Knoppix defies the “mother-ship” and leaves systemd OUT!

It is hard to tell from their web-site, at least if you don’t speak German and rely on the English text, that Knopper, founder or Knoppix, has made an effort from some time to provide freedom in init systems,  After getting sysvinit to work (once again on a debian based distribution) this latest version 8.6 not only does it ship without systemd and associates, it contains a conflict pkg that prevents systemd from reinstalling.  The package is called “no-systemd”.  We welcome Knoppix to the wide non-systemd community and we wish it endless popularity.

The pkg lists of comparing the last two editions 8.2 and 8.6 (and a mysterious 8.4), reveal the effort.  8.6 pkg list  8.2 pkg list

AntiX has a package called systemd-must-die which is very similar 🙂

Since it is all debian based you can seek and install both and compare.

Review: Nutyx GNU-Linux, if you play your “cards” right

A few days ago, while I was scanning through the site’s statistics I noticed that a search in google had lead here and the search term was Nutyx.  I remember seeing the name on the long list of Linux without systemd and the more recent one based on distrowatch but I never had a chance to take a closer look.  So the search had caught the name on the list and I decided I should give it a spin.

Manjaro free of Systemd – Obarun-ization – S6 init

For all of those who like their custom made minimal desktops, i3, awasome, jwm, openbox, etc. or are pure console freaks, there is Arch and there is an established and verified way to change from Arch to Artix and have OpenRC and lately Runit as an init system.  This makes a low resources fast booting machine faster and lighter yet.  Artix is progressively rebuilding all Arch pkgs and growing their own repositories, while 2/3 of Arch pkgs can be used still straight out of Arch.  But it is a blend of things with the Arch-Core repository left out.

For those that don’t like or know how to tinker too much with stuff, like conf and rc files, they prefer a precustomized desktop with all the possible bells and whistles predesigned by the distro designers.  Ubuntu, Mint, and Manjaro are really such products appealing to such audience.  But they all have the resource hog complex init system we love to hate.  We have to admit that Manjaro’s desktop designs are state of the art, aesthetically.  People get addicted to Manjaro and stick with it, even if they like further customizing things themselves.

But then there is a gray area of those who slowly are graduating from OEM ready out of the box setups to making the same installation lighter and faster.  That is to improve on the core system where a desktop really floats on.  So how do you go from a Manjaro full desktop installation to something faster and lighter?  Obarun