Devuan (DevOne) Fork of Debian, systemd, and Linux Mint

[vjek]

Hey there,

I'm a long time fan of LM, been using it since 12, have converted many friends, family members and workmates to the ease of use, high performance, feature-rich and hassle-free nature of LM.

Today, I noticed the fork of Devuan away from Debian core around the whole systemd religious debate. Personally, I hope to never install nor use systemd, but I understand some people support it, and that's fine too.

My question to the forums, and the LM maintainers/contributors is:

In light of this Devuan fork, Is the current plan for LM to adopt this fork and use it going forward, to specifically avoid systemd, or does Devuan change nothing for the LM team?

If systemd is going to be in the future of LM, that's fine, I just want to make an informed decision. I'll hold onto LM17 as is until LTS drops, but wanted to know if I should be adjusting my long term plans/views.

Thanks very much for any responses.

[cmost]

Frankly, the entire systemd furor is a storm in a teacup waged by the l33t. Apparently some people seem to think that if systemd is implemented in a distro then Red Hat will swoop in and take over Linux. Ridiculous! Mint is a desktop OS aimed at users who likely aren't going to care about the nuts and bolts of their OS or some silly debate over an init system; these folks simply want an operating system that just works and is easy to use. Even if Ubuntu decides to switch from upstart to systemd, there's nothing stopping Mint developers from simply forking upstart and continuing to use it if they prefer not to switch to systemd or back to sysVinit.

[thunderkiss65]

I would like to see the answer to this question myself. I really like linux mint, but I don't think I'll stick around for an OS slowly being devoured by the init system.

[cmost]

I would like to see the answer to this question myself. I really like linux mint, but I don't think I'll stick around for an OS slowly being devoured by the init system.

Linux Mint is not embracing systemd any time soon. The first thing you need to know about the Linux Mint 17.x branch is that it is using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as a base. The Ubuntu developers are only introducing systemd to the 15.04 branch. It doesn't mean that the Mint developers can't implement it right now, but they are probably waiting the next LTS, which will arrive in April, 2016. We already know that the Ubuntu-based version of Mint won't be getting systemd, but neither will the Debian-based one.

Here's what Clem had to say about it:

"Similar to Linux Mint 17.x, LMDE 2 "Betsy" will be using the traditional sysvinit. The move to systemd could happen with Linux Mint 18 and LMDE 3, giving this new technology and the Linux ecosystem 2 years (or more) to mature and to iron out integration and compatibility issues," wrote the leader of the Linux Mint project, Clement Lefebvre.