Personally - I think the step away from systemd is a fairly huge mistake.
I understand that legacy users and orgs may have vested interests in sticking with older init systems, but personally I think systemd solves a challenging problem space in a very easy to use manner.
I much prefer writing a systemd unit file than having to wade into sysvinit or runit.
Politics aside - I just find systemd far easier to work with.
In what case do you need to opt for a different init system than systemd? Genuinely curious, as I've been using debian with systemd for almost a decade now and haven't run into any issues regarding it.
Asking why/why not to use systemd is covering very old territory here at HN and not the point of my earlier comment - I was riffing on someone using the term ''a bit dirty'' in regards to a Linux distro.
I understand the point of your comment, and that why/why not is mostly a philosophical/political/whatever question.
But really, the “I use both as needed” is the statement which pokes my interest. When do you need something else than systemd? What is the actual work which doesn't run with that particular init system?
I'm honestly unsure if you were just joking or if there's really something more to it.^^'
Another reading of that comment would be that they use Debian (with Systemd) when needed, and personally prefer Devuan for philosophical/personal reasons.
It's still pretty easy to replace systemd in Debian with sysvinit (we do it at moderate scale). Devuan works very well though, basically there's little difference between Devuan and Debian without systemd (all the packages are identical, except where a package has decided to require systemd in which case the Devuan version will just have the dependency removed).
Long term though there's a query over support for anything other than systemd in Debian, hence the move towards Devuan.
Where Debian is a reputable distribution with a clear goal, the Devuan crew is solving a non-issue by means of almost religious levels of resistance toward systemd.
If you want technological merit, chose Debian. If you want to join the conservatives of Linux, you should go for Devuan.
Even during Debian's systemd adoption wars I'd never seen any argument calling into question Devuan as ''disreputable''. After all, it was a group of experienced Debian folks that made a systemd-less version of Debian that compares almost exactly with Debian's status and capabilities. I hope in your case you have not been forced to use Devuan.
I'd heard many times over the years that Roger Leigh was given a great deal of support by other Debian people, let alone across the Linux community. Maybe I misremembered.
You're using language and innuendo instead of argument to imply that the maintainers and users of Devuan are irrational. The objections to systemd were almost completely about the technical merits, with a side order of being annoyed that Red Hat was again being allowed to dictate the standard Linux stack by inserting another impenetrable monolith.
I know it's weird for me to object to your comment without implying that you're insane. It's alright to feel like using systemd after a tangle of init scripts was a breath of fresh air. I understand that point of view. I don't understand the invective against people who put their money where their mouths were.
I understand that legacy users and orgs may have vested interests in sticking with older init systems, but personally I think systemd solves a challenging problem space in a very easy to use manner.
I much prefer writing a systemd unit file than having to wade into sysvinit or runit.
Politics aside - I just find systemd far easier to work with.