When going gets tough those with ulterior motives find easier ways – eudev consolekit2

Recent excitement revolves around talk about eudev deficiencies as a replacement for systemd’s udev.  Consolekit2 having too many functionalities missing against elogind that it will eventually run out of steam.  In particular this package named libgudev requires now particular version specific udev utilities to compile and eudev has not reached this stage of development.  Developer/s said when time comes available it will receive some refreshing and incorporation of this utility.  But what is the rush?  For packages that are used to auto-discover and mount disks (particularly usb hot-plugs) and for them to be the latest of edition need this updated libgudev that eudev can’t support.

Should a community critical against systemd domination mind such dis-functionality?  Hopefully nobody here believes it should.  Didn’t we expect this to be a struggle or did we expect it to come easy?  Are there people here who think they can have the choice of not using systemd/elogind and libraries but have 100% functional Gnome or Plasma desktops and tools (gui-gadgets)?  Being against systemd is being critical of the sacrifices a system/distro should make in order to incorporate growing automation and convenience. Isn’t it? 

Fall 2023 hardcore list of 17 linux distributions without elogind and other systemd parts

Welcome antiX and Noir linux to the strict list, with edition 23 antiX is fully functional and lighter than ever without a trace of elogind!

        Edited:  September 24th 2023 (replacing older strict list)

This list is going to be short and there may be a sublist of distros with a medium strict standard.  We shall explain what the object is, below the short list (which we hope the community will assist in making longer as we have not been able to currently review the work of every distro and fork).

Fall 2023 list of “healthy” hardcore distros in alphabetical order with date/activity indicator (xxx)

1.    antiX —> antixlinux.com debian fork without systemd/elogind nearly as famous and popular as Debian itself now
2.    CarbsLinux —> carbslinux.org (Kiss fork with CPT pkg manager shinit/sinit/runit/busybox 02/2023 )
3.     Glasnost —> www.glasnost.org (Kiss fork – multi-arch tarballs 05/2022)
4.     Glaucus linux –> glaucuslinux.org (active 09/2023)
   
5.     Hyperbola Linux —> hyperbola.info A libre gnu-linux  distro like debian with pacman, or arch but stable as debian in transition to a BSD system – so it will be removed again (active 09/2023)
6.     Iglunix Linux —> https://github.com/iglunix/iglunix/releases, https://iglunix.xyz. (musl busybox no-gnu + alt kernels + wayland NoX) (active 09/2023)
7.     Joborun Linux —> http://pozol.eu Arch based w/o systemd building env runit (default) + s6/66 (optional). (active 09/2023)
8.    Kiss Linux –> kisslinux.org independent from community influence (dormant for quite some time) (neglected but still a strong base to start something new)
9.     Kwort Linux –> kwort.org  (active 09/2023)
10.     Mere Linux —> merelinux.org  (alpha project – active 1/2023 Musl + pacman  – it boots now!)
11.     NOIR linux –> github.com/noirlinux a promising kiss-linux fork with a more aumated building system (may 2023)
12.     Oasislinux –> oasislinux/oasis (active 09/2023)
13.     Obarun Linux –> obarun.org (the most extensive general use distribution that meets the criteria) (active 09/2023)
14.     PCLinuxOS —> pclinuxos.com a long term distro with wide variety of ready made sw without elogind or systemd
15.     Sabotage Linux  –> sabotage-linux  (most inspiring commitments and goals) (active 09/2023)
16.     Superboxon Linux –> superboxon.com  Slackware  based BSD type init, no elogind,PAM (active 09/2023)
17.     Venom Linux —> venomlinux.org  (forked from LFS – glibc now with runit –  active 9/23)

recently removed:

1.     Mutiny linux –> mutiny.red   site vanished/down

Please keep the recommendations going, for inclusion and exclusion from the list.  We can not keep and maintain installations for all of them, we count on you.

Hardcore because they seem honest and dedicated to the war against totalitarianism by IBM and other mega corporations to dominate the Open and Free software world.

antiX 23 next stable based on debian’s bookworm is here already

antix-23-beta2-iso-files-for-testing/ (release announcement and sourgeforge or is it sourceforce .. repository of images)

Based on the announcement above we tested the runit based full image with an urge to hunt and find something to criticize, constructively of course.  We uninstalled some things we don’t like, even when they work right, installed some others, openbox, pcmanfm, lxterminal, conky, and everything worked.  No elogind, no dbus running, no polkit, no automount or auto.. anything.  Then we flipped repos to sid, where things are expected to be exciting.  A beta release, and unstable repositories, which defeats the purpose of testing bookworm (testing repo a few weeks ago for Debian) … but you can only test antiX to a certain point before it gets too boring.

Chimera Linux: turnstile replaces elogind consolekit works side by side with seatd

Short article/ Introduction to new development

turnstile replaces elogind consolekit works side by side with seatd

chimera-linux/turnstile

When elogind will either begin to fail or just not work too well without systemd, I’d like to see what those distros will do and who will they blame for their demise, or conversion to full systemd which will make them just like anything else.  Will Artix be any different than Manjaro?  Will MX be any different than mint or ubuntu?  Will void be anything different from Arch and will they abandon musl?  Will Adelie’s LXQT work without elogind or will they then decide to give LXDE a try?

With a project as promising as turnstile the real choice against systemd may be coming  really soon.

If systemd is really developing, why is elogind progressively having more and more bugs?

No this is not about “I told you so”, this is about “I am telling you now … so”.

Quote from a favorite movie “Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying”

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!

---

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!

---

Zenwalk Slackel Salix – Slackware without systemd?

Run, don’t just add it on the TDO list, and download images from those two (Salix is dormant and part of Slackel) and if you do an installation, DO NOT do a network install, do copy from live image, or from CD.  We will explain later, while you are downloading those historic pieces of Slackware forks.

Cut them some slack?  New Years day and all happy hunky dory crap….  Not here folks, go to Phoronix or Fedora-Magazine for such festive atmosphere.

Slackel and Zenwalk (2021), report by Oneirosopher

A Short MEMO on Slackies to serve for all purposes…

Slackel has been designed so that:

• it comes for 64-bit and 32-bit CPUs as well;
• be %100 compatible with Slackware (Current) –beware: as such, it comes with elogind;
• it may be capable of using Salix’s source packages;
• it provides an OpenBox flavour (OB is not in the Slackware repos);
• the KDE-desktop is KDE 4;- MATE is more recent: 1.22;
• it comes with house-built Slackel tools: slapt-get & slapt-src to CLI-manage packages, Gslapt as a GUI frontend for the both of them;
• it provides, quote: “a ‘rolling release’ for lazy slackers” (Dimitris’ words);
• its ISOs both enable to install the system and to run (fast) live-sessions;
• it enables to create a liveUSB with persistance features directly from within a live-session;
• since last version, it be possible to perform a real installation on a USB media, which differs from liveUSB with persistance (it doesn’t get slow when more packages are installed).

No systemd, no elogind, no consolekit, no dbus – what did I miss?

Many reviews of linux distros you may read tell you what you need  to have (systemd – elogind – consolekit, – dbus : SECD from now on) to use the distro.  It is rarely seen or heard whether you can have an effective graphical interface, a desktop, a window manager, and not use any of the above.  Sometimes for a rarely used or never used utility you need one of those monsters, but hardly ever anyone goes out of his way to tell you “this is the ONLY instance you need this, otherwise you can do without”.  So the question on this topic should be obvious, “what can I do and have installed, or even if it is installed have it running, without the use of the SECD?”.  The less obvious question to the one questioning is “why?”.  Does anyone still ask why anymore, or have we (linux users) generally turned to fashion monkeys?