[sf-lug] SF-LUG meeting of June 20, 2016

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

> Maestro and I discussed briefly the new Debian.  He does not
> care for the new startup "systemd".  Neither did a lot of other
> Debian users and they created a fork to use the older startup.

(The 'older startup' refers to SysVInit.)

Although systemd is installed by default if you install Debian 8
'Jessie' using the Official Debian installer disc, it's extremely easy
to switch after installation to OpenRC, SysVInit, Upstart, runit, 
or nosh as the init, instead.

I've documented how to do so here:
http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Debian/openrc-conversion.html
(See below for DE consequences, though.)

The distribution fork (Devuan) is worthwhile and interesting.
Among other things, Devuan enables the GNOME Desktop Environment (DE) to
function without systemd.  This required significant work on support
software for GNOME.

The crisis within the Debian Project that ultimately caused its adoption
of systemd for Debian 8 'Jessie' was caused by GNOME's sudden dependency
on a piece of software called systemd-logind, part of the systemd suite.
In consequence, there are now some DEs, most notably GNOME, that can no
longer be installed in their entirety on Debian 8 'Jessie' unless you
have systemd installed.  I cover this on my Web page.

When I say 'in their entirety', I mean that a large percentage of the
constituent packages of the affected DEs can be installed on Debian 8
'Jessie' without systemd dependency problems, just not the 'kitchen
sink' metapackage.  So, you could have substantively all of GNOME, for
example, just not a couple of problematic piece of it, by installing all
the _other_ GNOME packages.

> 	6:40 P.M.Robert from South San Francisco came in for his
> second visit to out meeting.  He was looking for "rooky"
> help to get his Toshiba Satellite, a recent model boot
> up from a Linux medium.
>   	 He also needed some advice about an Internet connection
> and I believe Jim may have helped there.

If Robert still has problems, he's welcome to write to
installers at linuxmafia.com, and CABAL can give him in-person help at any
upcoming CABAL meeting in Menlo Park.