Re: Web + email hosting recommendations

[Andrew Luke Nesbit <ullbeking%andrewnesbit.org@localhost>]

On 08/05/2019 10:19, Christopher Pinon wrote:
> Sijmen J. Mulder <ik%sjmulder.nl@localhost> wrote:
> 
>> U'll Be King Of The Stars <ullbeking%andrewnesbit.org@localhost> wrote:
>>> Debian is in pretty bad shape these days.
>>
>> At risk of getting OT here, but in what way? Not trying to debate, just
>> curiousity.
> 
> I can't say what ullbeking was thinking of, but some were disappointed
> by Debian's decision (for Debian 8) to adopt systemd.

I don't like systemd but I accept it and I embrace it.  And I think it
will get better.  I am trying to learn how to operate it.  But I feel
that a lot of the anti-systemd sentiment comes from people not liking
change.

Systemd is here to stay; the world of computing is one of the
fastest-changing things in the, er, world.  If you want to stay relevant
(if you are a professional) then you have to make at least some effort
to accept changes you don't like or don't agree with.

There are MANY other modern technologies that I dislike more than
systemd.  Systemd is the least of my concerns.

Yes, systemd HAS complicated the operating system and I don't really
understand how it's supposed to be used.  With the benefit of hindsight,
had Debian or Red Hat gone on a campaign to explain what systemd is; how
it is different; where it is better than the old init system; and, most
importantly, _how to use it_; then I think we wouldn't have such
negative sentiment towards to it.

Unfortunately I think many grass roots developers see Red Hat as an
untrustworthy corporate enterprise these days.  I think they are angry
that Red Hat forced systemd onto them, thus signifying the start of an
era where Linux development is no longer a community effort.

So it is true I prefer to use systems that don't use systemd.  But
that's not the core of the issue here.

I boycotted Debian for a few months some time ago out of frustration
because a bug had turned one of my machines into a rogue host and caused
my entire network configuration to collapse.  When I was venting my
frustrations, people were automatically assuming that systemd was to
blame (it wasn't) and I hated systemd.  I didn't and I don't hate
systemd, although I prefer OS'es that don't have it.

I do agree that systemd exacerbated this bug, which was already present.
 And I believe that the complexity and unusability of systemd made it
difficult to understand what the problem was and how to contain it,
before it was too late.

Nevertheless, I think Debian made the right move in adopting systemd.
It's important that we have a distribution with a decent ethical
framework that can stay competetive against Red Hat (in some abstract
way that I am finding it difficult to articulate).

Having said THAT, I actually enjoy using CentOS and RHEL.  I also think
they have decent documentation even though it's not as good as BSD's.

In summary, systemd is correlated with increasing complexity and
increasing numbers of quality issues.  I am not anti-systemd because I
don't think it's the _cause_ of the kinds of issues I have been having
during the past couple of years.

> At the same time, the truth is that for any Debian release in its
> history, you can find people saying that Debian is in pretty bad shape,
> so unless more is said, it's hard to know what is meant.

I have a lot of respect for the Debian project -- its ethics and its
technical quality.  All Linux distributions have major flaws.  This is
software we're discussing, after all.  I have been using Debian since
the late 1990's, and I know that if I were to trade it in for something
else I'll just get a whole new set of issues to cope with.  (Disclaimer:
I am currently spending more and more time with Adélie Linux and intend
to move more of my end user Linux machines to Adélie.)

The main problem with Debian is one that I sympathise with greatly.  For
many years I have felt that the size and complexity of the project is
out of control.  It's an under-resourced project, despite the best
efforts of a lot of talented developers who often have to make difficult
(and sometimes unpopular) decision.

THIS is causing the kinds of defects that hit me the other day.  It
caused problems on my network that took weeks to fix.  Problems like
this are happening more and more frequently as time goes by.  There's
just far too much software to nurse along, but the Debian developers
have been doing a great job given the difficult circumstances.

Another issue, which I think is quite serious, is the outdated Stable
kernel that is continually recieving back-patches.  I know there are
real reasons for this, and I don't have a better solution.  Regardless,
this causes extremely subtle and mysterious problems that are almost
impossible to predict or detect, excpect for the fact that "my computer
is acting weirdly when I use this program that has very strict
requirements of correctness" (such as flashrom).

These old kernels also make it impossible to run things like Btrfs
reliably.  Btrfs generally requires as recent a kernel as one is able to
deploy, at least 4.14.  This has a knock-on effect that a project like
Btrfs suffers because a pure Debian Stable system has an old kernel that
doesn't meet the minimum standards for a reliable Btrfs system.

> Debian will never be as polished as CentOS or as shiny as Ubuntu, but
> it's pretty good in all other respects.

I still think it's the best GNU/Linux distribution.  It will be the gold
standard for a long time to come.  I think Adélie Linux and Void Linux
are the future of Linux distributions, alongside Debian.

Andrew
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