Why we are building Data Center Light on Devuan

The introduction of systemd* in 2014 has caused some uproar among developers. When the Linux distribution Debian also decided to switch to systemd, the community became truly split into two groups: those who follow the masses and accept systemd and everything that comes with it as the new norm, and those who swim against the grain, who value their freedom to customize, develop and build as needed. The traditionalists who feel that an init system should do one thing and do it well.

Systemd however, is more than just an init system* – it’s a software suite.

Many people feel that with a big and bulky software suite there are tons of scenarios in which it can crash and bring down the whole system. This together with not designing for security increases the attack surface and may open doors for the bad guys. It also means that plenty of non-kernel system upgrades will now require a reboot. They go on to argue that systemd's journal files, which are stored in a binary format, require systemd for viewing and are prone to corruption. In addition, they find that systemd is incompatible with other members of the Unix operating system family. Another big flaw is the heavily desktop-oriented design, which makes it a poor choice for many Linux use cases. In short, the core of Linux systems gets more complicated, leaving more room for errors.

As this new counter-culture in the Linux developer community formed, Devuan, a  punk-rock style Linux distribution was created - just like Debian, but without systemd. However, Devuan is still rather new and rough around the edges. We welcome the budding revolution – and so we are trendsetting by building our Data Center Light on Devuan. We feel that with rising awareness and as time passes, many more people will join the counter-culture movement and use Devuan alongside us, leaving behind systemd – the generic cookie cutter solution that tries to do too many things at once.

We build on Devuan! Light and stable, with room to move.