Leaving Trisquel over systemd Concerns, Fantastic Project Otherwise, Thanks

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Patrick Mc(avery
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Joined: 08/15/2011

Hi Everyone

I have used Trisquel 5, 6, 7 and 8 on the same quad-core computer. It's
possible that it is my PC but I am pretty sure that Trisquel 8 is a lot
more unstable.

I am having frequent freezes(basically daily) were my mouse continues to
work but I can't switch between workspaces and all applications are frozen.

I think I am going to give Gentoo a try. I tried Salix a while ago and I
liked it but there was flash installed by default, I am also not sure
about non-free software and Slackware. Many non-systemd projects seem to
be in trouble and then if you add in concerns over poorly maintained
software... I am not sure what to do.

Trisquel is a wonderful project and I am sad to leave. I will post here
again if I more confident that it was in fact systemd. Perhaps one day
it will be dropped.

Have a great day-Patrick

Ark74

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I am a translator!

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Joined: 07/15/2009

I had that behavior earlier this year, but that was around April, then it stopped.

Maybe you could try using another kernel, there are low latency kernels, pae, and more variants.
Also try to make sure your system is getting the latest upgrades. Whenever I had that issue changing the tty from 7 to 1 (or any other) and back to tty7 let me continue working.

Hope the info is of some use, if not hope you find the best tools that suit your purpose.

ivanruvalcaba
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Joined: 09/22/2018

If you had fun with Slackware (Salix OS in this case), you could give it a chance to Freenix (formerly known as Freeslack) which is a Free eXpansion Pack for Slackware. This means that you install a vanilla Slackware and once the installation process is finished modify your repositories to Freenix so that it replaces and removes the non-free software and kernel. This project is basically focused on listing and removing all non-free applications included in the software installation disk so it is not a GNU/Linux distribution itself.

Beyond that they do not make any additional modifications, as is typical in the Slackware community, they respect and greatly value the decisions that their benevolent dictator for life, Patrick V. in this case, considers for the distribution.

I tried it a long time ago and I have a lot of love and respect for this project. The only warning I can give you when using a Slackware-Libre is to be careful when using or installing any application from the Slackbuilds community repository, something similar to the Ubuntu's ppa, since, they do not have such a firm conviction about the ideology of the FSF as the truly libre distributions.

I assure that you'll have a lot of fun with Slackware-Libre.

Best regards.

onpon4
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Joined: 05/30/2012

Operating systems are a lot more complex than "has systemd" and "doesn't have systemd". They were freezing, crashing, and just plain not working long before systemd came along, and the reasons are numerous and varied. I think there may be better ways to solve most problems than to throw away arbitrary components and hope that resolves them.

I've never experienced the problem you describe, but I wonder if it might be at a higher level given that you can still move the mouse. What desktop environment are you using? MATE, LXDE, or something else? It might be worthwhile to try a different desktop environment and see if that works better.

jxself
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Joined: 09/13/2010

Indeed! Yeah, the cause of their problem may indeed have absolutely nothing to do with systemd since as far as I can tell, absolutely no troubleshooting has been mentioned having been performed in this thread. So I wonder how they arrived at the conclusion that systemd is at fault. After all, my experience with Trisquel 8 is the exact opposite: It's rock solid. That long time for release gave it a lot of time to be battle-tested on the FSF's servers running things like fsf.org and gnu.org (which gets a lot of traffic), and where Trisquel 8 was being used long before release.

But it's more fun for the systemd haters to blame their problems solely and exclusively on systemd, ignoring that computers had problems before it ever existed. Maybe we shoudn't rain on their parade and try to use logic: It's obviously systemd's fault. Because it exists. :)

freemedia
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Joined: 09/14/2018

"absolutely no troubleshooting has been mentioned having been performed in this thread."

there isnt enough information from the original poster to troubleshoot anything, and they expressed no interest in doing anything except migrating, so the odds of troubleshooting are going to be low.

i find the arguments youre trying to start in your post to be condescending and one-sided and far beneath what i would expect of anyone working directly for the free software foundation. if i hadnt stopped funding the fsf already, i would consider doing so (at least for 6 months to a year) based on the arrogance of your post. at least stop talking down to entire classes of people you dont know (or dont agree with) like someone from the open source side would, jxself. what the heck?

"Maybe we shoudn't rain on their parade and try to use logic"

maybe you should start saying that your comments are yours solely and do not represent the fsf, since youre doing such a shoddy job of that at this moment. you and people that agree with you do not have a monopoly on "logic", unless i missed that newsletter.

even the phrase or label "systemd haters" seems to go against the spirit of free software. why should i have to use systemd if i dont want to? i understand why i should have to use systemd /in trisquel/ but thats not what i asked. what exactly is wrong with someone wanting to avoid software they dont trust?

and what exactly is the point of software freedom, if someone is going to have their intelligence insulted by someone from the fsf no less, for choosing an alternative? i am happy to say i dont think trisquel itself will ever stoop to this level: "trisquel-- a great free software distro, unless youre an idiot."

"We're all human and there are better ways to treat people." -- your words, not mine. personally it doesnt bother me that youre attacking one person you dont agree with. it /does/ bother me that youre insulting the very concept of his freedom, as well as anyone else that feels as he does about it. if this sort of attitude is how we are going to do freedom from now on, i will give you all my computer equipment-- its worthless at that point. i can bring it right up to the offices, just let me know.

jxself
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Joined: 09/13/2010

"there isnt enough information from the original poster to troubleshoot anything"

Exactly; this was my point. :)

"working directly for the free software foundation"

Maybe you have me confused with someone else? I have never worked for the FSF. Trisquel's fearless leader Rubén a.k.a. quidam does; he's here: https://www.fsf.org/about/staff-and-board

Obviously anyone can run (or not run) whatever software they want. And: That obviously includes systemd as well, since it's also software. This is so obvious (to me) that I didn't think it needed to be said but there it is.

The same goes for whatever distro someone uses since that is, also, really a collection of software.

But: One should at least be honest about the reason that they're not using a given program. Or leaving a distro. "I just don't like it" is probably a valid reason but there is probably a more descriptive underlying reason beyond "I just don't like it." But: Blaming a program for system crashes or other problems seems not so much. Because, with troubleshooting, that can be proven to be an objectively a true or false thing. But there seems so much dislike of systemd (or perhaps that's only my perception due to the adage about squeaky wheels) that it automatically gets blamed for everything by default. In this case the thread seemed to start off with an automatic blame of systemd for their computer's ills.

If they'd left with "I'm leaving Trisquel because I just don't like systemd" I probably would not have commented at all, but of course that isn't their stated reason. Their stated reason isn't that they don't like systemd but because it's causing their system to crash. I'm not sure how they arrived at that conclusion because, as you agreed, there isn't enough information to go on.

"I will post here again if I more confident that it was in fact systemd" seems to help confirm that they don't even know that it was in fact systemd. Maybe they don't have the necessary skills to do the proper troubleshooting (but the collective Trisquel community does) but they're jumping to that conclusion and it's being blamed as the cause as if it were nonetheless.

And so: All that we really know is that their system was crashing. The cause is unknown. The second part of my original message was intended only as a commentary on this "blame systemd by default" thing and not to be condescending (or anything else) to anyone. I'm sorry if it came across that way.

freemedia
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Joined: 09/14/2018

fair enough. also yes, i did have you mixed up with one of the guys in charge of servers at fsf. not sure how that happened, there it is.

for what its worth, i agree the original post would be a lot better if it had gone in a more constructive direction. its almost like one bug was encountered and they were like "okthxbye!" which i would just chalk up to, you go to the trouble of installing a distro, you encounter a bug that you think is because of something you already dislike-- frustration gets the better of you and this is what happens.

not a high-quality post, but im glad it has triggered some high-quality responses regardless of that.

libreleah
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Joined: 04/03/2017

@jxself i mean, to be fair, systemd is crap. i run it on all my systems though without issue

Patrick Mc(avery
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Joined: 08/15/2011

On 2018-10-04 10:50 PM, name at domain wrote:
> Operating systems are a lot more complex than "has systemd" and
> "doesn't have systemd". They were freezing, crashing, and just plain
> not working long before systemd came along, and the reasons are
> numerous and varied. I think there may be better ways to solve most
> problems than to throw away arbitrary components and hope that
> resolves them.
>
> I've never experienced the problem you describe, but I wonder if it
> might be at a higher level given that you can still move the mouse.
> What desktop environment are you using? MATE, LXDE, or something else?
> It might be worthwhile to try a different desktop environment and see
> if that works better.
>
Of course your right. I should try to debug this and/or ask for help.

So first off, disclosure, I have had a warning about my CPU fan from my
BIOs. It's intermittent, I have tons of cooling and the freezing does
not occur when I would expect a heavy load and the mouse still works and
the computer does not shut down but still, something I should mention to
be fair...

I am running vanilla Trisquel 8 with Mate. I installed VLC right away. I
had trouble with it and loaded a bunch of libraries to sort things out.
It turned out to be a VLC bug. I ended up uninstalling and using totem
again. A lot of freezes occur while watching videos but also compiling
programs and just at random. My compute never freezes on it's own while
I am away from it, it's always while I am using it.

This is the only valuable information I can provide so far.

Thanks everyone for the valuable feedback.

As a side note... I am 42 year old but I might as well be 82 when it
comes to technology, GET OFF MY LAWN!. I work with scientific
instruments for a living and they just keep getting worse and worse.
Software also seems worse and worse to me. It seems like people are
always replacing old software that worked with new software that
doesn't. I am just not sold on the need for systemd and I am just not
excited about it. I would rather just walk away and debug without it in
the picture. Having said that, this is a fantastic project and if there
is anything I can do to help, I would like to.

Thanks

freemedia
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Joined: 09/14/2018

It seems like people are always replacing old software that worked with new software that doesn't.

not always, but i know the feeling. feel free send me an email if you want to talk about ways to address all of this, unless you want to stay on the forum, that works too. theres a contact link next to my name-- if you want to avoid the captcha, just tell me to contact you instead. then i will do the captcha work for you.

Magic Banana

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Joined: 07/24/2010

There is absolutely no reason to think those problems have anything to do with systemd. As far as I know, no technical problem has ever been attributed to systemd on this forum.

I have had a warning about my CPU fan from my BIOs. It's intermittent, I have tons of cooling and the freezing does not occur when I would expect a heavy load. (...) A lot of freezes occur while watching videos but also compiling programs and just at random. My compute never freezes on it's own while I am away from it, it's always while I am using it.

Decoding videos and compiling are CPU-intensive tasks!

More generally, random freezes under heavy loads suggest a hardware issue. If the processor is not faulty, then it may be the RAM. Have you tested it? You can install the "memtest86+" package, which is in Trisquel's repository, and run it (from the bootloader's menu) during a night. If the screen turns red, the RAM is faulty.

freeatlast

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Joined: 07/21/2018

there are systemd free gnu/linux distributions
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Linux_distributions_without_systemd
as far as i know none of the bsd operating systems use systemd
there is also true os which is based on freebsd

https://www.trueos.org/

http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Operating_systems_without_systemd

chaosmonk

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> http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Linux_distributions_without_systemd

Not all of these distros are free. ConnochaetOS, Parabola, Hyperbola,
and GuixSD are, but I wouldn't recommend any of the others on this list
without checking them out first. Also, Trisquel is on that list even
though it has used systemd since Trisquel 8.