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Debian long since accepted shipping large, obscure blobs as start of the standard distribution when they adopted systemd. There's no reason why they shouldn't feature the maximally working version alongside one specifically labelled "Hair Shirt".

Systemd is not obscure or a blob. You can get the source package and view/patch/compile it yourself. It may be big and not very unixy in that it is not a small program that does one thing well, but that idea has been dead since emacs was invented

I am sure that in many ways, systemd is neither obscure or blobby. However, it seems to me that it is a lot *more* obscure and blobby than any collection of more or less sensibly named shell scripts.

I wanted to get a debian install to do automatically a networking thing on boot up some time last year. After a few hours of reading systemd doco and tutorials &etc I just gave up without progress ... it really wasn't worth the candle. In contrast it would have taken me almost no time to get something functional working with a few lines in rc.appropriatenamehere.

I can believe that systemd might be excellent if you really cared about the design and implementation of handling startup stuff in an efficient and elegant manner. But I have different things I care about, but still want to get a few things working to my taste on startup, ... and systemd offers me not only no worthwhile advantages, but obscurity (or perhaps just poor documentation), and obstacles.

Emacs is great, but Unix/Linux has more apps.

(Accidentally posted this as a post down thread rather than a reply - since withdrawn)

"You can get the source package and view/patch/compile it yourself"

Have you tried that?

Don't forget that many of us who adopted Linux was because it was Unixy. Why do you think we should appreciate having something non-Unixy foisted on us in such a crucial role?

Edit wars coat-trailing ignored.

No matter how you might feel about design principles, the fact of the matter is that people only pay lip service to the Unix philosophy in the Linux sphere and have done so for at least 25 years. In that time Linux has become more widely adopted, more flexible and easier to use. Meanwhile, Unix purists like the BSD folks have continued to slide into irrelevancy.

Would that be like insisting on all networking via ip6, as I found when trying to install it (buster, I think) last year? Perhaps I had missed something, but in the end I dropped back to an older release (stretch) to get a completed install... seeing as the local network was ip4 only.

I've dabbled in using 'nux distros of one kind or another for years.

But that "hair shirt" approach is never far below the surface. There's always something that doesn't "just work". And then there's always someone who will say " Ah you just need to use the command line; type sudo string of incomprehensible characters and all will be resolved". And you're never far from someone who sneers at any distro which doesn't require a postgraduate diploma in Advanced Witchcraft either. Mint- you don't want to be using Mint lad. Real Men use Cyberfloggernix. It's command line only and you can only enter data by typing ascii character numbers in Hex

The point about an OS is that it shouldn't get in the way of using the box with the programmes inside to do stuff that needs doing.

'The point about an OS is that it shouldn't get in the way of using the box with the programmes[sic] inside to do stuff that needs doing.'

And you are implying that Windows fits that description? [laughs]

As said many times before: all OSes are crap, it's just a case of finding which degree of crapness we are most willing to live with in any given use case.

Debian seems to have a specific and excellent role to play in providing a core Linux OS that many other people can riff off. Debian should focus on doing what it does well, and listening to comments/criticisms that are relevant to that.

Otherwise it's like the whiners who never stop whining that GIMP isn't Photoshop! Gee, who knew? That really is the point, isn't it: GIMP is NOT Photoshop. If you want P'shop use P'shop, don't fill up lines of message boards whining on and on about how GIMP isn't P'shop, ... ad nauseum

>And then there's always someone who will say " Ah you just need to use the command line; type sudo string of incomprehensible characters and all will be resolved". ...The point about an OS is that it shouldn't get in the way of using the box with the programmes inside to do stuff that needs doing.

...And the award goes to the countless developers who make computer systems to appear to Just Work. Those who integrated all those incomprehensible sudo commands so that a mortal user does not have to.

Running Linux on a laptop without consulting the distro HCL is generally a bad idea: any problems, and you are on your own. Running a Linux distro that made a conscious choice not to include or officially support closed source device drivers is just asking for problems.

Anyway, the pal is clearly just trolling around and having a good laugh about recent changes to the website design: he writes directly to the developers list and complains about "The current policy of hiding other versions of Debian". Well, there is a 'More...' button right below 'Download' that helpfully reads, 'Further links to downloads and software'. The current website look is straight back out of the 90s, no doubt about that. It actually looked a way better in 1998 as witnessed by archive.org.

You missed the point. The distinction is in the license. Systemd is under a free license, so it's allowed in.

I still wish the claims of my having a choice on whether it's installed were factually accurate though.

Systemd is a set of well defined, small executables with specific roles and the entire thing is open source. Gripe about it all you like, but distributions use it because it works better than its predecessors did.

> Systemd is a set of well defined, small executables with specific roles

Systemd is a vast and ever-growing set of defined (well, sort-of) and slightly documented executables with specific roles (almost none of which you want), entangled with other activities that are unclearly related to those roles.

It has been claimed (evidence still awaited) that it outperforms its predecessors.

Good luck changing the mind of a Unix weenie errr... Veteran Unix Admin. They have their init.d scripts from 1994, and they want computers to keep booting processes one at a time (like a Pentium 4 PC) and of course do it by running arcane bash scripts. Oh, and using PID lock files to track service state. The idea that you can declaratively define a process and its dependencies and let a system daemon do the rest for you is alien to them. The idea that service files should not contain random bash logic is also alien to them. They are the same people who think array bounds checking and garbage collection in programming languages are superfluous.

But , fortunately for the rest of us, Red Hat and Canonical have money to make, and they need a way to reliably track services on a Linux system (as Windows NT has done since forever) so those Veteran Unix Admins should either learn systemd or retire for good.

Veteran Unix admin are used to the old adage: if it ain't broke, don't fix.

And BTW, Debian did a good job of increasing boot performance by replacing /bin/sh years ago: You can run a search of dash cs. bash

And BTW*2, boot frameworks including parallelism though using shell scripts exist

"Not all Debian developers agreed."

Ah, and there is the problem. Two different viewpoints. One for the devs who have the skills and opportunity to shape Debian and the ordinary user who does not.

Purity is fine but comes at a cost. Everyone using Linux owes a lot to Richard Stallman but not many people can go along with his strict interpretation of "Free" software.

When I was a SysAdmin my main concern was to allow the users to get on with their jobs. They had no interest or need to know the ins and outs of the systems they were using. Shortcuts were taken at times and workarounds put in place to ensure that the primary business of the company was allowed to continue. My view of the system was not the same as theirs. For me it was a job. For them it was a tool.

So for devs to say that the way you can use the system has to be the one they favour is, in my opinion, short-sighted.

As the old saying goes "Give me the tools and I will finish the job."

Heretic

It is a matter of freedom. The freedom to program and design software to the limits of technology. The only way this is possible is for all of the software to be free! Debian is the most successful Linux distribution, with countless derivatives on account of the quality.

This is only possible because people can devote their time to do it the right way, with no concerns to interests not directly dictated by the limit of technology (i.e. limits in licensing and possibilities of use).

You viewpoint is the shortsighted one! To serve "the users" in an "easy" way. To compromise the freedom of debian to appease an "easy" install "experience" will not further the fantastic quality and ultimate freedom of "The Universal Operating System". It might get you a win in an popularity contest, but my guess is that that is not the primary motivation of the debian community.

While I'm not defending unnecessarily counter-intuitive and arcane configuration requirements, nevertheless, regarding software as merely a tool is comparable to regarding citizenship as merely a way to earn a living. It's not as simple as that.

Our software choices have ramifications. Always favouring convenience and neglecting licensing stipulations have often been shortcuts to vendor lock-in and dependency, to lack of transparency, to increased difficulty or even inability to effectively security audit your tools, to loss of ability to make multiple copies of programs, etc. etc. Such things may not be at the top of your priority list, but they are important to others, and it's those people for whom distros such as Debian are tailored. For those for whom such things are irrelevant, there's a long queue of proprietary vendors just waiting to take your money. You have choice :-)

Debian is one of the most deployed server operating systems on the planet. It seems rather odd to criticise the project for not understanding what it is their users want and need. Their desktop offering might offer a few more challenges to the uninitiated (particularly laptop users) than than their server edition, but it's become one of the most successful Linux distros of all time, so I think we should cut them some slack (no pun).

Yes, there is a cost. It is a high cost that we Linux enthusiasts are accepting to pay because we value that freedom you put in condescending quotes.

Your opinion is short-sighted when you claim developpers are forcing you to adopt their view. They spent countless hours working on software they offer for free if you want to use it. They don't claim it is perfect and if you find it doesn't suit your needs they're fine with it. And it's not for users to shape Debian the same way it's not users who shape Windows.

What I really, personally owe to Richard Stallman is an OS that trusts me and one that I can trust. No forced activations, no telemetry(a.k.a. spying or slurping), no compulsory cloud logins. Yes, it has downsides, rough edges but it requires nothing in exchange and I'm comfortable with it.

This is why I point less-experienced users to Debian derivatives like MX Linux, as they generally already have the "user-friendly" install functionality built-in.

With respect, who the f*** wants to install an operating system on the basis that with more experience they'll be able to install another operating system.

It's an Operating System . The clue's in the words.

Otherwise what this turns into is Linux is for deep down grags, and Windows is for people who actually do stuff with computers.

Someone who really likes trying out new and increasingly weird and hardcore operating systems?

The installers I find particularly unfriendly are those which offer to do everything and then set up a partitioning arrangement that's not suitable for long term use, not even a separate partition for /home.

Debian isn't remotely difficult to install, assuming you have a reasonable basic skillset. It's approximately as difficult as properly installing say, Windows 8 and disabling all the crap associated.

A difficult install would be Fedora 14 or so (around that era? I don't recall precisely), which had a bug in the installer so it always failed. If memory serves there was a bad line in the install script that could be worked around, but it took serious head scratching to figure that out.

> It's approximately as difficult as properly installing say, Windows 8...

It's easier and much quicker than installing any Windows release I've ever tried.

Haha, no. In my Acer Aspire One netbook (ironically designed to run Linux) I had to manually install a driver for the Broadcom Wifi using obscure dpkg commands. Windows had the required driver bundled. Also, Windows always finds an accelerated GPU driver for your graphics card the moment it connects to the internet. Every Desktop Linux distro I've tried makes no attempt to find an accelerated driver if the required driver happens to be proprietary, so if you have an Nvidia or AMD graphics card, it will default to unaccelerated 1024x768, drawing pixels on the screen one at a time using the CPU like a peasant, without any indication that you should probably install an accelerated driver.

Dear distro devs: Either go the Apple/Android way and make system-specific images or go the Windows way and discover drivers automatically, at least for common hardware. Nobody cares about your "purity".

Nobody said it is difficult to install. The problem, apparently, is that it is difficult to get it to work with the hardware.

Which is not a problem because, apparently, the solution is Ubuntu.

I prefer Mint, these days.

Yes. So many times the install script offer to either install from scratch, wiping everything; install alongside an existing installation; or 'something else'. Something else is a bit daunting if you don't know what you're doing (should you really have to go to a web site to find out recommended default sizes?).

Maintaining an existing \home should always be a default option, I feel. Installing a separate \home should be the default except on very small disc/flash systems.

I have installed hundreds of debian hosts. Their ncurses based installer is the best there is! Of course you need to, actually, know how to use a computer to use the installer. A problem for the "digital natives" generation i guess.. HAR!.

Now get of my lawn!

It's not even about being built in though - as per the comment by Sven Joachim, they maintain two copies - a "pure" version that is broken for most laptops (which they put front and centre) and then a version that works (which they hide).

So the current situation is that we make an active effort to produce two different types of installation media: one that works for all users, and one broken for most laptops. Some sort of FOSS version of an anti-feature. Then we publish the broken version on the front page, and hide very carefully the version that works.

There's nothing wrong with saying Debian is a purist distro, useful for headless servers and as a proto-distro that is built out to fill different roles by others (Ubuntu, Mint, etc).

But they're not - they're maintaining two versions and then not making clear what's what. The entire free/non-free debate is quite irrelevant - it's bad website design, bad UX design, bad communication.

So why did the complainant not sit down and write the driver himself? That would have solved the problem but instead he wanted it for free ...

Open Source programmers tend to be owned by the users. The code writer is considered by end-users as property, or chattel, and is deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by users when they try to install a new operating system (the definition of slavery updated).

It depends on who you mean by complainant but I take it to be the one who just wanted to install and go. His complaint wasn't that the driver didn't exist. It did. His complaint was that the DVD with the proprietary drivers was well hidden.

If by complainant you mean someone who thought the driver should be OS you have a point but I find it difficult to see such a person as being the complainant.

So why did the complainant not sit down and write the driver himself?

Even for someone who is able to write a device driver (and very, very few programmers can as its a specialised area), can you provide them with the hardware documentation to allow that to be done?

Methinks you don't have a clue about the issues here.

I write and maintain a piece of open source software.

Do you know who I write it for? People who might want to use it. If they're also programmers then that's great but my priority is to make my piece of software a smooth part of their workflow; the less time they have to think about me or my link in the chain, the better.

Every time I get critical feedback that allows me to improve my software. I am tremendously grateful to those who not only take the time to try out my little effort, but put the extra energy into getting in touch when something isn't quite right.

So I guess I'm doing it wrong? I should just set up an autoreply that says "Oh, well, if you're sooooo clever, just fix it yourself"?

Good grief, did you get Sydney Powell to write that bit of hyperbolic, libertarian propaganda? Back to the Houston patent troll firm from whence you no doubt came!

In fact, most free software and open source programmers would rather collaborate to create their own tools than give a penny to the likes of someone with your sense of commercial entitlement.

But the post was Gold-Fringed ! Free from Admiralty Court jurisdiction the poster had not assented to !

I acknowledge that the post may well have been a missile full of sarcasm that rocketed straight over my head.

To be honest, it's just not Linux flavours that have this issue.

In the past with Windows, you had to faff with USB 3 drivers insatlling from a USB 2 port, because the OOTB install didn't support it. Same with video cards, and network drivers. I've had the same issue with my Windows box recently, because it didn't have drivers for my USB Wifi dongle.

It is a PITA, but lets be honest, you can't support everything OOTB.

What you should provide though is an easy link to drivers.

With regards to 'why didn't he write one'... that is the comment of a single man/nerd.... well, I use Linux as part of my job, but I haven't got the time (or knowledge tbh) to write a driver. As someone with a family, I just can't justify it, unless I want a divorce.

And is Qualcomm going to provide a register map/programming guide for every one of their devices? I doubt it.

"unless I want a divorce"

Oh, you mean that's how I could have escaped sooner?

"What you should provide though is an easy link to drivers."

Of course if it's a networking device and you need the network to follow the link...

The most ridiculous thing I've found so far is a motherboard that just hangs if a DVD drive is plugged into its SATA connectors, less so if the drive is in an external USB connected housing or connected via a SATA daughter board but even then it won't work. Try installing a DVD image if the MB won't handle a DVD drive.

I built a new PC in 2004, Athlon64, SATA HDD, DVD, no floppy... And swappable hard drives. The drive with Linux installed like a dream, slap the DVD in the drive and wait 30 minutes while it chugged away.

Windows? No. No hard drive attached to the PC! Hmm. The motherboard supplier provided a floppy with the drivers. I borrowed a USB floppy from a friend. Windows found the drivers... Then reset the USB bus before trying to load them! Luckily the shop where I bought the components was very friendly and lent me an internal floppy drive, 10 minutes later, Windows had found the drivers and loaded them! I then returned the floppy drive to the shop.

I also had an Acer laptop, with ATi Radeon X800m graphics. That couldn't even install Linux in VESA mode! I had to do a command line install, then download the ATi drivers and link them into the Kernel... I think it took a good 18 months, back then, before even rudimentary support was built into Linux for the graphic chip!

Both sides of the fence "could do better". Although, these days, both do a half-way decent job of installing from scratch, as long as you have a compatible network driver in your toolbox...

2004? Use nlite to slipstream the drivers required into the XP CD that you're using. While you're at it, you can do a bunch of other really nice tweaks so that you don't sit and spend until the end of time adjusting settings on the finished install.

I mean, it's not like you were going to do something idiotic like install Vista back then. And if you did, you fully deserve what you got! :D

Ah yes, the eternal problem of XP not having bundled SATA drivers, with Microsoft not being able to fix it because the CD-ROM had already shipped (back in 2001). It was fixed in Windows Vista and Windows 7 about 13 years ago, so the pain is now gone. Now imagine that little driver problem expanded to your WiFi chip and your graphics card, and not being solved, and you have Desktop Linux.

Debian is probably better suited to more technical users.

There are *many* distributions more suited to the beginner / GUI fanatic / Windows convert.

So many of these gripes suggest they are on the wrong page and that they don't have much of an interest in learning how things work. They are not going in the same direction as the project. There are still many distros for these guys, no need to sit in the wrong community moaning.

...because not so very long ago I remember all too well that pretty much every machine came with a CD with Windows drivers on it and you could be pretty much certain that a clean Windows XP, 7 or 8 install would come up with VESA graphics and the odds of the wifi working "out of the box" were close to zero. We should probably give Microsoft some credit for the fact that that's no longer the case - but it's not the case in the vast majority of Linux distros either. Debian is still more aimed at technically adept users than the average layperson. If it weren't, there's be no need for things like Ubuntu or Mint. I really don't see that it's a problem in it's current form - and if it is the only thing they need to do to fix it is change the "DOWNLOAD" link on their website from the netinst image to the full install DVD.

(And if they do that let's be clear - it'll just annoy people who will go "But why is the installer so large? Why not just download it on the fly?!")

A compact netinst image still isn't much use if the netinst doesn't because it won't talk to the net. I have to admit that I'm used to that so if I'm using a netinst image I take the precaution of plugging in cable.

And let there be a special curse on distros which provide an install-from-live image where the live image is all singing-dancing but only includes OSS drivers in the installation.

With many other Linux's available if Debian doesn't work out for whatever reason then try another. Although I have used SUSE for many years, I use Debian on the RPi's and recently installed Mint for a newbie (on a laptop too!). I would recommend trying Mint, then Ubuntu and then Zorin.

If all these fail to please then feel free to go back to Windoze. But, if you do mange to get Linux working on the laptop you will never go back so do persevere.

A really useful (free) package for trying various flavours of Linux is Ventoy. (https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html). You can put loads of Linux ISO's on it by just copying therm.