(   )
                          (    )
                           (    )
                          (    )
                            )  )
                           (  (                  /\
                            (_)                 /  \  /\
                    ________[_]________      /\/    \/  \
           /\      /\        ______    \    /   /\/\  /\/\
          /  \    //_\       \    /\    \  /\/\/    \/    \
   /\    / /\/\  //___\       \__/  \    \/
  /  \  /\/    \//_____\       \ |[]|     \
 /\/\/\/       //_______\       \|__|      \
/      \      /XXXXXXXXXX\                  \
        \    /_I_II  I__I_\__________________\
               I_I|  I__I_____[]_|_[]_____I
               I_II  I__I_____[]_|_[]_____I
               I II__I  I     XXXXXXX     I
            ~~~~~"   "~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sat, 11 May 2019

Devuan to the Rescue

I mentioned a while back that I was fed-up with systemd [0], and was considering installing Devuan [1] on my personal mail server. I finally did just that and I have to say it has given me reason to like Debian again (by way of Devuan of course). As far as I can tell, Devuan ASCII is indistinguishable from Debian 9, minus the systemd virus.

Systemd led me to give up on Debian, after being a hard-core user since the Slink/Potato days. While my desktop or laptop OS'es tend to vary with my interest at any given time (I've played with lots of GNU/Linux distros plus the three big BSDs at one time or another), my own servers run Debian stable. And back when I did consulting, if given the choice, I would always recommend that my clients use it also (the one exception was in the area of firewalls, where I would recommend OpenBSD). So it's nice to see what many of us consider and know as Debian continue to be developed and supported. Every once in a while I read about problems keeping systemd from infecting software on the remaining sensible GNU/Linux distros, and I hope it does not become impossible.

posted at: 14:40 | path: / | permalink | debian, devuan, email, systemd

Sat, 06 Oct 2018

Systemd and Gopher Tags

I'm so fed up with systemd. I tried recently to install gophernicus on my home workstation, Debian 8 (Jesse) - the first release they switched to systemd. Somehow the installer sets up a listening gopher server on IPv6 only, and the systemd interface is completely broken. I don't even want to spend the time to debug it, the CLI interface and config file layout is so awful. I think I'll install Devuan and say goodbye to systemd.

Solderpunk writes about tagged gophers [0][1], and Jynx is right [2][3] in that my gopher phlog engine Slerm [4] supports tags and tag searches natively. I agree a tag-search facility outside of any given client would be very useful, a nice middle ground between full-text and selector searches. Speaking of full-text search, I have a prototype of a full-text search engine I wanted to bolt onto Slerm, but I never finished the integration. Maybe I'll do that one of these days.

posted at: 18:24 | path: / | permalink | debian, devuan, gopher, slerm, systemd, tags