can systemd do ANYTHING other systems can not do? Can you transition to wayland?

NO!

NO, what? To which question, both?

Then what is the problem with systemd or replacing it with another system?

The quick answer is NO, but in reality one must be able to match the resources of IBM/x-RH to chase behind this dog when this dog does its best to try to shake all tailgaters away from it.  “It” wants to run throughout the system, from bios/efi/boot-loading to every click you make on the desktop with your mouse or finger touch to the touch-screen.  PRECISELY what google has done on android, for which we have no say it is a private non-open non-free system.  Monkey see, monkey do, monkey governments enforce its use, monkeys conform.  Fuck you google and fuck the state that mandates its use (I wonder if North Korean sites have google apis in them, RT do!).

HOW does this work?

Obarun alone employing a new paradigm of software building?

About the most outdated software in Obarun is s6 and 66.  The first stack from skarnet is about 4-5 versions behind on each piece, who knows why, maybe no time to test the changes?  The next, if it was rebuilt on top of skarnet’s latest stable stack maybe it would fall apart?  It hasn’t for Joborun after several rebuilds.  But the aging 66 hasn’t received much attention in recent time, many commits but no release for nearly 2 years now.  The next release will make your known 66 appear as very different software all together.  All documentation written in the past will have to be re-written, all procedures and commands changed, all options and ways of doing things will be new.  And new is always better!!  Right?  Right?

What is new in Obarun is the way packages are being built.  No longer labor intensive processes of overseeing bumps on software editions, it is all algorithm triggered.  How?  Since obarun chases arch-stable behind, as soon as a package placed on the new system is bumped by arch, the previous arch pkgbuild is contrasted against the new, its differences from obarun are saved in a patch file, and the patch is applied to the new pkgbuild.  Then the software is placed on the builder, tested that it is built without errors and warnings, and then placed on the repo. 

A new low for the systemd gang and what it may mean (libblockdev udisks2 udiskie)

WOW I can plug an external disk into my pc and it shows up on my MS look-alike filemanager right away, without even being an admin of the system!

WOW WOW I can plug an encrypted external disk into my pc and it shows up on my MS look-alike filemanager right away, without even being an admin of the system!

This linux is JUST LIKE MS-windows11!

And this is what you were after?  An open-free software system that acts and looks just like windows 10/11?

If your distro caters to morons keep expecting what it is you are getting.

If your distro doesn’t cater to morons, why keep getting what it is you are getting?

We can’t answer every philosophical question here, and we never intended, but circumstances keep drawing us back to the meaning of life.  libblockdev udisks2 didn’t change versions remained the same, but were rebuilt, why? Because the source address was changed, and also the ckecksums of the source changed, and their dependency to systemd changed, somehow. 

Advertising policy on sysdfree (the Case of Artix and Gable)

Dear Gable

If you just wanted to place a plug for your system of choice, like any good fan-boy would, you are welcome to do so.  But when this plug (a form of an informal advertisement for free in web-land) includes inaccuracies, false characterizations, and right-out lies, you open up an area of criticism and correction of your plug that may end up as a boomerang to become a negative advertisement.  And below is your comment and source included, unaltered, unmoderated, and still waits a response.  We thought it would be a valuable separate discussion, since it is a bit off-topic to discuss other objects than the article specifies (not that we were ever so strict on this), to just speak here about Artix specifically, in contrast of its other two Arch alternatives.

Joborun vs Obarun linux

The surface:

obarun  stands for OpenboxRunit … but has been the home for arch based s6 implementation with tools (currently 66) to make s6 less hostile to MOST users of linux.  Runit only lasted a few weeks before s6 was implemented and runit dumped.  Currently featuring a graphic installer of base, openbox, jwm, xfce4, and plasma desktops and a setup of s6/66 to get you going.

joborun stands for JwmOpenBoxObarunRunit, so it is everything Obarun can be, plus runit that can coexist and alternatively boot instead of s6/66, but also replaces most core Arch pkgs with ones built in vaccuum of systemd/logind/udevd.   Currently not including an installer, or an iso image, but an old fashioned tarball of the base and instructions on how to make it a bootable system within minutes.  Joborun is basically a source based distro, although it provides 2 tarballs, base system, and builder system, and binary repositories of all packages it provides source for.  You always need a binary system to build your binaries, joborun just makes the process easier and quicker, without frustrating fails.

Spyware: KDE Plasma, like Gnome, the anti-FOSS eye-candy blackmail

Non-Linux OS with extensive telemetry:
MS Windows
Apple macOS – based on Unix
Apple iOS & derivites – based on Unix
Google Chromebook ChromeOS – based on Linux
Google Android – based on Linux

Linux OS with extensive telemetry:

Pretty much any Linux with KDE-plasma or Gnome, and there are some like ElementaryOS, EndeavourOS, Fedora that may use telemetry even with LXDE or i3wm.

What ever happened to Obarun, long time no noise from it.

4 years of blogging, 4 years of Obarunning, (more than 6 for Obarun starting from Openbox and Runit) and we are all still here.  So what is there new for Obarun to talk about?

66 development, OUR instead of AUR (Obarun Community/Users Repository) is reality, new images published, and a new XMPP chatting board with room for more rooms, on Obarun’s own server.

udevd is dead, long live mdevd – libudev-zero shines bright

Getting close to our 4year birthday here and what more reason to celebrate than cutting one more tie to the IBM’s monolithic bloatware that is shoved down our throats by agents of dependence and control.

Thanks to the revamping of Kiss and its new commitment to independence, to offer a way to such independence, we noticed a tragic neglect of reality.  We started talking about independence from systemd, and all we thought it was necessary was to substitute pid1 for an alternative.  100 distros later, and many forks, seem to be systemd-free.  Some solutions pre-existed and worked, some fresher were hardly tried. Then came the substitution to systemd’s logind by consolekit2.

Then came the realization that not using systemd init, but using dbus and elogind, was the next worst thing to be doing, and while more and more non-systemd distros (on our long list) didn’t use systemd, they used – or later adopted elogind (void, slackware, and our beloved adelie, even antiX is using it here and there).  So beyond pid1 those systems were business as usual.  We then focused on the next best alternative, consolekit2 (which is recently receiving fresh attention) or not using it and dbus at all, which is fine for most of us wm, teminal, consoles users.

Now, as Kiss points out, udev is another piece that behaves as an IBM monolith in linux and it is our task to evade its dependence.  Maybe then we can set ourselves free, not so fast slick you will trip on your own myth here!  Most X-server subsystems depend indirectly to what udev provides, and IN THE WAY UDEV provides it.

In the pandemic of global neo-liberal capitalist dictatorship we are still here

… and so are all the projects we support and exhibit.

WordPress continues to make our life miserable, with all their new guis a web-client-google-apis.  As if they are no longer capable of developing their own code for a web-client interface they must add google functionality, which in turn is not supported by all safety and privacy minded browsers, only those produced by google and mozilla corporations, making it hard to protect yourselves against the corporate bandits and have adequate functionality to publish.

Arch-linux building from source – and Obarun to the rescue

What if, there was a benefit in building from source, a system that is commonly used by pre-fabricated binary packages, like Arch or any of its forks and desktop flavors?  What Arch considers a “clean-chroot” is primarily of need to developers ensuring their package can be both satisfied for all dependencies AND are reproducible, as long as this can be achieved within a constantly rolling distribution.  That is open and nearly free condition for you.

Why

Building in a clean chroot prevents missing dependencies in packages, whether due to unwanted linking or packages missing in the depends array in the PKGBUILD. It also allows users to build a package for the stable repositories (core, extra, community) while having packages from [testing] installed.

Scratch most of this for several reasons.  We are not developers, we are building our own system like Gentoo-ers, k1ss-ers, Crux-ers, and others do.  We want to make sure that each of our packages fits well within the parameters of our specific machine, and it wasn’t built on another machine that may not be 100% compatible to ours.

Openbox tweaks and tricks – no {dbus,ck2,elogind,dm} no user services needed

Although this was created with Obarun/Arch based distros in mind it works pretty universally for nearly all distro that have openbox available (nearly all except for Adelie that is).  About building and installing obmenu-generator there is an older article here.

Originally published in the Obarun Forum, so here is a copy:

Openbox tweaks and tricks – no dbus – no ck2 – no user services

Minimalist tricks and treats

To start you need xorg-xinit and openbox installed:

From AUR download, build, and install obmenu-generator

You can use pacopts or cower if you don’t have something else as an AUR helper, ask for help if you want details, especially if you want to install yaourt, the best AUR helper ever created which was taken off AUR for a second time in less than a year.  I wish they would make their minds up!

Popular mythology spread by IBM parrots elogind vs consolekit2 1.2.2

Thanks to the great work by Eric Koegel and Antoine Jacoutot we were not wrong again!

Parrots never think of what it is they say, they hear things (generally things are heard through highly paid and supported media that serve corporate and state interests) and reproduce the sound of them.  Not that they are dumb, but they can’t process rational language based communication. 

QUESTION: Why are you dumping consolekit2 and use elogind, that you know is just a significant piece of systemd, which further makes upstream reliance to systemd more acceptable and wide spread?

EXCUSE:  Consolekit is deprecated, it is unmaintained, it will never work with Wayland, and we must support wayland because that is the future.

QUESTION: Could consolekit2 be able to work with wayland?

EXCUSE: No, it never will!

QUESTION: Elogind, being a piece of the most convoluted piece of opensource software ever encountered is very big.  Shouldn’t this be a performance concern?

EXCUSE: No, because consolekit was also huge!

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ANSWER:  Consolekit2 1.2.2 was released Dec.20 2020 and among its changes is a memory leak fix, NetBSD/OpenBSD fixes/compliance and more.  If you notice in the list of issues and discussion there has been a workaround to get ck2 to work with wayland in Gentoo since 2018. 

Consolekit2 is between a 1/5 to 1/6 of the size of elogind!

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