The right answer is to do whatever the customer asks, as stupid as it seems.

If the customer was intelligent, he would not even ask a GNU/Linux system in the first place, it's bloated by nature, kitrooted by default and uselessly complicated (SystemD is just one more argument against Linux, not the worse one).

I've found that my own Devuan sends https requests to an apparently unconfigured Windows server on Azure (all web browser were down). Is it infected ? not by anything that usual tools can detect. What does that ? I've no idea, so far I did not find (requests are rare and fast). I decided to put my working PC (not the one I'm using to write this email, but the one used to connect to my customers' servers) behind a firewall to shut any useless access to the Internet down. I resign trying to find whatever software in the thousands installed is hacking my data and sending them to the Internet.

Is using a Devuan can be considered "safe" when litteraly thousands of people build thousands of unaudited packages with thousands of unaudited softwares ? OMG NO !!! Have you seen the world outside ? what makes you think a second that there is no hacker in such a huge team and that all those people act only for the best of things ?

My Devuan is behind an OpenBSD. The OpenBSD has no software installed, it's a pure system as release by the OpenBSD team, the code base is small, strongly audited by a very small and known team. It can be considered safe, at least safer. Much safer than any Debian based distribution. My network configuration is so safe that I could safely store unencrypted Bitcoin private keys on an unpatched Windows 98 without any risk if I wish.

If the customer was intelligent, he would ask a small system strongly audited, a code base as small as possible and that only very few software compiled by hand are run and installed on it, everything behind a strong firewall who not only filter what's coming in, but as well and more importantly what's going out. SystemD is just the tree who hides the forest.

Good luck with that.

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

On Saturday, November 20th, 2021 at 21:59, Steve Litt <slitt@???> wrote:

> steph.tougard via Dng said on Sat, 20 Nov 2021 13:06:53 +0000
>
> > The question is so stupid that it does not even call for an answer.
>
> Ad-homonym logical fallacy.
>
> > If an admin is unable to understand a Unix system without SystemD,
> >
> > he's not a sys admin.
>
> No True Scotsman logical fallacy.
>
> The OP had pushback from the customer. If the OP wants to install
>
> Devuan, the right answer is a path to reassuring the customer.
>
> SteveT
>
> Steve Litt
>
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