2025 hardcore list of 21 linux distributions without elogind and other systemd parts

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Welcome antiX and Noir linux to the strict list, with edition 23 antiX is fully functional and lighter than ever without a trace of elogind!

        Edited:  October 4th 2025 (replacing older strict list)

This list is going to be short and there may be a sublist of distros with a medium strict standard.  We shall explain what the object is, below the short list (which we hope the community will assist in making longer as we have not been able to currently review the work of every distro and fork).

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The end of linux-kernel as free software we trust – war on FOSS revisited

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Basically the article aims to help some of you decide on your own when and which kernel is the last “safe” kernel to use.  In the bottom of this article is relevant release dates of lts and current kernels with release dates before and after the ban.

Safe is and has always been a very relative term in FOSS and any OS for that matter.  It is most related to belief in trust between end user and author.  Especially FOSS, being exposed to millions of knowledgeable critics and auditors of software, beyond the millions of lines of code there is a relationship of trust more than being able to evaluate every single line of every single piece of software used.

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War-time OS new release, just on time

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No, new linux or other OS but war is knocking on our doors daily now and we are in no position to say what will this mean for our daily material and social lives, how communication and exchange of information will continue.  All we can tell from history is that “any” little freedoms we may locally enjoy can go out of the window as soon as the sound of the first bomb flies in.

– This does relate to linux and OS in general and users. –

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syslog-ng how long have logs being accessible by your sys-admin?

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Interesting discussion taking place in a r/joborun thread about building syslog-ng without systemd and telemetry!

What is interesting is that the author of syslog-ng took notice of the article and responded himself defending his choice.

This may continue so visit the link directly but here are the first two responses to the article:

https://www.reddit.com/r/joborun/comments/16x7u8o/users_of_syslogng_beware_telemetry_is_coming_not/
users of syslog-ng beware …. telemetry is coming! Not from skarnet
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A new low for the systemd gang and what it may mean (libblockdev udisks2 udiskie)

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WOW I can plug an external disk into my pc and it shows up on my MS look-alike filemanager right away, without even being an admin of the system!

WOW WOW I can plug an encrypted external disk into my pc and it shows up on my MS look-alike filemanager right away, without even being an admin of the system!

This linux is JUST LIKE MS-windows11!

And this is what you were after?  An open-free software system that acts and looks just like windows 10/11?

If your distro caters to morons keep expecting what it is you are getting.

If your distro doesn’t cater to morons, why keep getting what it is you are getting?

We can’t answer every philosophical question here, and we never intended, but circumstances keep drawing us back to the meaning of life.  libblockdev udisks2 didn’t change versions remained the same, but were rebuilt, why? Because the source address was changed, and also the ckecksums of the source changed, and their dependency to systemd changed, somehow.  Continue reading →

Advertising policy on sysdfree (the Case of Artix and Gable)

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Dear Gable

If you just wanted to place a plug for your system of choice, like any good fan-boy would, you are welcome to do so.  But when this plug (a form of an informal advertisement for free in web-land) includes inaccuracies, false characterizations, and right-out lies, you open up an area of criticism and correction of your plug that may end up as a boomerang to become a negative advertisement.  And below is your comment and source included, unaltered, unmoderated, and still waits a response.  We thought it would be a valuable separate discussion, since it is a bit off-topic to discuss other objects than the article specifies (not that we were ever so strict on this), to just speak here about Artix specifically, in contrast of its other two Arch alternatives. Continue reading →

2023: Linux rusting away into non-FOSS territory – Build rnote and you will see

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Linux 6.2-rc2 kernel is out as the last commit in kernel.org at the start of the 2023 year.  RUST is here, the initial code-base is included in the kernel.  At least Arch seems to be disabling it for now, at the beta level at least, we shall see.

Rust is not just a language, as people commonly think, it is much more.  It is a building environment, system, and a mode change of the philosophy of building packages from source.   Rust incorporates its own git system in pulling code in from 2nd and 3rd parties.  So if you have never gotten into the real FOSS practice of auditing code before you build, try and audit this stuff.  If building in C you thought was a practice similar to building sand castles, by comparison, this is like building sand castles with quick-sand ON QUICK SAND.

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How safe are you and how much do you trust your distro?

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Except for a few distros that assist their users to build everything they install from source (kiss and forks, LFS and forks, gentoo and forks, crux, exherbo, T2-sde, etc), most linux-distributions, offer binaries to be installed, usually backed up by the source code (script) building the package from either their own source code, or what we call upstream (other FOSS sources).  How do you know though, that what the source repository shows and what the binary package contains is the same?  One way is to build it with the same recipe (packaging source script) and compare the sums.  Very few people do this and in very rare and controlled environments is the product the same, meaning checksums are identical (Arch is reporting 15-20% failure to reproduce their own packages).  So what most distros do is they sign their packages and by having their public signature key, you know what they built is what you got.  But are you sure they built it right, or did they take adequate measures to make sure what they pulled from upstream to build the package is what the author really published?  How can you check?

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linux removes obarun presentation

r/linux removes Obarun announcement

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https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/…./modular_boot_process_a_new_door_to_the_future
linux removes obarun presentationIn case the above link magically vanishes from reddit here is a screenshot of what it looked like (a couple more comments may have been added) and below see the text and imagine the reasons this announcement was removed by the moderators of r/linux.  Imagine also what the “image” of linux is perpetrated to be.  I say they are going for one linux, IBM’s linux, systemd linux, with various flavors of desktop crap just like themes of MS-windows or Apple’s and Google’s squishy flaky bubble hovering CRAP! Continue reading →

Ataraxia and the need for a stricter list of distros

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A while ago someone I didn’t know contacted me in reddit about the list of distributions without systemd, suggesting I should add ataraxia linux.  Ataraxia Linux was very similar to kiss-linux, source based, musl, but featuring an array of init and service supervision systems available to choose.  A few weeks ago, someone (turns out to be the same person) added a comment to this blog to this more precise list of “linux distributions without systemd” and suggested I should add Ataraxia to the list, and I did.

Then a comment comes in by someone who is really going through the list of distributions and also has been reviewing the narrow list of distributions, or systems, built on musl instead of glibc.  He alerted me to the fact that Ataraxia is now using systemd as its default init system.  It didn’t strike me as odd in the beginning, even though I had recently given it a try.  I was under the impression, never tried, that systemd couldn’t be built on musl as it wasn’t even written in C.  So I asked that same guy, who turns out to be the distro owner of ataraxia, how has he  achieved this, and I got a single word response:  “patching”. Continue reading →

7 – Modules of services and service bundles

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This was topic #7 from the proposed list and since this is going to become a hot topic soon, in linux-system-administration circles, we thought of introducing our community to the basic principles.https://i0.wp.com/victorloughlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Mr-smith-Matrix-image.jpg

If you read up what module means, where the term comes from, where is it utilized, you may end up more confused than you were before you encountered the term.  If you are French or speak French well, since the term appears more native in this language than others, and since it has more applications you are familiar with, the concept may be easier to digest.  There is also a mathematical operationalization of the term, which is a very specific concept in mathematics that is, that makes the term more understandable, but if you are not into theoretical mathematics don’t even touch that subject.  Don’t go there!

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New Obarun live image based on all new 66 0.4 edition

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A new Obarun live image has become available on July 10th 2020 and it brings many updates and changes.  From the live JWM session you can install a base system, Openbox, JWM, XFCE4, or KDE-Plasma with corresponding setup of 66 root and user service structure already set-up.  All recent (July 9th 2020) stable Arch-Linux upgraded software based and a much improved installer is onboard.  You can run the live system off of a CD (still fits) or Dvd or USB stick, or a virtual machine as a common disk system or a RAM only system from its syslinux editable boot menu.

NOTE:  Previous Obarun images and installer may not work without manual intervention to incorporate the new GPG keyring for Obarun.  Therefore older versions of pacman will not upgrade or install software, hence the net-install process will fail. Continue reading →