Peter Duffy wrote:
> I've recently been asked to recommend an upgrade route for a number of
> linux servers, and I proposed going to devuan. In response, I've had a
> concern raised which took me by surprise. It was suggested that in the
> future, it may not be possible to find staff who have the skills to
> administer and manage servers running non-systemd or pre-systemd
> distros/releases.

That's actually a concern that I think is valid. Sad. But valid.
However it depends upon the scale of the timeline.

You are working with them right now. Are you expecting to do so over
the next 3 months? Six months? Year? Two years? And so on... In
the next release cycle they have expertise. And that expertise says
to go with Devuan.

In 10 years who is to say? In 10 years if systemd continues to be
required by the most popular distros then, just like MS training a
generation with Windows, it might be difficult to find expertise
outside of that mainstream. But that is 10 years away. The future is
very hard to predict correctly.

> I've tried to give reassurance - but I'm still wondering if this could
> be a valid concern. I'd always taken the view that it's primarily the
> linux sysadmin community which is trying to stop the onslaught of the
> systemd juggernaut - but obviously, the greater the proportion of
> servers running systemd-based distros/releases, the less staff get
> exposed to non-systemd management techniques and tools.

I don't know what type of activity or environment this is in but I can
guess that there is software and that it is running. Is it a web
server? Is it a C&C mill? Is it a point-of-sale system? Whatever.
That they are now talking about upgrading makes me think they get
entrenched and then stick there for a long time. They are not keeping
updated. As long as the system is running the software they need they
would prefer to freeze on that and keep it stable for a long time.
But now they are doing a lump-effort upgrade.

I would reassure them this way. I would assure them that the software
they are running now is portable on either type of system. (Is it? I
assume so.) In which case it runs now on a system without systemd.
And in the future if one were to replace the hosting OS with one
running systemd then the software would run there too. Right now the
best wisdom is that the hosting OS is most reliable with Devuan. And
with the hosting OS being reliable then their software will be most
reliable running upon it.

A decade later if a new generation arrives and if they only know
systemd systems then in that future time they could change the hosting
OS to one they think is the better choice at that time. It's all
about providing the most reliable hosting system for the task that
needs to be done. In the past it was different than it is now. We
now have our current systems. In the future it may be different. But
in the here and now if you think the best option is Devuan then that
is the best option now. And doing that now does not preclude making a
different decision later.

Ten years ago we would have all chosen Debian as the right answer for
the hosting OS at that time. We would have been right. But here we
are a decade later. The future is hard to accurately see. It's
always in motion.

> I'd be grateful for thoughts and comments.

It is the tyranny of the default. People will install the most
popular whatever. And it will have defaults. And whatever those
defaults are those will be the most common use configuration. Very
few will actually change the defaults.

Most of us here though are more likely to be the people who do not see
the defaults as hard limitations. We will open things up. We void
warranties. We make modifications. We would rather be pilots than
passengers.

Bob