On 2017-03-03 at 12:42, Patrick Bartek wrote: > On Fri, 03 Mar 2017 07:25:13 -0500 The Wanderer > <wanderer@fastmail.fm> wrote: > >> On 2017-03-02 at 13:01, Patrick Bartek wrote: >> >>> I've been considering Stretch as a clean install or dist-upgrade >>> of my aging Wheezy desktop setup as well as to install on a new >>> notebook I've yet to decide on. I don't like systemd (why is >>> unimportant to this query). I plan to use some other init >>> system, probably runit. So ... >>> >>> Just how dependent has Stretch's system become on systemd? I >>> don't mean applications or GNOME, etc. with systemd dependency >>> that I can choose not to install, but the system itself, the >>> guts, the basics, the things and tools it needs to work >>> properly. >> >> There are two packages which are in some sense "part of" systemd >> which you will not be able to avoid: libsystemd0 and udev. > > udev I knew about. (Also, udisks2.) But there are udev > alternatives that don't have any systemd dependency. One is eudev > from the Gentoo people, IIRC. It's suppose to be platform > independent.. Yeah, but last I checked, those weren't available in Debian. (Although "last I checked" was months ago at minimum, so it's possible I could have missed an ITP message for such a package.) >> libsystemd0 is the "detect at runtime whether systemd is present" >> library; it's what makes it possible for programs to use systemd >> when it's there, but still work when it isn't. It might >> _technically_ be possible to avoid this, but one of the packages >> which depends on this is xserver-xorg-core, so for most systemd >> that will not be a practical option. > > Had heard about that dependency. I'm sure there are others that have > yet to be discovered. That's one of the reasons I dislike systemd. Frankly, I have basically zero problems with this. There are definitely advantages to building against systemd for those who _do_ have it, and the alternatives to a dependency library like this would be "one set of X packages built against systemd, one not" or "X packages built only against systemd; if you want ones that aren't, compile it yourself". Multiplied by all the _other_ packages that depend on libsystemd0. I think a wrapper/stub library like this is probably the best solution. >> udev wasn't originally a systemd thing, but is now maintained by >> the systemd people, and apparently shipped from the same source >> package (or at least I can't see any other reason why changes to >> udev would appear in apt-listchanges under the name of "systemd"). >> >> Those are the only systemd-related packages on my current primary >> machine (unless you count systemd-shim, which exists specifically >> to make avoiding systemd itself possible), and I've been running it >> with no apparent related issues for pretty much the entire time >> since the systemd transition. > > Know about systemd-shim from my tests with Jessie.. Read some time > ago, it was to be dropped from Stretch. It's orphaned and unmaintained (even upstream, AFAIK), but it's still present in stretch as of this morning; I don't recall hearing word that it was going to be dropped entirely. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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