces piecemeal. Imagine Sendmail growing loghandling, a DHCP
server, and general service management facilities, all interwoven such that
it's easier to use them all together than to choose different components for
the different functions. This is one of the issues with systemd - suddenly the
incentive to build a better mousetrap is gone, because it's much harder to fit
in a better syslog service, a better process monitor, a better NTP server, a
better DNS suite.

Just so, a GNU/Linux distribution can take some steps to make it easier still
for developers to offer software for the platform. Ubuntu does this to good
effect with PPAs, and Fedora does it with COPR:

    https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ppas
    https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Copr

I think this would be a good feature for Devuan. Let's work to entice software
developers to write code for Devuan by making it easy for nontechnical users
to access their software.

I'd love to hear from others about this stuff, and I'll see about bringing the
topics up in tomorrow's meeting, if we have time.

-- 
Mason Loring Bliss            mason@???            http://blisses.org/  
The sand bats of Manark IV look like inanimate rock crystals until they attack.