Fred DC said on Fri, 5 Jan 2024 12:25:08 +1300

[snip]

>No offence meant. English is not my first language. My apologies in
>advance.
>
>But only after a successful conquest (physical + winning the hearts).
>But obviously it all depends on the leadership-quality of the
>sydtemd-free distros to fend off these uncalled for challenges.
>
>Linux always had its challenges. Way back in 1996 the audio was
>problematic, ext1/2fs had its quirks from time to time and bringing up
>XF86 for the first time was a very scary experience to say the least.

In America many worse challenges. There was a horrible law called SSSCA
( http://www.troubleshooters.com/tpromag/200111/200111.htm ) that could
have made Linux use illegal. There was the active sabotage by Gates and
Balmer and Mundie ("Linux is a cancer"). There was the 2001-2004
recession when all the monied factions pulled out of Linux, leaving it
a hobby again. Now it's threatened by the monied factions who pulled
out in that recession. But somehow, Linux has always survived. Linux
was a miracle when born ("For using a monolithic kernel I would give you
an 'F'!"). Its survival today, especially in its sans-systemd distros,
is a miracle. But somehow this miracle keeps on happening.

>But it was fun and rewarding to be able to enjoy such a fine *free
>OS*.

Free as in beer, free as in liberty, AND reasonably POSIX compliant!
Linux is such a gift.

>The freedom which comes with it has to be earned and if a user is
>not willing to get his hands a tiny bit dirty he is in the wrong
>department.

Yes. Those not willing to learn can always use Windows (and suffer the
consequences). As far as these theoretical admins who want a perfectly
easy life, if they don't like POSIX let em go to windows.

>At least that is my attitude. Today, the slightest
>challenge comes along and some people think the sky is caving in. That
>is not going to happen unless some idiot presses the red button. IMHO
>that's life, period.
>
>Personally, I am not worried if sysv-rc should finally go, even if
>rc.S should go. The Debian/Devuan runit-package has progressed well
>and is working fine for a general Desktop-Environment and is supported
>by an excellent set of debian-runit-specific documents. Any missing
>start-script can in most cases easily be written by having a look at
>the equivalent sysv-script. I (not a techie and 84+ years young, no
>kidding) can manage it - so what *is* the problem??????

Wait a minute. Let's not perpetuate the myth that older people can't
tech. You ask "what's the problem". One problem is the horrible mess
that Open Source software's documentation is in. A mass of ambiguity,
outdatedness, contradiction and just plain inaccuracy. Bless those
people at Gentoo and Arch for their documentation.

>I use 'runit-init' on and off since the 'devuan-ascii' days. For a
>more future-proof systemd-free Linux s6 (a distant cousin of systemd)

And an extremely close cousin of daemontools and runit.

>is perhaps a better long-term solution. With a s6 compatible logind
>and a more user-friendly management tool I like to think that a lot of
>present and future problems caused by systemd would be more
>manageable. And I hear that s6 is much more Unix than Windows.

You got that right. S6 is modular. You can pick and choose what parts of
it you want.

>
>But what worries me slightly more right now is the fact that the whole
>pam-sheebang is scheduled to be scrapped by Debian-Limited and I don't
>think elogind etc is ready for that one. I must say, a smart move by
>them but it also could boomerang very badly for them. If they really
>will go ahead as scheduled by them, I have my doubts. Fedora with its
>much smaller package-base should be able to do it and if anything
>breaks in Fedora so what, that distro is not meant to be a production
>distro. Hopefully, Debian-Limited learned something from their
>usrmerge fiasco.

Debian's got the money to patch up the consequences. But hey, don't we
have vdev now? And couldn't we just grab elogind from git while it
still exists, and use it going forward?

>Obviously I would like to continue using xfce4 as my desktop but if I
>have to compromise too much I will just simply switch back to a
>window-managed gui. It is as simple as that.

You're the kind of person who should be using Linux.

>The way I see it: As long as we are not caught napping or start
>panicking we should be fine.

I agree.

>
>And a big thank-you to all the devs for their quality work.

Quality work and courage.

SteveT

Steve Litt

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21