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.

On the discussion about elogind and dbus “hate”, is there reason?

A vivid discussion has broken out between members of the community, whether q66 considers her/himself one or not is not our prerogative to define, or exclude anyone, about the hardcore stance against FOSS pests such as systemd, elogind, dbus, udev, etc.  So since the topic of discussion is very specific it would have been best if a topic addressed the specific issue, which is irrelevant to whether Chimera Linux belongs on a strict list of distributions without systemd or not.  The criteria about that list are very clear.  The criteria for the “gray” list are not very clear, but nobody really cares about this sloppy list of gray categorized distros, such as void, artix, and devuan.

Arch No-Systemd … yes but how? Is systemd so different than ALL the other inits?

Hypothetically speaking, let us take Arch, and rebuild nearly all of it, without systemd.  What does this mean?

On any particular core, extra, community package, the minimal environment needed to build a package, incorporates systemd and its libs.  It is part of Arch base.  So systemd is present even when it is not required.  Some packages from source incorporate utilities based on systemd/libs and will utilize those in their package when present.  Sometimes it is evident, sometimes not so obvious.  So the hypothetical task is to build everything (except systemd and parts themselves) in a systemd-free environment.  See when errors arise due to the lack of it, disable systemd/logind utilities where we can, and see what arch would be like without systemd.

Can you build ARCH from source? Let’s see!

Apart from the object to build arch minimal base without systemd and its libraries, the idea or question that came to mind was whether you can build all your packages from the Arch recipes. Since Artix now is autonomous and relies on its own software base, not Arch, the same question applies, and I suppose the same applies to Manjaro. Most of the core pkgbuilds in Artix are just copies of Arch. Systemd may not be there but many of its libraries or pieces are still there. But let’s say you just want to build Arch, authentic and 100% true arch.

The short answer is NO!
The long answer is explained here:

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.

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.

Myth busted: Can you run sway/wayland’s i3 without systemd or elogind?

For those who want to skip the discussion and get right to it follow the steps at this README

For a while, we have heard this justification, among distributions that have refused systemd as init, that elogind was adopted as a necessity for running wayland which is the future of graphical desktops.  Some future this is, but anyway.  For Artix it was a day one decision, for Void and Adelie it has been a year or more, for Slackware a few months.  But it is only a handful of distros at this point that have totally refused the use of elogind and stick to consolekit2 (which was recently upgraded upstream unlike common myth that has it abandoned).  Consolekit2 can handle logind functionality but can’t provide seat management.  So there is seatd, a daemon that just does this.  So count the different functions, unrelated to each other, that systemd provides all in one huge blob.

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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Boot/Shutdown console output on obarun or any 66 driven distribution

A hint/trick to control console output during booting and shutdown/reboot.

Users come in all shapes and forms.  Some users dislike looking at too much output on their console while the system is booting, while others like to see more, so if something is wrong they pick it up right away and go fix it and reboot.  Some prefer the aesthetics of looking at a splash screen (defined in their grub, lilo, or syslinux configuration).  With Obarun and any distribution 66 is installed not many complain about too much output, quite the opposite, people see very little and then either a console login prompt appears (indicating booting is complete and all predetermined services are up and running) or a display manager has kicked in and off they are to a graphic login screen.

New blood, new linux distributions without systemd

Two new distributions (Sulinox and Split Linux) to keep an eye on were added on our 2 lists of systemd without systemd.  The early first list of all systems we know without systemd (including BSD varieties) and our more detailed list of 66 linux distributions without systemd.

The first is called Sulinox, an independent linux distribution, built on glibc with OpenRC as init, a base software available on repositories with a few varieties of desktops, and elogind present, available for X86_64 architectures.  The distribution is aimed at expert users who know and like to build packages from source.  To do so in a more organized way and maintain system integrity Sulinox has developed their own package manager called inary.  For those of you who like to keep an eye on the source repository of a distribution and follow development in detail we warn you that comments are in Turkish, although the rest of the documentation for the distro and the package manager is written in English.

5 Does the “typical linux user” have anything to gain over traditional scripts?

This is article 5 from the latest proposed list of topics

Probably the most valuable content this community has produced was condemned by immaturity and lack of organization (on our part) to set the parameters of the procedure within which a productive debate can occur.

One of the reasons people without bosses, authoritarian structures, fail to organize and formulate their own power structures is because they have been conditioned to be vicious aformalists (anti or non formalists in terms of organizational tendency).  Individuals born and raised within this patriarchal system of authority can only behave like spoiled children all their life.  Sorry cynwulf1 and mobinmob, but you used and abused your expertise to block all other possible participants and concentrated on your own duel of expertise competition.

The content of your expert testimonies may be of value, but next time something like this happens fungalnet is not going to be here and be nice, you will be moderated and either respect an open process discussion or you can take your dialogs somewhere else.  Imagine if in a Union meeting two characters, with very accute and experienced authoritative voices,  converted the meeting into a dialog where everyone else was forced to be quiet and listen,  Two people from within an amphitheater, can dominate nad hijack all discussion to what they think the object of the meeting is.  Not here, not again!

Fungalnet failed to set the rules of a debate, it occured in a totally unrelated subject, fungalnet let it go on, you both ignored fungalnet trying to present the case of “the average linux user”, and now the question still remains open.  Neither of you, consumed in your own expert testimony, were able to convince (we believe) for either or.

The question remains,  should we “average linux users” (who may use a workstation for editing text, browsing the net, manipulating images, video, or audio, or who may be an average linux admin hosting a home or small office network of file, mail, firewall, backup, print, and other servers).  Are scripts as found in Antix or Open/Free{BSD}, enough, or are supervision suites such as those of Void, Obarun, Adelie, Spark, Artix, a benefit to users?

Coming up next the new sysdfree resurrection

Just so when “some” were happy this is done and over with, POP goes the sysdfree community project again.  From now on, we will have a summary article of what is coming up next, and a series of articles discussing in detail the most worthy or note-worthy topics of interest.  Since  YOU haven’t been contributiong much to the community, it will be OUR topics of interest.

Why did we vanish for a little while?  After all this closure and prohibition to end the covid diaspora we have been burning some skinny road bike tires enjoying the end of spring and the starrt of a very HOT summer.  So now that it is getting hot, we will stay indoors again enough to write something up.  Yeeahhheee!!!! Or is it Yaaayyyy….!!!

1  Devuan:  Boring new stable release a year later  (you wanted an article .. go find one elsewhere).

2  Debian:  Script that runs and removes systemd and installs sysvinit and reboots to a systemd init free system.

3  Adelie (and Alpine) free and non-free independent repository

4  Black Artix, as if Artix wasn’t shady enough

5  Adequacy of traditions scripts (sysV or BSD inits) necessity of supervision suites (s6, 66, synit, minit, perp) or other alternatives such as OpenRC.

6  Split Linux, based on Void, security, anonymity, real firewalling, and more ….

7  Enough with supervising dry-cut monolythic services, the future is in modules (modular services and bundles of services).  If systemd was already burried and done with, this builds a pyramid on top, just so nobody will ever dear to open the mummy’s coffin.

8  Live streaming with Terry Barentsen on 2 wheels, no gas or dirty coal electric motors!

9  Kiss gets a new package manager

10  The shit (green energy environmental disaster) has to stop.  A documentary about the end of the planet’s ecosystem and who are the deceiving actors causing it.  It may be the most revealing 100′ of your life, or at least your recent world perception.

11  A song for our own resurrection:

            __________   –  “*”  –   __________