Hello! I’m thinking about switching from my beloved fedora to a rolling release distro, because it really intrigues me, but I’m a bit scared of Arch, it’s still too soon for me to go down this rabbit hole XD
what do you think about debian testing? It’s not a “true” rolling release as long as I understand, but it “practically” behaves like one, correct? On the system informations I still see Debian 12, what will happen when Debian 13 stable will be released?
sorry if these are silly questions and thanks to all in advance!
The benefit of testing branch is it’s still nit quite so bleeding edge, and updating from testing branch every week means you’ll never have to install new stable releases, you’ll already be running it.
While the testing branch is stable, if you want even more assurance of consistant stabilty, use Devuan testing branch, which is Debian without systemd.
thanks for the answer! In your experience, is Devuan more stable than classical Debian? I’ve never used a non-systemd distro, so I don’t really know what to expect from it
Yes, Devuan is more stable. It’s not modified or forked, it’s still Debian .deb files but with a different init system.
The difference is systemd is one thing to handle everything. The other inits are launched or initiated each time something thing starts on an individual basis.
I have heard that systemd has greatly improved, but a different init starts a new process ID for each separate program so if something locks or freezes, it affects that one inidividual init process. For systemd, which runs system wide to handle everything, if one program locks, systemd has to make adjusts for the whole system to fix the problem.
I also tried Artix, which is native Arch without systemd, and while it was still a rolling system like Arch, I found Artix to run smoother or lighter than Arch.
Some people find command line with systemd easier to do becase it is one centrslized control system, I say no, what you gain in ease of management you lose in optimal performance and precise control over each individual one, as opposed to systemd being a blanket system. I want Firefox running an isolated process from the one that Plasama desktop is running, each sith their own init started only when each one was started and not controlled by a shared resource.
super clear answer! thanks!
So Devuan has even older versions of packages than Debian? Stability in the distro context means that features, APIs, UIs don’t change. Please don’t mix software bugs with stability.
It may be I’ve entirely misunderstood how systemd works, but I think your description of it is off by a mile too.
Of course there are PIDs with systemd too! First of all, systemd itself has a PID (1).
This is just wrong… Sure, if the service in question is dependent on a lot of other services, or vice versa. If your programs tend to lock, that’s the application’s fault and should be handled at the application level.
This is most definetly a difference in what else is running on the system. Systemd doesn’t really use that much resources. Unless you are measuring RAM usage in the megabytes. Which is of course valid on constrained systems, but on a regular desktop one browser tab will need orders of magnitude more resources than any init system.
This just shows you have absolutely no clue on Linux processes, I really really doubt anyone is running Firefox under systemd. And neither have you.
There are valid reasons for choosing a different init system, but you have not provided a single one that is really true. It seems like you are only repeating things heard from some one else.
This is true, but it refers to systemd handling a lot more than process management. Systemd has the problem that nowadays it does log management, memory management, login management, user management etc. This goes against the UNIX philosophy of one tool for one job, and THAT is why people frown on systemd.