[Novalug] dynamic symbolic links

Peter Larsen peter@peterlarsen.org
Tue Apr 28 16:15:45 EDT 2015


On 04/28/2015 03:50 PM, Derek LaHousse wrote:
>> It's OLD in IT terms. Again, I cannot help that some distros seems to
>> think time has stopped and aren't interested in solving the problems
>> modern IT needs. There's a good reason Debian isn't use for OpenStack or
>> any of the new cloud solutions out there. It's stuck in the past and not
>> capable of solving the complex IT architectures of today and tomorrow.
>> And it's not even experimental anymore - so I'm really lost to where
>> Debian and by indirection Ubuntu wants to go from here. Change and
>> adaptation is the name of the game.
>>
>> The question you should ask is why was Fedora the only one to adopt it
>> initially? Of the hundreds of distros out there - less than a handful
>> seems to want Linux to be anything but a toy?
>>
>>
>> Systemd was introduced in Fedora in 2010 and released as default in
>> 2011. Even Arch was on systemd by late 2012.  The list of major distros
>> adopting systemd is a fabulous as a foundation to see which distro is
>> looking forward vs. those who are stuck in the past.
>>
>> As another poster to this list confirmed, it seems the only reason
>> Debian and other distros went onboard was that they couldn't fork every
>> piece of software out there to maintain packaging that was independent
>> of systemd. And kicking and
>> screaming we have the "I'll script it till I die" distros finally coming
>> along.  Ok - exaggeration sells - but I'm trying to get my point across
>> here.
>>
> Hey now, don't drag Debian through the mud just because you don't know
> what's going on with the project.

Well, don't assume :)
But I cannot help noticing that Debian is exactly where Fedora was 4-5
years ago when Systemd was added as an option to Fedora and the year
later became mandatory.

>   Systemd didn't make Wheezy as
> default, so it wasn't a targeted goal of the project.  That doesn't
> mean you couldn't run it.  The systemd-sysv package was purposely
> there to set init to /usr/sbin/systemd.
> Now, Jessie is out.  Support for systemd is a MUST, meaning that
> debian developers are supposed to make sure their packages work well
> with systemd. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#Adoption_and_reception
It took Debian 3 years to do what Fedora did in 6 months?

>  Yes, they also support sysvinit, and there's discussion
> of how to generate sysvinit scripts from the declarative language of
> systemd unit files.  I've yet to see systemd for embedded devices.
> But Debian supports embedded devices, so it needs flexibility.
> Debian stable is, well, stable, NOT ancient.  Kernel version is 3.18,
> systemd is 215, gnome is 3.14.  Don't like it, run testing, get newer
> stuff.

When I look at Debian announcements it's really behind other distros -
like for Docker support (only for Jersie unless you apply some nasty
back-port patches to Wheezy). Only through hacks does releases become
"able" to run something. Anyway - my point was that I don't see Debian
and it's like leading much on the FOSS side. They seem to follow and
wait for others to have done the hard work first.  I do remember the
time where Debian was state of the art of what was possible with Linux.

As to systemd on embedded devices:
http://bec-systems.com/site/1098/why-systemd-in-embedded-linux-systems

Of course I think we have to define what type of embedded devices we're
talking about.  There are devices that have no need for dynamic device
changes or where the startup changes based on user settings - where even
a staticly compiled kernel makes more sense than using one with initrd
and dynamic modules.

-- 
Regards
  Peter Larsen






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