On Thu, Jan 09, 2020 at 07:16:38PM +0100, Alessandro Vesely via Dng wrote:
> > # apt install libelogind0 libpam-elogind synaptic
>
>
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> The following additional packages will be installed:
> elogind libept1.5.0 policykit-1
> Suggested packages:
> dwww software-properties-gtk
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
> libpam-ck-connector
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
> elogind libelogind0 libept1.5.0 libpam-elogind policykit-1 synaptic
> 0 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 1 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
> Need to get 876 kB/3,047 kB of archives.
> After this operation, 11.4 MB of additional disk space will be used.
> Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
> Abort.
>
>
> if I just try synaptic, I get additional packages libept1.5.0 and policykit-1,
> so adding elogind doesn't seem to help.

This is fine and just as expected. Policykit is not related with
systemd. policykit is a framework which allows "normal" users to run
commands which usually need "root" permissions like removable drive
mounting, installing packages, shutting down the system. Its main purpose
is to provide a "smooth" feel to GUI desktop users: E.g. Plug in USB-Stick
and just click in the file manager on it without the need to enter a
password or invoke sudo.

For that purpose policykit uses a rule set. E.g. a typical rule to allow
mounting a removable drive could be "User must be logged in locally and
the session should be still active ( Not switched to another
terminal/screen)". In order to determine the state of a user session and if
the corresponding program is part of this session policykit can use
either:

- consolekit (deprectaed and not working well anymore)
- systemd (...)
- elogind (Just the session management part of systemd extracted)

Besides that session management, elogind/systemd provide some additional
functions like commands to shutdown/reboot the system as user.

You might be able to run without them on a headless machine or with simple
desktop environments but virtually all the "big" desktop environments
nowadays depend on availability of either "systemd" or "elogind". Even
such applications like "apt" or "apt-*" are now linked to libsystemd0. So
if you're going to have a package manager, you'll have either
libsystemd0 or libelogind0 installed.

Back to topic: I personally stick with apt or aptitude but since the
the family sticks more or less to GUI, I have also installed
"muon". It is Qt/KDE based and is quite similar to aptitude. I didn't like
synaptic since it performs too much "background" magic as I'd tolerate.

cheers
Andreas

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