On Wednesday 05 September 2018 05:58:00 Nick Koretsky wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Sep 2018 14:42:05 +0200
>
> Thierry de Coulon <tcoulon@...> wrote:
> > On Sunday 02 September 2018 17.16:48 Nick Koretsky wrote:
> > > Now, i am still puzzled why people think that stretch must run
> > > systemd?!! just install sysv-rc and sysvinit-core and you have a
> > > stretch running sysv-init.
> >
> > I've never dared to try but I will,as sson as I've made a backup (by
> > security). I alway thought it would be more complicated than just
> > installing two packages (if it is, why do they need Devuan?).
>
> Because ideology. They want to get rid of systemd and all its dependencies
> completely, not just avoid running it as pid 1.

My 2 cents worth of opinion here, if it matters. I did try AntiX, and it was 
pretty nice in a lot of ways. (In fact, I do believe I'm the one who noted it 
here, and got some others trying it.) However, AntiX did (or didn't do) a few 
things that rubbed me the wrong way: 1) Permissions were changed to some 
weird groups, and the setup messed up how I organize places in my own system. 
2) My internal hard drives were not recognized on the first installation, and 
there was no way to add them through the partition manager. (I realize that I 
could have added them later, but I use special mount points, with names to 
make my various drives instantly recognizable to human beings - e.g., the 
Present Author - so that I don't have to access them by long UUIDs. (It's 
almost as though the developers of some newer distros cannot imagine that 
there are people "out there" - such as, e.g., the Present Author - who still 
run desktop computers. Soon, perhaps, everything will be designed around 
mobile phones, tablets, etc., and even laptop computers will be obsolete.) 
Well, so I may still try out AntiX again on an old laptop that I have here, 
but it's not the thing for myself right now; even though it does have some 
good features. 

I also tried for a long time to run Debian without systemd as PID 1 
(recommended by deloptes, I believe). I recommend the steps provided in that 
earlier thread. Again, however, it seemed like I was fighting an uphill 
battle, and always ended up with an unstable system, and was reinstalling 
practically every other day. 

At last, however, I have gone over to Devuan net install, and all my problems 
have *magically* disappeared; which is to say, my system now runs like I've 
always expected that it ought to do, and I've had no problems now for about a 
month or six weeks. (I'm still running Jessie, but am about to move on to 
Ascii [= Debian Stretch], once I feel confident that this is really True 
Love, the Holy Grail, the secret Elixir, and all that.) 

I did try net install before, but had some problems with networking. At first, 
I thought that it was because with Devuan I was using all free software, no 
proprietary crap; however, the problem turned out to be with the network 
itself where I live. One has to wait rather a long time for all the packages 
to download; and after an hour or two, my network would disconnect me. All 
that I needed to do was to go back in the menu to the *configure network* 
option, and I was reconnected (and I needed to do this a couple times); then 
I proceeded with the installation. 

By the way, some other issues that I was having (such as using youtube-dl and 
other such software over a proxy) have also disappeared. When I was running 
Debian and tried to use youtube-dl in this manner, my system would hang, and 
suddenly I could do nothing for 20-25 minutes, until at last my file started 
downloading. With Devuan, though, everything runs normally again, with no 
issues whatsoever. 

Running Devuan with TDE is as close as I can get to running Hardy Heron 8.04.2 
with the old KDE3 (the only desktop I've ever loved). I pretty much have my 
old system back again, only better! 

I've waxed on, I know, and got both prolix and verbose, and no doubt have cost 
several pennies more in bandwidth; but I wanted to direct others to the 
Devuan net install discs. They fit on a CD, and you can choose whatever you 
want (or don't want) to install. I recommend Mate over LXDE, though, for 
choice of desktop, as for me, at least, it interferes less with my own setup. 

Also I am thinking of some problems mentioned by Gene Heskett. I seem to 
recall that he wanted to stick with Wheezy, but why run a system for which 
the security patches are always out-of-date? 

There now, I've said my piece. 

Bill