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Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Wed Oct 01, 2014 4:33 pm

Very happy to see the troops gathering . . .

Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Wed Oct 01, 2014 6:03 pm

systemd dissenters who still want to run xfce, note this: On my sid box with TDE and *systemd* excluded in /(etc)/apt/preferences:

Code:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
xfce4 : Depends: xfce4-session (>= 4.10.0) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
[email protected]:/home/dzz# apt-get install xfce4-session
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
xfce4-session : Depends: libpolkit-gobject-1-0 (>= 0.99) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

# apt-get install libpolkit-gobject-1-0
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libpolkit-gobject-1-0 : Depends: libsystemd0 but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

This is a separate issue to dbus (old version still working). The polkit stuff has been assimilated. Dean started on the whitelist (thanks).. this is for the blacklist.

TDE still running fine, resource usage similar to xfce.

Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Wed Oct 01, 2014 7:20 pm

Alternative to gksu (went quiet for a while, disappeared from Debian, now active again)
https://github.com/nomius/ktsuss

It compiles, installs and works here. Only 2 small files. There is also kdesu and tdesu therefore refractasnapshot-gui and refracta2usb do not need strict dependency on gksu.

Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Wed Oct 01, 2014 7:40 pm

As I posted earlier, it is possible to run sysvinit and Xfce on Debian Jessie, but how crippled it is, the user can decide. It does bring in libsystemd-login0, but the init is still sysvinit.

It seems the the only 'sure' way to stay completely systemd-free on Debian Jessie is to use a wm rather than a desktop environment (except trinity as dzz has shown)

Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Mon Oct 06, 2014 5:46 am

What all needs to be present to qualify as a "desktop environment". I don't need a desktop-resident weather widget, thanks.
Maybe you demand (or expect that "desktop users" demand) CUPS printing? I leave that out & when I seldom need to print, I print from another pc (or boot to O/S on another partition, which has CUPS installed).

I'm surprised that dean's list didn't mention SpaceFM.
slim + fluxbox (or jwm or icewm... or openbox?) + udevil + spacefm (plus, idunno, does fbpanel count as a separate component?)
...and none of my preferred applications depend on gvfs nor policykit.
In fact, I believe most everything I use will run (although the errorlog gets spammed) in the absence of udev.
Along the way, I think "systemd-login0" and "polkit1" are the only cling-ons my system has acquired.
Hmm, consolekit too, if you wanna count that. I'm not hardcore enough (or haven't bothered hard enough) to pare that from the system.

Because GTK3 has repeatedly been a thorn for me (unreadable foreground/bg color combos in many places) I've also learned to avoid gtk3-dependent apps.
The Trinity DE is still gtk2, right? Does it provide/support transparency? I think fluxbox does, and openbox doesn't (so just add compton, if needed)

Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Mon Oct 06, 2014 12:53 pm

The Trinity DE is still gtk2, right? Does it provide/support transparency?

No.. it's qt3, they also forked qt3. Not sure what you mean by "transparency" but gtk apps generally run fine in TDE. It doesn't need consolekit stuff but I don't know enough details how it handles login and permissions. It does require dbus but older dbus (and udev) without systemd deps are still installable in sid.

Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Mon Oct 06, 2014 4:20 pm

Maybe "compositing" is the correct term instead of "transparency".
My point was that support for it can be easily added, if needed and not already provided by the WM.

The "3" in qt3 might be what had me scratching to remember. It's been a while (last december? time flies) since I booted your Trinity+Debian exegnulinux,
but seemed to fondly recall the absence of libgirl3* GTK3 package dependencies.

The mention of "avoiding lock-in" in this thread's original post is what grabbed my attention.
That's been an ongoing motivator for me in choosing system components piecemeal (a la carte) vs just "going with the flow".

Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Tue Oct 07, 2014 3:46 pm

It is getting worse. Now in sid, bsdutils (essential) depends on libsystemd0

https://packages.debian.org/sid/bsdutils

So even a server/X-less core debian-sid will get traces of systemd.

Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Tue Oct 07, 2014 4:33 pm

It is getting worse. Now in sid, bsdutils (essential) depends on libsystemd0

Aside from added dependencies, have any remarkable bugfixes or improvements been made since v2.20.1-5.11 ? (the version in jessie repo)
I can't find anything remarkable in the changelog:
http://metadata.ftp-master.debian.org/c ... _changelog

after skimming this page
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgrepo ... atmerged=0
what does seem remarkable is that the added systemd dependency was tagged as a "WISHLIST" item
and the package maintainers were motivated to "fulfill someone's wish", vs attending to the numerous backlogged "BUGS".

Re: Going with the systemd flow . . . or not?

Mon Oct 13, 2014 7:59 pm

Playing around with jessie, trying different stuff for a graphical session. I'm probably going to ramble and maybe rant.

Openbox with lxterminal and lxpanel is ok. I'd like some other features, like wallpaper, desktop icons and removable devices. Added spacefm and got pretty good handling of devices. Wallpaper setting didn't work.
Added nitrogen and got a background image to work. Then added rox-filer to let that manage the desktop. Run 'rox -S' and there's a home folder icon on the desktop along with an extra panel at the bottom. How can I combine these two file managers into one that does all that I want?

I did try razorqt again, and this time it lasted longer before I uninstalled it, maybe for an hour or two. All files in my home dir showed on desktop until I edited ~/.config/razor/desktop.conf and changed directory=/home/user to directory=/home/user/Desktop.

Added the old version of dbus that dzz linked, and then installed most of xfce4 (excluding xfce4-session). I think it was thwak who said it's crippled. That seems to be an accurate description. After this was when I went back to openbox and added spacefm and nitrogen.

Tried to install trinity, but apt-get tells me I have held broken packages and aptitude tells me I need an older version of binutils along wtih a bunch of virtual packages.
I have the following in etc/apt/preferences.d/00pinsystemd:
Package: *systemd*
Pin: origin ""
Pin-Priority: -1

Package: dbus
Pin: release a=wheezy
Pin-Priority: 1001

Using wheezy sources for trinity. I tried changing wheezy to jessie, but that didn't work.

That's all for now. Feeling a little like I'm lost in the woods with no idea of what direction to go.
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