Goodbye Debian… 😢

ISSUED: 2025-10-29

📢 This text was initially written as Friendica post, but I decided to adapt it as Gemlog too,

Where I live, after the covid, the use of computers have been heavily integrated into my kids school homework, I am not very happy about that but there is very little I can do to change this situation, what I can do is at least let them use an operative system that I consider better and safer.

💡 Funny enough it is only because everything is now cloud based rather than Microsoft Windows based… 😑

I installed Debian on my kids' laptops, and just recently I upgraded everything to Debian Trixie, however one of the laptop, the Dell Latitude 7390 has started to behave weirdly, with very frequents system freezing.

When I tried to understand what are the causes, I realized I am not to troubleshoot #Debian anymore!

Now logs system is so tightly integrated with "systemshit" that I am not able to understand anymore what is going on under the hood. Especially because in the last years my main daily drivers have been Devuan and FreeBSD and both are "systemd-free."

Once, before systemd, if you had an issue (with Debian) you could go on the `/var/log/` directory and look for any logs that sounded familiar like: `kern.log`; now you can't, there are still some logs but not the ones that you need.

Now there is this ugly `journalctl` that I can't find a way to learn because my brain is not wired to work that way! As a matter of fact it is counter intuitive and you need to learn how to use it. You need to use this application because logs are stored as a binary file, on the contrary with regular plain text logs you don't need to learn anything, you can open it with the tools you use every day like `less`, `cat`, `grep` or any other fancy TUI and GUI editor, everything is clear and easy to grasp.

📢 I reiterate the concept: clear and easy to grasp!

Old century *nix operative systems were meant to be clear and easy to grasp. Modern Linux systems don't, it has put a lot of effort to push away normal people making everything quite convoluted (systemd, immutable system, wayland, etc...). Some say for the sake of "system administration", however I don't believe it… That is the unavoidable consequences of the extreme corporate ramification into the main Linux development.

Why didn't install you something else in the first place then?

In the past to avoid to reflect my personal biases upon my kids, I decided that I would install on their computers Debian instead of Devuan, but because I am also their computers' administrator, I eventually realized that I need to switch to something that I use actively and I know how to fix it when problems come out. If I use Devuan or FreeBSD on a daily basis perhaps I must install one these operative systems on their laptops, although Debian and Devuan are mostly the same thing except for "systemshit."

The reality is that none of my kids care about the init system or the logs; actually non-techy people don't cares about these stuff. Because many (Linux) desktop users are potentially not really into "system administration" or are not enough expert in this subject, I am of the idea the init system and the logs, for a basic desktop use case, must be easy and simple, as it used to be. Complex tool are mainly useful for system administrators (most of the time).

Therefore when the next Devuan release will be available I will switch their laptops to Devuan and I will be finally out from the frustration of using an OS with systemd.

You are a systemd hater 👎

I don't hate systemd, surely I dislike it, what I hate is the lack of choices and the (linux) mono-culture. `Systemd` has been forced from the top, if "Linux & Opensource" are synonyms of choice then systemd is not a choice. Red Hat developed and forced the mayor distributions to adopt it by eliminating any other alternative from the landscape, this is not very opensource-y, not at all.

I hear a lot of people talking very well about `systemd`, with an emphasis on `journalctl`, I am not affirming the opposite. I am pretty sure that someone will state that `journalctl` is a powerful tool, that is far more advanced than `less`, `cat`, `grep`, you name it!

Based on this attitude, I can tell the same about the use of Gimp, the Gnu Image Processor, as a matter of fact it is the most advance image editor available on Linux, thus next time anyone who needs to crop or resize an image, must install and use Gimp!

However as I read many people writing sweet comments about `systemd` and `journalctl` I also read people complaining about the complexity of Gimp with comments that sound like this one: «But I only need to do basic operations, I don't understand it (Gimp), it is (Gimp) too much complicated for my needs!».

Yes, indeed! The same apply for me, please folks avoid to use double-standard, manage a system with the old school tools it is just easier and far more intuitive. Systemd is a tool for professionals.

Wrapping this up

In an ideal world all the operative systems are "commutable" in the terms that if I use one instead of another, my hardware is still recognized, the software I use is still available, and the process to switch from a system of another is completely frictionless. Unfortunately we don't live in an ideal world, so while the best operative system to install might be FreeBSD, hardware and internet support is still limited, therefore to avoid Microsoft and Google the only option left is GNU/Linux, in a word Devuan.

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