Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 10, 2018 17:20 UTC (Sun) by edmonds42 (subscriber, #42670)
Parent article: Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Why is it called "ASCII"? Did they strip out Unicode support too?

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Posted Jun 10, 2018 18:50 UTC (Sun) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link]

> Why is it called "ASCII"? Did they strip out Unicode support too?

巨魔？喷子？

Debian releases are named after toys. Devuan releases are named after minor planets. PARC named some servers after wine grapes and I'm currently naming servers after mathematicians.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 10, 2018 18:55 UTC (Sun) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

Am I the only one to read that as "Devuan releases are named after sour grapes"?

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 10, 2018 19:30 UTC (Sun) by Wol (guest, #4433) [Link]

Each to their own. My home network systems are named after Winnie-the-Pooh characters :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 20:19 UTC (Mon) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]

To continue off topic, my machines are named after Chess grandmasters (my latest and greatest is of course named Carlsen) and my WIFI-routers are named after chess computers.

no stripping

Posted Jun 10, 2018 18:58 UTC (Sun) by h2 (guest, #27965) [Link]

If you take the slightly more than 1 second it took me to follow one of the devuan links provided in this thread, you could avoid making snide and sadly inaccurate comments and know that Devuan releases are named after minor planets (https://devuan.org/os/releases). In this case, ASCII is planet number 3568. I for one am very glad someone is taking the non corporate free distribution I love, Debian, and removing the part of it I have come to truly hate, due to its constantly failing catastrophically on major upgrades, and minor, and, well, whenever it feels like it. Free Software is about this kind of freedom, so I'm very glad to see the Devuan concept working. I was waiting to see how it did, it's hard to really know if an idea will gain enough traction to take off and become self sustaining, but it appears that they are on their way, so hats off to them.

no stripping

Posted Jun 10, 2018 19:33 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> due to its constantly failing catastrophically on major upgrades,

Got any citations for that? And by citations, I mean actual Debian bug reports. (Because they can't fix what they aren't told about!)

Debian takes failures on upgrades very seriously, to the point of blocking releases outright if there are any minor, much less catastrophic, breakages on upgrades between major versions.

no stripping

Posted Jun 10, 2018 20:38 UTC (Sun) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link]

Unfortunately Debian allows intentional upgrade failures in the form of deliberate stripping of sysvinit support.

Devuan solves most of these few but serious intentional Debian bugs, while still providing access to the vast pool of excellent unsabotaged Debian software.

(h/t to Debian's Quagga maintainers for restoring sysvinit support in Buster.)

no stripping

Posted Jun 10, 2018 21:26 UTC (Sun) by mbiebl (subscriber, #41876) [Link]

bug reports or it didn't happen

no stripping

Posted Jun 10, 2018 22:26 UTC (Sun) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link]

LMGTFY

https://www.google.com/search?q=debian+bug+missing+sysvin...

no stripping

Posted Jun 10, 2018 22:52 UTC (Sun) by mbiebl (subscriber, #41876) [Link]

So all in all, 5 bug reports, 3 fixed and two open with a request for help.

I'd say if you want to badmouth Debian, you'll need to try a bit harder.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 10, 2018 23:15 UTC (Sun) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link]

These and similar bugs deliberately broke existing systems and prevented admins from deploying Debian Stretch.

Fortunately the vast majority of Debian packages still work well, and Devuan solves the problems created for Debian by a handful of systemDDDs.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 10, 2018 23:33 UTC (Sun) by mbiebl (subscriber, #41876) [Link]

yawn, your unfounded claims don't become more true by repeating them.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 10:36 UTC (Mon) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

I've always appreciated how Devuan advocates disparage the competence and integrity of Debian, Debian Developers, and Debian users as a whole, while continuing to loudly demand unpaid effort from everyone else involved.

But yeah, a total of five reported bugs (three resolved) with all involved DDs working in good faith to resolve the issues, hardly demonstrates a systemic problem with Debian.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 14:00 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

I've always thought that the effort required to keep legacy init support going throughout the existing Debian distribution ought to be a lot less than making and maintaining a complete Debian fork – but if the Devuan folks think it's worth it in order to avoid having libsystemd.so show up in ldd output (even if the library doesn't do anything unless systemd is actually running) then more power to them.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 12, 2018 10:35 UTC (Tue) by philh (subscriber, #14797) [Link]

> ... worth it in order to avoid having libsystemd.so show up in ldd output ...

That's what I thought too, but having just checked the live CD, I discover that they are actually shipping libsystemd0 installed by default ... the exact same version as found in Debian stretch-updates.

It seems that getting rid of it is just too much work (for now?), and also that it has been accepted that the library does nothing if systemd is not running -- which is a refreshing hint of sanity.

However, I'm really struggling to understand what makes it worth the effort to have a some things not link against that library, once one has accepted that it's basically harmless.

At which point you're back to it being better to make Debian without systemd work as well as it can, unless the thing that you really care about is some sort of tribal endeavor that can only be maintained by one's opposition to some other.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 12, 2018 13:52 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> At which point you're back to it being better to make Debian without systemd work as well as it can

I've been saying this from the outset, especially given that most of the "problems" were actually due to decisions by (or general state of) various upstreams relying on systemd's functionality (eg Gnome & KDE dropping support for ConsoleKit due to the latter's festering, unmaintainable bitrot) rather than any [in]actions of Debian itself.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 10, 2018 18:59 UTC (Sun) by jwilk (subscriber, #63328) [Link]

https://www.devuan.org/os/releases says:

> Future release names will be chosen from the list of Minor Planet Center Names starting with the letter A, then B etc. ASCII, Beowulf and Chimaera have already been chosen.

This doesn't explainy why ASCII in particular was chosen out of ~3000 planet names starting with A, though.

Perhaps to remind everyone that this is not a serious distro?

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 10, 2018 19:02 UTC (Sun) by jwilk (subscriber, #63328) [Link]

Oops, it ~1500, not ~3000. Sorry!

way back in unix early days

Posted Jun 10, 2018 19:11 UTC (Sun) by h2 (guest, #27965) [Link]

Maybe because it's a planet name and also points back to the very early days of UNIX. Maybe because the developers liked it. Personally, I've always winced at Debian using characters from a bad movie as the distribution names, and at Ubuntu's silly naming choices, which have little to do with anything, and at the horrible names a distribution I was involved in used, but in general, I am a decent or adequate enough engineer to not waste too much time on worrying about such choices since they have zero meaning or impact on the underlying distribution quality. Once you join the Devuan project and contribute all the time and energy they have, I'm sure they will be happy to take your feedback on naming down the road. More interesting is how you have come to be able to determine this project is irrelevant or whatever. It has users, it's offering a valid choice, it's shipping releases, and it's meeting its core mission purpose. What defines relevance then in your opinion, I'm genuinely curious? Is shipping without systemd the definition? If so, slackware is obviously irrelevant, as is gentoo, but don't tell that to chrome OS, they will have to find a more relevant system.

way back in unix early days

Posted Jun 10, 2018 19:55 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Is shipping without systemd the definition?

In a word, yes.

Devuan's entire raison d'etre was to prevent libsystemd.so from ever polluting their hard drives. Take that one goal away (ie ship, but not actually use, systemd/libsystemd) and what you have is stock Debian.

way back in unix early days

Posted Jun 11, 2018 7:17 UTC (Mon) by andrewsh (subscriber, #71043) [Link]

$ du -sh /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsystemd.so.0.21.0
528K	/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsystemd.so.0.21.0

Much polluting. Very systemd. Wow.

way back in unix early days

Posted Jun 11, 2018 16:19 UTC (Mon) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]

But the legend has it that is takes away your "init freedom."

Remove one init system (actually two, as "file-rc" has been reportedly removed too) and you have it back.

way back in unix early days

Posted Jun 10, 2018 23:32 UTC (Sun) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link]

> Debian using characters from a bad movie as the distribution names

I'm afraid your incorrect opinion on Toy Story makes me doubt your judgment on all other issues too.

Mr Potato Head is the best.

way back in unix early days

Posted Jun 11, 2018 3:15 UTC (Mon) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

Mr. Potato head: Look, I'm Picasso!
Hamm: I don't get it.
Mr. Potato Head: You uncultured swine!

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 7:14 UTC (Mon) by thumperward (subscriber, #34368) [Link]

ASCII is a technology which was mostly fit for purpose several decades ago but which has largely been supplanted by more capable successors since then, except in the heads of a few self-styled greybeards who are convinced it's still all that anyone needs.

In most other projects, one would assume this was a bit of self-deprecating humour. Here, not so much.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 14:22 UTC (Mon) by rweikusat2 (subscriber, #117920) [Link]

> ASCII is a technology which was mostly fit for purpose several decades ago but which has largely been supplanted by more capable > successors since then,

Thanks to the UNICODE consortium, ASCII is the only single-byte encoding of a particular, national script which effectively still exists in the world. It's perfectly fit for the purpose of enabling Americans to process texts written in their variant of English in the exact same way as they were already processing it in the 1970s while anybody else has to jump through all kinds of bizarre hoops to deal with text written in his/ her native language (I've actually stopped using German characters like a diaresis because of this "Speak American or Die!"-maneuver as it seemed the lesser inconvenience).

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 14:58 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Funny, now that most people are using Unicode, using national characters seems to be much less of a hassle than in former times when everyone had their own way of dealing with character values 128 to 255. As a student of languages like Russian or Japanese I enjoy that I can look at text that contains Cyrillic and CJK characters, mathematical notation and emojis, and that works way better today than it used to 20 years ago, when “ISO Latin 1” was the done thing.

In particular, I don't think twice about using German umlauts today because at least now I can be reasonably sure that whoever receives them in Unicode (i.e., most people) can actually process and display them correctly. Earlier on that wasn't the case.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 15:14 UTC (Mon) by rweikusat2 (subscriber, #117920) [Link]

The point was supposed to be that ASCII hasn't been "replaced by more capable technology", it has been enshrined forever. Hence, this supposedly 'witty' comparison is anything but.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 15:31 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

Yes, but (a) even Americans are using Unicode today (if only for the emojis), and (b) the Devuan people are apparently hard at work enshrining legacy init forever – so far we don't see them moving to one of the other more modern (and more palatable to a systemd rejecter) replacements.

In the end it's all a question of perspective; one person's heroic struggle is the next person's ridiculous WOMBAT and vice-versa.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 20:44 UTC (Mon) by rweikusat2 (subscriber, #117920) [Link]

Hmm ... I'm working on a commercial product which is (presently) based on pre-systemd Debian. The main reason for this is accidental: It's older than systemd-Debian. This product not only includes sysvinit but actually even a sysvinit (NB: the program) fork as I needed some additional features for controlling daemons running in containers from the host in there. It's obviously technically possible to base this product on systemd instead, if only because I can kick against it until it does what I need, however, this would be nothing but putting a certain amount of effort into redoing something which already works in a perfectly adequate way such that it would work in a different way more 'palatable' to certain people whose opinions don't matter to me.

In addition to said sysvinit fork, there's also some 3,600 lines of C code making 22 fairly small C programs providing process control etc extensions designed to integrate with the script and runlevel based startup system which solve all process management problems I need to deal with which aren't already available in some other, sane way (tools like daemon or start-stop-daemon with their "combine everything I happen to need in one program" approach are not something I'd consider sane. And neither are "pid files" ...).

For an earlier product, I also succumbed to the urge to write "my very own init" but in hindsight, that simply wasn't worth the effort: Unless I encounter a problem which positively cannot be solved without wholesale replacement of the init program itself - and I can't presently imagine what this could be - it's certainly going to be good enough for me. Thus, Devuan provides a very convenient, minimum effort upgrade path should "update the base system to something more recent" ever actually appear on the roadmap.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 11, 2018 23:45 UTC (Mon) by smcv (subscriber, #53363) [Link]

The Debian releases where the default init is systemd (Debian 8 'jessie' or later) can also boot with sysvinit/sysv-rc, so presumably fitting your sysvinit fork into a Debian derivative or a Devuan derivative would be quite similar.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 15, 2018 2:27 UTC (Fri) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]

Funny, whenever someone brings up the use of Unicode in computing (e.g. Perl 6, Python 3) the snark and derision usually flows the opposite way. Obviously the only way to make everyone happy is EBCDIC.

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 15, 2018 12:21 UTC (Fri) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> Obviously the only way to make everyone happy is EBCDIC.

s/happy/have horrible flashbacks/

</shudder>

Devuan ASCII 2.0.0 stable

Posted Jun 18, 2018 0:33 UTC (Mon) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]

Well... *equally* (un)happy at least.