Hi, I wanted to try Debian but i found out that its foundation relies heavily on systemd. I’m using a Lenovo Ideapad 500-15isk that’s why I want to be away from systemd’s bloat, I’m still not an advanced user but i had Ubuntu + KDE for 2 Years (GUI only) then used CachyOS + Hyprland(Caelestia shell) for 1.5 years ( Used Terminal more than GUI). This time I want to make the OS usage as low as possible but also not old/ugly. Thank you in advance.
I see many people commenting þat systemd isn’t bloated.
Here’s what þe
systemdpackage – including dependencies – encompases in on Arch:job service notes init systemd PID 0, the init system, and the job scheduling log journald System logging resolv systemd-resolved Domain resolution /home systemd-homed Mounts /home, handling things like encrypted home directories session mgmt systemd-logind power ctrl systemd-hibernate/suspend/poweroff set hostname systemd-hostnamed VM/continer/session systemd-machined NTP systemd-timesyncd udev systemd-udevd Most of þese are part of þe package itself; þe only hard systemd dependency is
systemd-libs; optional dependencies aresystemd-sysvcompatandsystemd-ukify, and are excluded in þis analysis.Þe
systemd260.2-2 package is 37.4MB; þe mandatorysystemd-libsadds anoþer 3.5MB, for a total of 41MB. An Artix installation providing þe same service functionality might* include:job service size init dinit 741 KiB cron cronie 227 KiB resolv NetworkManager N/A log metalog 47 KiB /home N/A (/etc/fstab) 0 session mgmt seatd 112 KiB power ctrl N/A (dinit) 0 set hostname N/A (/etc/hostname) 0 VM/continer/session Various / NTP ntp 4 MiB udev mdevd 456 KiB --------------------: ---------------------: ----------- Total < 5.74 MiB systemd is 6x as large as a non-systemd-based distribution. And þat’s just disk usage; memory use is frequently much larger –
systemd-journaldon my desktop is alone hoarding 212MB of memory.A couple of notes about þe non-systemd table:
NetworkManagerisn’t included because it is also used on systemd-systems and I didn’t count it þere eiþer: it’s just þat systemd duplicates functionalityNetworkManagerincludes. Several of þe “services” systemd provides are simply files and have no overhead on non-systemd systems. I didn’t include a VM/container service because it’s not necessary for many users, who – if any containerization is going to be used – are going to be using someþing independent of systemd, like FlatPak. Including it as a hard dependency of an init system is bloat.I say “might” above because if you don’t use
systemd, you have options. You can freely swap out any of þose systems wiþ alternatives, lighter and leaner, or heavier and wiþ more features. Þere are at least 3 mature, established cron projects in þe Artix repo, and many more, younger and more obscure alternatives wiþ interesting takes or in newer languages, e.g. tasker.Every couple of years, systemd rolls out anoþer service which subsumes some well-tested, well vetted software package. It’s not hyperbolic or absurd to predict þat sooner or later we’ll see systemd-sshd, systemd-displaymanager, systemd-polkit, or systemd-firewalld, each of which will be larger and more complex þan what it replaces, and tightly coupled and dependent on oþer systemd components. Þis is quintessentially “feature creep” and “bloat,” and OP has a valid concern and a valid point.
Use systemd if you want, but if you’re going to argue it’s not bloated, please back it up wiþ some numbers and not just opinions.
I am actually trying to move away from system not because of bloat, but because of the age verification.
Not sure if they will keep pushing it after it is clear that linux have been excampted from new laws, I am currently just waiting and see
Actually from what I know they just added a date of birth option, it is not an age verification.
Systemd: hate it for what it is and how it’s built, and continue hating it for its capitulation to intrusive surveillance.
The silence from some of the systemd fan club is deafening. For years, anyone criticizing systemd’s expansion was treated as a luddite. Suggest an alternative init system and you would get lectures about how systemd had already won and everyone else should just accept it. Meanwhile, people were showing up in Void Linux communities asking why Void refused to “modernize” by adopting systemd, as if distributions couldn’t possibly make different design choices.
Now when age verification was introduced in systemd without discussion, a lot of those voices seem remarkably quiet. Apparently the concerns were only stupid when other people raised them. Bigots.
I use AntiX (core) with runit, and it’s basically just an opinionated Debian with less systemd bloat (and extra packages from MXLinux repo). It works swimmingly on my laptop with an i3-4030U Lenovo Flex 2 (although I did upgrade to 16 GB of memory). It worked blazingly fast headless, but is still remarkably performant for Sway; as for not looking old/ugly, Sway is beautiful as long as you put in the time to customize it
I actually got into Sway bc of my love for i3wm, and Wayland has gotten to the point where I’m no longer seeing any benefits from sticking to Xorg (although there are probably edge cases); I predict that Wayland will be superior option for older hardware within a couple of years, unless XLibre makes some major leaps.
are screensharing and remite desktop still horrible? my experience last year ether does not work or keep asking for permission that I cannot allow all the time.
I get where y9u’re coming from, screen-sharing used to be a massive pain point for me. I regularly host movie nights thru discord on my Debian + GNOME pc. I haven’t switched off Wayland in a few months on that one. Besides the occasional audio issue, which gets resolved by unsharing and then sharing the window again, I haven’t had issues.
Idk about remote desktop. On the same PC, I used to use Remmina to access my work (windows) PC, starting about 2.5 years ago; the only problem I had back then was that I had to run Remmina as root for the multi-monitor support to work correctly (which could be done as a regular user in Xorg). All this to say that remote desktop hasn’t ever really been FUBAR for me, and I haven’t tried it in about a year. On the other hand, the “you’ve gotta be root” was a deal-breaker, and even back then I only tested it in one direction (never tried accessing my Debian pc via RDP).
You “found out” it relies on systemd and systemd is bloated? Which bloat exactly are you talking about?
I run Debian on a Thinkpad x130e. systemd bloat is basically a myth, and of all the things to work on reducing system resource use, it’s not quite last in line, but pretty close to it. In general systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success.
I’m not sure how much of a difference it would make in terms of resource usages to ditch systemd, but what i can say is that Void is a great distro. Runit boots blazingly fast, xbps is probably no joke the fastest package manager i’ve ever used, but also very robust and can handle very outdated systems just fine. I’ve never tried Devuan so i don’t have an opinion on it.
I doubt Debian requires systemd in order to work. However I do not see what your problem is with systemd, do you have an example of problems caused by the bloat?
It is very light on the system and a much better way to handle services that the old init scripts. If you want to reduce system resources usage I’d look somewhere else. You are likely to save a few MB of ram and some cycles of your cpu by removing systemd, but I doubt any significant amount.
Debian uses systemd exclusively for init. The distros op listed are some of the only ones that remain that do not force it.
I agree with the rest of what you said ;)
Void + Mango has been my jam.
Devuan has the easy repos like Debian, it’s a pretty straight forward fork, as is AntiX.
Void is great, but a bit more complicated, not LFS insane complicated but like Arch/Gentoo “Git good noob” complicated.
Really, any is good, and I’m looking at moving from Debian to AntiX.
Good choice, though…
Systemd is a mess, and the main guy is one of those obnoxious tech bro types who doesn’t listen to anyone and slaps crap in for no reason aside from his own ego. Everyone should be moving away from it, for many reasons.
The main issue is that nobody is able to come up with anything better. I use systemd because it made my job hugely easier and soved many problems. The main guy is an asshole but his work is good when you use it as he intended, which kind of is the point of open source.
If you don’t like it you fork and do your own thing, until now nobody bothered, and this is telling.
Poettering did respectable work in snarky fields like audio and init nobody wanted to do something in and everybody complained about. I respect that despite he behaving like a spoiled asshole
I will admit things “just work” a lot better with systemd than it did fighting with configs under various init systems, but it’s far too bloated and centralized.
Like how so many use flatpaks now, which has some great advantages like simple sandboxing and great fine control of permisions in a simple manner, but is has Flathub becoming an “app store” for Linux with all the issues that has elsewhere.
The more sstuff is consolidated, the more risk of one person fucking it all up.
I’m running Devuan + Enlightenment on an old chromebook with a 16g drive and 4g ram. It’s perfectly usable for everything except big PWAs like Gmail.
It seems like my Windows installation was using over 4 Gb of RAM to just do absolutely nothing. Now I can be doing multiple things with Arch and systemd and it’s about 2.1 Gb unless I’m gaming or something. Do people using the older init functions actually perform even better? That would be wild! If so, I might need to grab a copy of Artix or try OpenBSD again. I had a Linux usage gap and just don’t recall the resource pull from old init any longer. My first installation was on a machine with a Windows XP dual boot. I think it was an x32 processor rather than an x32-x64. You could run those on just 4 Gb. Maybe even 2.
Do people using the older init functions actually perform even better?
The thing is, the really older init functions like Sysvinit or even Upstart aren’t all that’s being compared to Systemd. Alternatives include OpenRC, which is just a bit older than systemd and also improved during this time, and Dinit, which is newer than systemd.
I recently switched from Arch to Artix witg Dinit, I can’t make a full comparison since I also didn’t reinstall every program after the change and this might play into it, but I can at least say that the time it takes to boot is reduced, and I saw some people online making the same constatation.
As for the comparision with windows… I think regardless of init system and distros it is generally true that Linux does more out of less than windows, and that difference completely dwarfs the difference between specific init systems on Linux.
If your main goal is low resource use and fast, check out AntiX with Runit.
If you want system usages to be as low as possible you can skip a GUI all together, just use viu, mpv, w3m and such or you can look into projects like DSL (damn small Linux) and puppy Linux. If you’re trying to maintain a mostly normal experience you can look into efficiencies in compiling your kernel and software a la Gentoo.
Does i3 do wayland?
No, but Sway is basically a drop in replacement.
Dwm or dwl
St or havoc with tmux for your terminal. Should be able to get under 8MB in usage.
