[lug] Ubuntu is auto-installing new kernels

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 2 Oct 2020 08:27:34 -0600
"Jed S. Baer" <blug at jbaer.cotse.net> wrote:


> Yet another nail in Ubuntu's coffin for me 

Hi Jed,

If you're looking for a new distro, I have two suggestions:

My first suggestion is what I use: Void Linux. It lacks the training
wheels that most Red Hat and Debian derived distros have. Lack of
training wheels mean less layers of abstraction, and also make for a
more DIY-friendly distro. Void's sort of like Slackware with a
dependency aware package installer. As far as I know, Void has no
"automatic updates". Instead, every day or two you perform the command
"xbps-install -Su", and it updates itself. It's a rolling release, and
that sounds scary, but the only time I got in real trouble with the
rolling release thing was when I didn't update for months. I think
Ubuntu would have had trouble with that too.

Void has few developers, but they get maximum bang for their buck by
having a special machine that builds and gits all the software.
Although Void is missing a few of the exotic programs possessed by
Ubuntu and Debian (and therefore Devuan), the breadth and quality of
its packages is remarkable. When I encounter must-have software that
isn't packaged in Void, which is very rare, I either
./configure;make;makeinstall or I run a different distro in a VPN.

Void has neither systemd nor sysvinit. Instead it has an
init/supervisor called "runit". No more unit files. No more 327 line
init files with 500 lines of includes. PID1 is trivially simple: All it
does is basically do early boot stuff with an rc file, fork off a
supervisor, and then sit there and spin listening for and handling
signals. Enabling or disabling a new service is as easy as creating or
deleting a symlink. Daemons that crash get restarted. If you *really*
don't want that restarting, you could have it contact you by email or
other means, and then go into an infinite sleep. If you're familiar
with djb's daemontools software, runit's supervisor is basically the
same thing.

I've been using Void for over 5 years now. I love Void so much my wife
is jealous.

Void isn't for everybody, which brings me to my second recommendation:
Devuan. Devuan is simply Debian, except with sysvinit instead of
systemd, and with a nice, helpful community instead of the constant
snarking you see on Debian's Debian-User mailing list. In my opinion,
Debian's smartest people left: Many ended up at Debian.

Since 2014, Debian has been bending over backward to sabotage every
init system other than systemd. Since its inception in very late 2014,
Devuan has welcomed all init systems except systemd (after all, if you
want systemd, why not use Debian? Well, except for the snarkitude.)
Devuan has a runit package that's not ready for prime time as PID1, but
you can use sysvinit as PID1 and runit as the process supervisor to get
an init system every bit as good as I have on Void.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt 
Autumn 2020 featured book: Thriving in Tough Times
http://www.troubleshooters.com/thrive