[Arm-netbook] new development laptop needed, looking at dell xps 13 9350

[Michael Howard]

On 07/12/2016 09:07, Philip Hands wrote:
> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net> writes:
>
>> On 12/5/16, Julie Marchant <onpon4 at riseup.net> wrote:
>>>>   by contrast: fvwm2 is an 8 *megabyte* install size.  gnome is...
>>>> what... several hundred megabytes?  latest versions force you to use
>>>> wayland?  and systemd?? fuck that!!  absolutely no way i'm tolerating
>>>> that.
>>> GNOME does not force you to use Wayland. I don't know where you got this
>>> idea from. Wayland is still supported experimentally (X is used by
>>> default, Wayland support is quite buggy) last time I checked. As for
>>> systemd, GNOME requires logind, but not the entire systemd package.
>>   that requires libsystemd, which i refuse to have on any machine that
>> i am managing.
> I really think that you should draw a line between libsystemd0 and
> systemd itself (whether running as init or not).
>
> One of the functions that libsystemd provides is the ability to check
> whether systemd is available, so if you want there to be a vibrant
> ecosystem of packages that do not require systemd, then it's probably
> worth encouraging people to write programs that check if systemd is
> available, and then behave sensibly if it is not.
>
> The alternative forces the systemd refuseniks to fork every package that
> might find any (even optional) use for systemd services, which a) there
> is not sufficient manpower for, and b) removes any pressure for the
> upstream to put effort into accommodating your needs, so they don't
> bother to maintain/add the conditional code.
>
> That said, I don't have a lot of time for Gnome either, but that might
> be because a) I prefer Xmonad so I'm not their target audience, and b) I
> run Debian, and we're making life difficult for Gnome maintainers by
> continuing to ensure that using systemd as init is optional (unlike most
> other distros), and also constraining systemd when it is running as init
> to be backwards compatible with sysvinit in various ways, which means
> that there are things that Gnome can safely assume on the likes of
> Fedora which might not be true on a particular Debian install, so I
> guess Gnome on Debian has interesting little bugs that don't appear
> elsewhere.
>
> If everyone that doesn't like systemd runs screaming away from Debian,
> shouting about libsystemd0, and doesn't bother to report bugs where our
> ambition to support other inits falls short, then they just ensure that
> the future they fear comes to pass.
>
Wow, that last paragraph is the height of arrogance. Choice, long may it 
live.

-- 
Mike Howard