[arch-general] A systemd less Linux alternative to Arch is hard to find but exists

[Kevin Chadwick]

Forgot a change Tom requested, please reject previous if not too late!

>  I'm sure I will
> have to switch to systemd on all my systems eventually, but I don't
> give up that easily ;-)


For those looking for many of the plusses of Arch, you may want to
check out Sabayon. The forums say there are no other distros akin
enough to Arch, and that you will be stuck with systemd eventually
anyway but I disagree and you may be surprised about what Sabayon
offers and the similarities to Arch.


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 Similarities
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Bleeding edge

many binary packages (>10,000) and the entire Gentoo Source repo
(>30,000)


For pro audio on Gentoo Ralf you may be interested in this and the ease
of compilation customisations rather than hacks, though I have no
experience with the info in this link myself, yet.

http://audiodef.com/projects.php?project_id=1


___________

 Benefits
___________

optional pre-built hardened packages in the main repo

Intended to be customised compilation control via Gentoo Use Flags
(especially useful if you don't like all the default flashiness and the
rainbow of colors and graphics on the console for a particular system
or any other package defaults)

A script based openrc that I really like by default and systemd only if
you choose it and for the foreseeable future. It may take more
work though initially than keeping initscripts on arch currently and is
not supported by Sabayon however you may receive help from some on
the Gentoo list as setting it up is described here.

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Systemd


The advice is to stick to binary (equo) or source (gentoo's emerge) but
if you are confident the two are in sync at the time of build/install or
you can keep an eye on the versions and compatibility of what you are
installing/building, then you can mix the two and gain all the power of
Gentoo and it's USE flags without the waste of energy or time and
resources for compilation.


_______

 Cons
_______

They recently dropped non-PAE kernel support, so a few pentium Ms
from 2005-2007 will not work (Typically the system I happened to want to
test it out on and so had to use an older laptop).

You don't start with a minimalist system but they have many iso
flavours, so one such as server or hardened server should suit as a
start, if that's a reason you use arch.

The package system is very very cool and colourful, but not as fast as
pacman, possibly because it uses both hashes and signatures.




I put this mail in for review on the Sabayon list with the following
responses.
_______________________________________________________________________
>>> Nice to see you like Sabayon. I want to clarify one thing.

>>> openrc and systemd only if you choose it and likely to the end of
>>> time.  


Sabayon doesn't provide systemd but you should be able to install it
from Portage if you know what you're doing (ie. probably better to use
an older version rather than newer one that would require udev update),
but keep in mind that packages are built without systemd support
(many .service files are provided regardless though).
_______________________________________________________________________

>>> I would like to confirm though as I ideally want to stay clear of
>>> the... systemd that Sabayon will likely support Openrc for a long time
>>> if not forever even if the default is switched before I invest some
>>> time in migrating installation scripts etc..  

I digged the discussion here on the mailinglist out for you:
http://lists.sabayon.org/pipermail/devel/2012-August/008278.html
In case you want to read the whole story =)

Regards, Andre


-- 
_______________________________________________________________________

'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work
together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a
universal interface'

(Doug McIlroy)
_______________________________________________________________________