On Sat, Jul 22, 2023 at 09:49:36PM +0100, Manfred Wassmann via Dng wrote:
> On Saturday, July 22, 2023, Marjorie Roome via Dng <dng@???>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Firstly elogind doesn't have any systemd dependencies. .
> >
>
> Of course not because it is a forked subset of systemd so that people like
> this diziet can pretend they were running Debian without systemd.
>
> But WRT it being in Devuan, that doesn't matter. Nobody forces you to
> install it unless you want to install packages which depend on it, like
> Gnome, but noone forces you to install that either. And that is what Devuan
> really is about: Leaving the choice to the user.
>
> Debian has left that path when they started pottering, forced systemd down
> the throat of their users and drove the people out of the project which
> then started Devuan. The only point of not having systemd as an option in
> Devuan is that you simply can install Debian if you want that choice.
>
> Debian OTOH doesn't give you any choice and that is clearly visible when
> you closely read the linked blog post: You can hack together a Debian
> without systemd, but that's not supported by Debian. A choice would be e.g.
> an installer menu which lets you select an init system.

There was an installer that was close to giving users a choice whether to install systemd or sysvinit, but shortly before release when the absence of a choce was pointed out, it wa decided that it was too close the the release to put the option back in. I always considered that a flimsy excuse.

      It was that decision that told me that Debian had definitively gone over to systemd, despite lip servise to choice.  (They did produce instructions how to remove systemd after a successful installation with systemd.

-- hendrik