Re: Devuan

Let me elaborate on something:

> As I elaborated downthread, IMO the primary aim of systemd-free Debian
> did not, and does not, require forking the distribution, and lesser
> measures would easily have sufficed to achieve that goal with much less effort.

As I believe I've mentioned before, there was for a very long time a
live-CD distribution called Sidux, released quarterly.  The ISO, if you
booted it, ran (with optional HD installer present, a la Knoppix and
imitators) a polished desktop Linux system with cutting-edge versions of
applications and a very recent kernel.  You could fetch your choice of
several differing 'flavour' ISOs, to pick your choice of DE, e.g., Xfce,
KDE4, etc.

It was called Sidux because it was a compatible variant of Debian Sid,
i.e., the Debian-unstable rolling distribution.  Sidux repos got enabled
by default in /etc/apt.d/* alongside Debian ones and with a higher
pin-priority.  The purpose of packages in the Sidux repos was to apply
ongoing further stabilisation to Debian-unstable's package stream.

By any functional definition, an installed Sidux system _was_ a
Debian-unstable desktop system -- that by default happened to have a
small team of Sidux developers (mostly in Germany), in the form of the
additional repo.  Turning that repo off rendered one's Sidux host even
_more_ indistinguishable from one installed using the Official Debian
installer.

Consequently, Sidux was _greatly_ my favourite way of installing either
Debian-testing or Debian-unstable, as I considered it a superior Debian
installer.  (I do not in general install Debian-stable.)

Additionally, Sidux was also my go-to choice for a general-purpose
live-CD distribution, e.g., for system maintenance, backup/restore,
partitiioning, and so on.


A few years into its history, there was a political squabble within the
Sidux group, a non-developer ended up owning the Sidux Foundation and
the trademark rights, and all of the developers 'left' (taking the
entire actual distro and all of its infrastructure with them), renaming
the distribution to Aptosid, and leaving the non-developer holding a
now-purposeless foundation and associated trademark.  So, Aptosid, same
as Sidux except with a somewhat dumber name, continued for some
additional years.  http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=aptosid

A couple of years further along, a subset of the Aptosid developers got
into another tiff with the majority of developers, allegedly over
Aptosid's insufficient devotion to desktop computing, and founded a
schism distribution called Siduction with greater coverage of diverse
DEs than Aptosid had, and continuing the trend of adopting ever more
eye-rolling and more obscure names.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=siduction
I test-ran a couple of images of Siduction to see if it was about the
same as Aptosid (it was), but found no particular advantage and didn't
care about the institutional politics, so kept using Aptosid.

Most recently, Aptosid started to fail in the way distros sometimes do,
as quarterly releases didn't appear.  (At this date, most recent release
was 2013-05-05, and Distrowatch classifies it as 'dormant'.  Looking at
the Aptosid forum, it appears that repo updates have continued as
normal, but they just haven't bothered to update ISOs these past three
years.[1])

Siduction appears to keep doing releases, so, I expect (if it's truly as
good as Sidux/Aptosid always was) that it's what I'd use if I wanted a
Linux live CD with a shiny new kernel that also can be used as a Debian
unstable/testing distro installer.


And the point is:  Siduction is basically a value-add repo for Debian
unstable/testing -- and so is Aptosid, even today and even though
Distrowatch classifies it as 'dormant'.  You can follow canned Web
instructions to add /etc/apt.d/* and /etc/apt/preferences plumbing to
enhance a Debian-unstable or Debian-testing system with Aptosid or
Siduction repo contents.

The Aptosid (ex-Sidux) and Siduction teams are hardly the only people to
have offered 'Debian-plus' using third-party repos.  It's an old,
well-established trick.  The fact that they (respectively) did nd do
also release live-CD ISOs with Knoppix-like installer programs is nice,
too, but just the repos are enough for maintaining a Debian-plus
project.

And, the point is, that is _one_ really obvious way to do a specialised
Debian variant such as one that has a no-systemd policy:  All it takes
is packages in a third-party repo.

I'll bet I could pretty easily create a deb file to implement the
instructions on http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/openrc-conversion.html
, and put it in an unofficial public deb repo on linuxmafia.com .  That
would be, de-minimus, an example of a way to programmatically support a
specialised Debian variant with a no-systemd policy -- although ideally
one would then _extend_ that using other debs to fill in the holes,
e.g., maybe even packages that add back certain key desktop-glue
packages whose Official Debian packages' dependency graphs currently
include systemd (the ones I list on my page).  I _could_ do that if I
cared about DEs, which actually I don't, so I personally won't bother.
Other people most certainly would be better motivated.

Ritual objections start with 'Too difficult for the Average User{tm}.'
Sucks to be them.  

Meanwhile, point is, that is _one_ obvious way to maintain a
Debian-variant community with an enforced policy (such as no-systemd or
anything else that might be wished) without forking the entire
distribution and all its infrastructure a la Devuan.  Implementing that
community's software policy could be made as easy as "Here, install this
deb after adding our package signing key to your system keychain.  The
deb will add our repos to your apt setup, and will set pin-priority
appropriately.'

That is not fscking brain-surgery, maybe even for Ye Olde Average User.


This not only can work, but already does for many such efforts.  It's
one of the older tricks around.

Maybe the Devuan folks also wanted to make a big political statement and
flounce off in a dramatic huff of publicity.  Maybe they needed a hobby
and wanted to do project-management work anyway.  Personally, I'd rather
just be quietly effective and do a whole less work to accomplish the
avowed goal.  But whatever floats their boat, really.


[1] In case it's not obvious, this means that you can still have a
cutting-edge installed Aptosid system even though Distrowatch calls the
distro 'dormant', provided the 2013 release CD supports your hardware
well enough to complete installation from the ISO.  You just get a lot
of package updates the first time you use apt-get to sync to new
versions.  _Or_ you could use an Official Debian 'sid' latest
installation image if cutting-edge hardware is a problem, and just add
Aptosid's repos at the end.  Either way, you get up-to-date installed
Aptosid, which in turn is basically Debian Unstable with fixes.  All you
_don't_ have at the moment is a 2016-release Aptosid ISO.  They might
start doing those again, or not; I really don't know what the story is.
But, again, Siduction is producing those.