# ataraxia



## judd (Sep 27, 2020)

Although it looks like a grout, it looks interesting!


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## mark_j (Sep 28, 2020)

Perhaps not so interesting now it's systemd based: 
Sysdfree blog


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## judd (Sep 28, 2020)

You're right, I got the reading mixed up... sometimes these things happen.


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## mark_j (Sep 28, 2020)

When you posted about it, it piqued my interest, until I read it's a systemd victim now.

Oh, and yet another package manager? When will everyone in the Linux world come to their senses: it's Redhat or bust. All the rest are on borrowed time.

Do you know how they implement OpenBSD into it? The best I can come up with is "Using mixture of GNU, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Suckless and busybox " (whatever that means) in https://github.com/ataraxialinux/ataraxia/releases/tag/200416


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## richardtoohey2 (Sep 28, 2020)

Looks like they've used OpenBSD userland - so non-kernel stuff - but not sure specifically what that means - stuff from /usr/bin /usr/sbin I guess?


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## cynwulf (Sep 28, 2020)

mark_j said:


> Perhaps not so interesting now it's systemd based:
> Sysdfree blog


"Interesting" reading...  one decent response in the comments - and of course the site "editor" responds with typical politically charged fire and brimstone.

It's an activist's site.  Its theme is all about opposition to systemd, but in reality it's an "echo chamber" for the main contributor's political opinions.  As I recall, they had a fall out with the Devuan project and then decided to cease all coverage of Devuan - despite it being arguably the No. 1 Linux distribution which doesn't implement systemd.


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## ekvz (Sep 28, 2020)

cynwulf said:


> It's an activist's site.  Its theme is all about opposition to systemd, but in reality it's an "echo chamber" for the main contributor's political opinions.  As I recall, they had a fall out with the Devuan project and then decided to cease all coverage of Devuan - despite it being arguably the No. 1 Linux distribution which doesn't implement systemd.



Ouch, i hadn't noticed but now that you say it it's hard to ignore how an anti-systemd site without a single mention of Devuan feels strange.

Semi related: It's kinda funny how much overlap there is between FreeBSDs and Devuans communities. Just whois a couple random people on IRC you will almost certainly stumble across more than a handful of them who are obviously Devuan affiliated. I guess it makes sense as i've been a Devuan user for the last couple of years myself.


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## Truupe (Sep 28, 2020)

cynwulf said:


> "Interesting" reading...  one decent response in the comments - and of course the site "editor" responds with typical politically charged fire and brimstone.
> 
> As I recall, they had a fall out with the Devuan project and then decided to cease all coverage of Devuan - despite it being arguably the No. 1 Linux distribution which doesn't implement systemd.



As a longtime user of Devuan, I'm curious to know what the fall out was about.


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## Crivens (Sep 28, 2020)

After reading the start link, I realized that 10 minutes were gone from my life, never to return. I really don't care about systemd, as long as I am not forced to deal with the fallout. Sadly, developers don't wash their hands enough after touching it.


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## mark_j (Sep 28, 2020)

cynwulf said:


> "Interesting" reading...  one decent response in the comments - and of course the site "editor" responds with typical politically charged fire and brimstone.
> 
> It's an activist's site.  Its theme is all about opposition to systemd, but in reality it's an "echo chamber" for the main contributor's political opinions.  As I recall, they had a fall out with the Devuan project and then decided to cease all coverage of Devuan - despite it being arguably the No. 1 Linux distribution which doesn't implement systemd.


Whether it's an activist site or not does not change its message: that this linux distribution used to be systemd free but is now no longer.
As to the rest of the site, I neither read it or stood to want to read it. I just posted the link in relevance to this "ataraxia distribution".

As an aside, I have to say I'm warming to systemd. It's totally Linux centric so there is no chance it will ever infest any *BSD. Win/Win.


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## mark_j (Sep 28, 2020)

richardtoohey2 said:


> Looks like they've used OpenBSD userland - so non-kernel stuff - but not sure specifically what that means - stuff from /usr/bin /usr/sbin I guess?


Yes I assumed userland, but wondered what specifically? Probably one of the Open... utilities, I assume.


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## cynwulf (Sep 30, 2020)

Fair enough, no insult intended, but when someone links to something of that sort, others may well conclude that they are "proponents" of some sort.  I suppose I would simply point to this source:






						Ataraxia GNU/Linux
					

Simple and lightweight source-based multi-platform Linux distribution with musl libc.



					ataraxialinux.github.io
				






> "Ataraxia Linux aims to be simple, compact and safe, adhering strictly to the KISS principle. "





> "GNOME can run without systemd, pulseaudio (we're using apulse)."





> "This is interim release was made to show the GNOME Desktop Environment working without systemd, elogind, pulseaudio, avahi and Linux-PAM"





> "This is interim release made to show OpenBSD userland, fixed live installer, systemd init and other things!"


All seems a bit conflicted and messed up to me.  Loudly proclaiming about "KISS" principles and how they're avoiding several bit of "poetterware", then quietly announcing the switch to systemd.

Truupe , I don't recall the exact reasoning, as I was only mildly interested.  But I believe the "activist" was banned from the Devuan forums or made a voluntary exit after some disagreement with the administration there.


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## mark_j (Sep 30, 2020)

Don't worry I wasn't taking it as an insult, I was merely pointing out that regardless of their motives, the facts remain the same.

And, I agree, it seems to be an oxymoron: state one thing, do something else.


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## fungalnet (Dec 21, 2020)

cynwulf said:


> It's an activist's site. Its theme is all about opposition to systemd, but in reality it's an "echo chamber" for the main contributor's political opinions. As I recall, they had a fall out with the Devuan project and then decided to cease all coverage of Devuan - despite it being arguably the No. 1 Linux distribution which doesn't implement systemd.



Echo chamber was not meant to be, it was meant to be a community's echo chamber.  Whether people are too lazy (or possibly uninterested to contribute) is not the fault of the editor.  Some did, and some still do though, it is by no means intended as a one person "echo chamber".  And you know it because you were invited to be a contributor and turned it down (or never accepted the invitation).

Now, about Devuan.  This "fall out" which you might not remember the details of was catching Devuan red-handed with their pants down and all they could do was to shut the whistleblower's mouth.  THEY DECEIVED users that they were using their tor/onion address to forward their repository and were using it to test this alternative repository screen (between debian and their devuan pkgs) making the blend nearly impossible to distinguish.  They did this for 3 months without users knowing, till one noticed a difference between their clear repositories and the onion ones, producing variable and breaking upgrades.  Then there was an issue of violating tor's fundamental rules, of forwarding calls to the repositories out in the clear and back into onion network for a 2nd time, which torproject for years has discouraged people from doing.   How they did it?  They are able to screen out which connections came "from" the onion network and forwarded them back to the debian onion address, while the ones that came from clear were going to clear.  So they were being the middleman in the middle of two onion transactions.  Very spooky?  Instead of answering and explaining they were dismissing the claims and banned the person asking questions.  Within days they changed their little "experiment" and announced their "amprolla" repository system as exiting beta testing and becoming THE repository system.

Antix has been at it, Debian without systemd, for much much longer than Devuan 1.0, and quite successfully.  AntiX also provided for as long as  they could the option of not using elogind but if you need a logind to use consolekit2.  Devuan adopted elogind, the lazy way around repackaging upstream desktop packages from day one.  

You are also (those who mention it) lying that the blog doesn't talk about Devuan.  For a long while half the articles were about devuan.  The blog started pretty much covering Artix and Devuan, before it moved to better, cleaner, and more dedicated solutions.  I myself even contributed graphic material with Devuan logos to the project, and they are still up on the blog.  All you had to do is look, search, use the Devuan tag for all the Devuan related material.  The last couple of articles about it is revealing the details of this "Fall Out".

The Ataraxia guy was busting my balls a few months ago about being listed as a systemd free linux distribution, so I added it, but really I didn't know about it, there was no intention to block it.  I even made an installation and played with it.  Then some community member left me a comment a month or two afterwards about ataraxia porting systemd into musl (which I thought was impossible) and when I asked him how did he get it done, he responded with "patching".  So I took it back out.  That's all!  On a list of linux systems without systemd distributions that include or utilize systemd as their primary init setup have no place.  A few days I dropped Nutyx.

Honestly, the pressure to maintain "popular" desktops and not utilize systemd or parts of its functionality is getting harder and harder each day.  The most sincere in fighting the intrusion off have two options.  Stop supporting certain complicated desktops, and their responding software, or give up the struggle and conform to IBM's totalitarian control of linux.  

At this stage, I think saying that you are not using systemd but using elogind is in a way dissonest.   You are trying to deceive users that you are brave to defend their choice not to use it, but use a large chunk of its functionality renamed.    The reason systemd is intrusive is not because of its init setup and how it runs services, but how it live and controlling userspace through logind and dbus.


Why am I here?  

Well Cynwulf suggested that if I want to escape this madness I should try something non-linux instead, without really trying to sell freeBSD, he is not a salesman.  He has made this clear 

My 2nd goal is to learn how to use this system well enough so I can see how s6 and 66 can be ported into this system as well.  Running well in every linux tried is not a complete achievement.
What is scary about this is zfs and its latest development.  So I came here to find more zfs experts discussing it because linux people seem to be getting excited about something they know very little about.


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