[Arm-netbook] Logging and journaling

[Elena ``of Valhalla'']

On 2017-02-09 at 10:53:02 -0500, Adam Van Ymeren wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 9, 2017 at 10:37 AM, Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir at cohens.org.il>
> wrote:
> > That is: you don't like systemd? fine. Installing Debian without it is
> > rather simple:
> > https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Installing_without_systemd
> 
> Please don't spread this mis-information.  Installing Debian without
> systemd is far from simple, and many things just won't work right as
> systemd has become a dependency on more and more packages.
> 
> It's possible, yes, but it's not simple, not supported, and tends to leave
> the user debugging weird behaviours.

This is mostly false:

installing debian without libsystemd0 is not supported. Lots of packages
have added optional support for systemd, so they are built linking that
*648 bytes* library to access it *when available*.
Not doing so would require multiple builds of all packages and that
would lead to mainteinance hell.

Using another init system on debian is fully supported, mandatory on
non-linux archs (sadly, none of them are release archs, but people are
still working on them). Since less people are using it it is likely that
there are bugs and that it will take more time to find them, but please
if you do *report them*, they will be taken care of as any other bug
(i.e. not always, because sometimes maintainers disappear).

The only way to be sure that other init systems will die completely in
Debian is not reporting bugs, because that way the maintainers have no
idea that they exists and no chance to fix them.

Running GNOME without systemd is a different beast: I don't know if it
has happened already, but sooner or later systemd will be required
because of an *upstream* decision.
Debian fully supports a number of other Desktop Environment and window
managers, some of which (e.g. KDE/Plasma) have a committed to being
multi-platform and thus will not for the foreseeable future force the
use of systemd.

-- 
Elena ``of Valhalla'' - who is very grateful to the systemd maintainers
in Debian because they are dealing with *that* upstream and are managing
to protect us users from some upstream insanities.