[sf-lug] systemd 8-O ... ; -) Re: SF-LUG meeting notes + abt some lightweight distros

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Michael Paoli (Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu):

> Okay, so now I'm tempted to see for myself just how dang easy it is to
> install Debian without systemd.

If you're using the Official Debian installer images, the _immediate_
result at the end of installation will always be a system with systemd
as the init system -- unless you go rather far out of your way to use
preseed stuff (as you did below).  But the point of my Web page is that
_after_ the end of installation, a couple of trivial and obvious apt-get
operations suffice to move laterally to your choice of other init system
(such as OpenRC).  This was in part (and initially) my way of
dispassionately refuting the emotive anti-systemd critics' unsupportable
claims about Debian 8 'Jessie', but also should serve to clarify the
situation for others.

So, basically, the easy and obvious method _if_ using Official Debian
images is to just not have a cow over systemd being the default init
system, and just replace the thing at the end.  Easy.  _Or_ use a
different ISO to create your Debian system, such as Devuan's.


The Devuan distro (forking the entire Debian distro and setting up
new infrastructure) was a rather extreme reaction to the Debian Project
political follies of a few years ago.  IMO, their setting up of an
entirely separate Debian-compatible distro was excessive; i.e., IMO they
could have achieved their goals with much more modest means, like 
just having a systemd-eradicating third-party .deb repo and (if they
wished) their own Debian-compatible installation ISOs, the way the
Aptosid and numerous other efforts have done.  But, basically, they
went full-bore with a distro fork as a gesture of no-confidence in the
Debian Project and its future willingness to accomodate diversity of
views -- and of course their effort is theirs to lavish as they please.

I _can_ say that the Devuan installer ISOs are excellent means of
installing Debian systems.  Which brings me back to my earlier point
that there have _always_ been many installer images for creating Debian
systems, including many maintained entirely by third parties and many of
them not called 'Debian'.  (Aptosid is one of them.)

Long years ago, I got _so_ tired of hearing people make the mistake of
thinking the Official Debian images were the only (or best) way of
installing Debian that I made a page documenting the issue:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html

   Introduction and Explanation

   "The Debian installer sucks!" People saying this are astonished to hear
   me reply "Which one?" Such commentators usually want a
   naive-user-friendly, preferably graphical installer that aggressively
   probe hardware (which they know little about), and don't give a damn
   about non-i386 architectures. They don't value network installs, broad
   choice of journaling filesystems (XFS, JFS), flexibility, small
   installer images, or sparse initial installs.

   All of that means they might hate the Official Debian installer, but
   would be fine using Ubuntu Linux, Xandros Desktop OS, or maybe even
   Knoppix. But they use the wrong installer, complain, are advised of
   their error, and then complain that they had no way to know better.
   Please let them know of this page.
   [...]

Unfortunately, I've not in any way kept up page maintenance since 2007,
and essentially making it pragmatically useful again would need
re-researching the _current_ options, and then a complete page revamp.


> Now our only remaining systemd package is:
> libsystemd0:amd64
> Is it feasible to get rid of that?  I mean heck, we're already well
> beyond not having systemd as our init system.  But if we want to go
> further ...
> $ apt-get -s --purge remove libsystemd0:amd64
> $ apt-cache --installed rdepends libsystemd0:amd64
> Doesn't look like we can rip that trace out.  And what is it, anyway?
> Description-en: systemd utility library
>  The libsystemd0 library provides interfaces to various sytemd components.
> 
> Doesn't sound too horrible, ... especially if it may mostly be a
> "compatibility" layer.

It's a trivial thing that has -literally- no functionality if the
systemd init isn't present on-system, so, again, just not worth having a
cow about.  Just ignore it.

Predictably, there was a huge fight over libsystemd0, a couple of years
back, on the anti-systemd mailing list 'Dng' (Debian's Not GNOME) that
gave birth to the Devuan distro.  I was on the side of people who said
'Look at the damed code.  It literally does nothing in the absence of
systemd, so why worry about it?'  I also said, if you're that paranoid
about libsystemd0, just create a daily cron job that ensures it has
file permissions 000.  The other argument faction kept trying to invent
fanciful scenarios where _future_ libsystemd0 code would eat everyone's
lunch, leave the toilet seat up, and open a subspace channel to V'ger.
In the end, most folks ignored them, as the position was a bit silly.


> We repeat again, as before, except where we get to the
> Software selections point in the install, we deselect everything
> before we continue - yes that will be highly minimal ... but we'll
> adjust that later.

Certainly a respectable way to build _up_ the desired system, rather
than needing to pare it down of unwanted installed packages.  As always,
this approach works only for relatively advanced users who are prepared
to deal with 'Oh, I can't run [foo] yet because it hasn't yet been
installed, so I'll do that.'  Novices tend, in my experience, to get
nervous over the 'How will I know what to install if it's not already
there?' concern.