Debian Forked over systemd: Birth of Devuan GNU/Linux Distribution

Debian GNU/Linux distribution is one of the oldest Linux distribution that is currently in working state. init used to be the default central management and configuration platform for Linux operating system before systemd emerged. Systemd from the date of its release has been very much controversial.

Sooner or later it has replaced init on most of the Linux distribution. Debian remained no exception and Debian 8 codename JESSIE will be having systemd by default. The Debian adaptation of systemd in replacement of init caused polarization. This led to forking of Debian and hence Devuan GNU/Linux distribution born.

Devuan project started with the primary goal to put back nit and remove controversial systemd. A lot of Linux Distribution are based on Debian or a derivative of Debian and one does not simply fork Debian. Debian will always attract developers.

What Devuan is all About?

Devuan in Italian (pronounced Devone in English) suggests “Don’t panic and keep forking Debian”, for Init-Freedom lovers. Developers see Devuan as the beginning of a process which aims at base distribution and is able to protect the freedom of developers and community.

Devuan Linux
Debian Forked over systemd: Birth of Devuan Linux

Devuan project priority includes – interoperability, diversity and backward compatibility. It will derive its own installer and repos from Debian and modify where ever required. If everything works smooth by the mid of 2015 users can switch to Devuan from Debian 7 and start using devuan repos.

The process of switching will fairly remain as simple as upgrading a Debian installation. The project will be as minimal as possible and completely in accordance of UNIX philosophy – “Doing one thing and doing it well”. The targeted users of Devuan will be System Admins, Developers and users having experience of Debian.

The project started by italian developers has raised a fund of 4.5k€ (EUR) in the year 2014. They have moved distro infrastructure from GitHub to GitLab, progress on Loginkit (systemd Logind replaced), discussing Logo and other important aspects useful in long run.

A few of the Logos are in discussion now are shown in the picture.

Devuan Logo Proposals
Devuan Logo Proposals

Have a look at them here at: http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Logo

The unrest over systemd that gave birth to Devuan is good or bad? Lets have a look.

Is Devuan fork a good thing?

Well! difficult to answer that forking such a huge distro is really going to be of any good. A (group of) developer(s) who initially were working with Debian got unsatisfied with systemd and forked it.

Now the actual number of developers working on Debian/Systemd decreased which is going to affect the productivity of both the projects. Now the same number of developers are working on two different projects.

What you think would be the fate of Devuan as well as Debian project? Won’t it hinder the progress of either distro and Linux in the long run?

Please give your comments about Devuan project.




Do you really feel that Debian with systemd will have a bad fate as depicted below
Strip SystmeD
Strip SystmeD

Time to wait for Devuan 1.0 and lets see what it could contain.

Conclusion

All the major Linux Distributions Like Fedora, RedHat, openSUSE, SUSE Enterprise, Arch, Megia have already switched to Systemd, Ubuntu and Debian are in the way to replace init with systemd. Only Gentoo and Slack till date have shown no interest in systemd but who knows someday even Gentoo and slack too started moving in the same direction.

The reputation of Debian as a Linux Distro is something very few have reached the mark. It is blessed by some hundreds of developers and millions of users. The actual question is what percentage of users and developers were not comfortable with systemd. If the percentage is really high then what led debian to switch to systemd. Had it moved against the wishes of its users and developers. If this is the case the chance of success of devuan is pretty fair. Well how many developers put long hours of code punching for the project.

Hope the fate of this project will not be something like those distros which once was started with high degree of passion and enthusiasm and later the developers got uninterested.

Post Script : Linus Torvalds do not mind systemd that much.

If you need Devuan, then join and support it now!

Development : https://git.devuan.org
Donations : https://devuan.org/donate.html
Discussions : https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
Devuan Developers : [email protected]

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Avishek
A Passionate GNU/Linux Enthusiast and Software Developer with over a decade in the field of Linux and Open Source technologies.

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