Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 5, 2013 23:55 UTC (Tue) by wahern (subscriber, #37304)
In reply to: Which init system for Debian? by robert.cohen@anu.edu.au
Parent article: Which init system for Debian?

I had never heard of it, but according to Wikipedia OpenRC is already portable to non-Linux. That's definitely a plus.

People bemoan monocultures, but when it comes to writing and designing portable code all of sudden they incredulously ask, "what's it worth it me?"

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2013 1:41 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (8 responses)

OpenRC is a nice improvement to init scripts themselves, by way of eliminating boilerplate, but it doesn't fix any of the core problems with sysvinit's architecture, and in particular it doesn't provide an event-based system that fits with the kernel's event-based structure. In short, OpenRC doesn't actually solve the underlying problem.

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2013 11:07 UTC (Wed) by keeperofdakeys (guest, #82635) [Link] (7 responses)

As mentioned in the linked wiki, it does provide some event-based functionality, by using udev rules. No matter which system is picked though, some integration work will have to take place anyway.

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 7, 2013 7:50 UTC (Thu) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (6 responses)

OpenRC doesn't provide anything that GNOME wants from systemd, like logind for instance. Suggest looking at wiki for the notes regarding systemd, the others are not that interesting as they don't solve the issue regarding ConsoleKit vs logind. Upstarts solution is to maintain a fork, not a good solution but at least it is mentioned. OpenRC: silence. That doesn't inspire confidence.

gnome?

Posted Nov 14, 2013 8:39 UTC (Thu) by amtota (guest, #4012) [Link] (1 responses)

> OpenRC doesn't provide anything that GNOME wants from systemd

Seeing how gnome seems to want to dictate everything, a little pushback sounds like positive thing to me!

gnome?

Posted Nov 15, 2013 19:04 UTC (Fri) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]

Now, will GNOME have to do the work with Debian or will Debian have to make GNOME work?

Because that's important to figure out before you talk about who is pushing whom back.

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 23, 2013 0:26 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (3 responses)

That might have been an important consideration for Squeeze; Gnome used to be a major player in desktop Linux. But for Jessie? I hardly see that what the Gnome guys want matters much. Debian has moved to XFCE as their default desktop. I'd be more interested in what the XFCE, Cinnamon, and MATE guys can make best use of.

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 23, 2013 0:31 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

That isn't quite accurate. At this point, they haven't made any final decisions for their release yet.

http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a...

Note that Debian switched to Xfce before and then reverted the decision so it is unclear at this point what the release default will be. I don't think the choice of desktop environment is a big influence over the current debate however. So this is somewhat of a side discussion prompted by one of the changes.

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 23, 2013 9:37 UTC (Sat) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

In an ideal world, the fact that Gnome requires systemd should make Debian's switching to it an easier decision …

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 24, 2013 12:32 UTC (Sun) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I think GNOME requires the systems DBus interface. If Debian implements it for Upstart, that should be sufficient.

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2013 6:57 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (1 responses)

I think avoiding 'monoculture' is more of a Slashdot meme than a considered approach; anyone who does real work with computers understands that it is best to simplify and consolidate where possible. Then you save your intellectual firepower for the cases where a mix of different technologies is really needed.

Besides, with the global scale of Linux development, its portability to almost anything, and its scalability from tiny to huge systems, I don't think it is fair to characterize Linux as a 'monoculture'.

Linux is a monoculture?

Posted Nov 15, 2013 22:51 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

YES IT IS!

As someone who has worked on a variety of systems (and that was before the PC/MS monoculture) I bemoan the fact that computing is now a Windows/linux duoculture.

There's an awful lot of historical viewpoints that have been swamped but imho are much better. I'm not saying the other systems are better overall, but there are lots of things where the "Unix Way" is "different".

My favourite moan is the cp command - you cannot predict FROM THE COMMAND ITSELF what the results are going to be. Can anyone predict the result of "cp a b" without knowing anything about the system it's running on? There are at least two possible outcomes depending on the environment ...

I come from a Pr1mos background - like Unix that was a Multics derivative - but it was noticeably different from Unix/Linux. Other people swear by Vax/VMS - I never used it but it had many features people liked that have been lost ...

Cheers,
Wol

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2013 10:47 UTC (Wed) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (2 responses)

> I had never heard of it, but according to Wikipedia OpenRC is already portable to non-Linux. That's definitely a plus.

I don't think Linux development should slow down for "non Linux" operating systems to catch up. So if technology A is better then technology B but the only downside of A is that A does not work on non Linux operating systems choosing B based on that is a not great way forward.

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2013 13:19 UTC (Wed) by cwillu (guest, #67268) [Link] (1 responses)

Debian is not exclusively Linux though, so yes, given their stated preferences, it is definitely a plus.

Which init system for Debian?

Posted Nov 6, 2013 16:10 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

There is already porting that needs to happen for non-Linux Debian though and unavoidable platform-specific differences between Debian on BSD, and Debian on Solaris. Like Josh said above, running launchd on BSD, SMF on Solaris and systemd on Linux makes sense as these are core technologies which are tied to and can use the unique features of the underlying kernel. This is not something which can be abstracted away without losing important capabilities. Having a different startup config file for each platform is reasonable, requiring three different startup configs for each platform is unreasonable.