13 ms·

Devuan us a separate Debian with its own repositories (and presumably many packages patched to improve systemd-less life), while this is just replacing Systemd

by _flux 3mo ago

Devuan us a separate Debian with its own repositories (and presumably many packages patched to improve systemd-less life), while this is just replacing Systemd with OpenRC on a Debian system, while keeping Debian repos etc.

nubinetwork 3mo ago
You're going to have to make a separate repo for everything anyways, because you'll have to change all the init scripts and whatnot that get supplied with programs... well, unless you install both and just leave the useless systemd files laying around forever.
- _flux 3mo ago
  My /usr/lib/systemd takes 6.4 megabytes, so I think I could live with that overhead. Or I suppose just delete them manually. What would actually be useful would be a generic OpenRC wrapper that would ingest those service files and provide traditional start/stop interface for them.
  - nubinetwork 3mo ago
    You mean the inverse of systemd.generator? Probably wouldn't be hard to make, but you'd have to be pretty committed to your init system to not just write the script by hand...
    - _flux 3mo ago
      Hmm, I perhaps didn't quite catch this. I thought having a generator would let you be less committed to it, as you wouldn't need to manually write all the init scripts you need.. ?
      - nubinetwork 3mo ago
        Writing a basic init script is less intensive than having to learn the entire "schema" for both script formats, which you'd probably want to know if you were writing the generator.
        _flux 3mo ago
        Yes, but one only needs to write it once, and then everyone could use it. It could probably even be packaged as an official Debian package.
        simoncion 3mo ago
        > Yes, but one only needs to write it once... ...and then keep up with behavioral changes that the Systemd Project people introduce and load-bearing bugs that services end up relying on for lifecycle management. OpenRC service files are easy to write, and their schema is far far simpler than that of Unit files. [0] It's really not worth the effort to write and maintain an converter, if for no other reason than you need to understand the semantics of both systems' service files to double-check the results of the converter. [0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717056>
        JdeBP 3mo ago
        It's wild to see people having this argument in the subjunctive in 2026. I've had a convert-systemd-units tool since 2014, and provided Debian packages for the toolset that it is part of for around that long. * https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/convert-systemd-units.xml https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/convert-syste... * https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/converting-systemd-units.html https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/converting-systemd-uni... * https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/debian-binary-packages.html https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/debian-binary-packages.html
        yjftsjthsd-h 3mo ago
        Writing a script is easy. But converting a whole system of .service files seems like a great time to automate.

by _flux 3mo ago

nubinetwork 3mo ago

You're going to have to make a separate repo for everything anyways, because you'll have to change all the init scripts and whatnot that get supplied with programs... well, unless you install both and just leave the useless systemd files laying around forever.

_flux 3mo ago
My /usr/lib/systemd takes 6.4 megabytes, so I think I could live with that overhead. Or I suppose just delete them manually. What would actually be useful would be a generic OpenRC wrapper that would ingest those service files and provide traditional start/stop interface for them.
- nubinetwork 3mo ago
  You mean the inverse of systemd.generator? Probably wouldn't be hard to make, but you'd have to be pretty committed to your init system to not just write the script by hand...
  - _flux 3mo ago
    Hmm, I perhaps didn't quite catch this. I thought having a generator would let you be less committed to it, as you wouldn't need to manually write all the init scripts you need.. ?
    - nubinetwork 3mo ago
      Writing a basic init script is less intensive than having to learn the entire "schema" for both script formats, which you'd probably want to know if you were writing the generator.
      - _flux 3mo ago
        Yes, but one only needs to write it once, and then everyone could use it. It could probably even be packaged as an official Debian package.
        simoncion 3mo ago
        > Yes, but one only needs to write it once... ...and then keep up with behavioral changes that the Systemd Project people introduce and load-bearing bugs that services end up relying on for lifecycle management. OpenRC service files are easy to write, and their schema is far far simpler than that of Unit files. [0] It's really not worth the effort to write and maintain an converter, if for no other reason than you need to understand the semantics of both systems' service files to double-check the results of the converter. [0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48717056>
        JdeBP 3mo ago
        It's wild to see people having this argument in the subjunctive in 2026. I've had a convert-systemd-units tool since 2014, and provided Debian packages for the toolset that it is part of for around that long. * https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/convert-systemd-units.xml https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/commands/convert-syste... * https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/converting-systemd-units.html https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/guide/converting-systemd-uni... * https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/debian-binary-packages.html https://jdebp.uk/Softwares/nosh/debian-binary-packages.html
      - yjftsjthsd-h 3mo ago
        Writing a script is easy. But converting a whole system of .service files seems like a great time to automate.