In today's open source roundup: Veteran Unix admins threaten Debian fork if systemd replaces sysvinit. Plus: Ubuntu turns ten years old today, and Ubuntu 15.04 to have codename Vivid Vervet Systemd has set the Linux world on fire, and that inferno continues to rage out of control. It has spawned endless discussion threads and many angry blog posts. This time around a collection of veteran Unix administrators is threatening to fork Debian if systemd replaces sysvinit. Triangle Linux Users Group According to Debian Fork: We are Veteran Unix Admins and we are concerned about what is happening to Debian GNU/Linux to the point of considering a fork of the project. Some of us are upstream developers, some professional sysadmins: we are all concerned peers interacting with Debian and derivatives on a daily basis. We don’t want to be forced to use systemd in substitution to the traditional UNIX sysvinit init, because systemd betrays the UNIX philosophy. We contemplate adopting more recent alternatives to sysvinit, but not those undermining the basic design principles of “do one thing and do it well” with a complex collection of dozens of tightly coupled binaries and opaque logs. More at Debian Fork Well, you can’t say that the folks who did that site aren’t…er…blunt about what they want. And there’s a bit of a menacing tone in the threat to fork Debian. But is this a real threat or somebody just blowing off steam about systemd? Some folks on the reaction thread on Reddit expressed a healthy skepticism about the threat of a fork ever actually amounting to anything. Most of the comments after the article seem supportive of the idea of a fork though, so we’ll just have to wait and see if anything comes of it. For now it’s clear that there are folks out there who are still enraged about systemd and their anger shows no sign of dissipating. Would you support a fork of Debian to rid it of systemd? Ubuntu turns ten today Scott James Remnant looks at Ubuntu’s tenth birthday, including the back story of how Ubuntu got started. Scott James Remnant According to Scott James Remnant: The surprising thing to me now, looking back, is how modest our goals were and how lofty they seemed at the time. Our goal was to be one of the top three Linux distributions after two years. I don’t remember Ubuntu ever leaving the #1 spot for the duration that I worked on it. I don’t think any of us really realized how popular Ubuntu was at first, since heads were back down working on fixing all the problems of 4.10 and getting 5.04 out of the door a ridiculously short six months later—the first hurdle being merging all of our changes with those made in Debian again. More at Scott James Remnant You can also read the original announcement of Ubuntu 4.10 by Mark Shuttleworth from back in 2004. It’s hard to believe it’s already been a decade since Ubuntu first launched. It’s become such a fixture among Linux distributions that it seems like it’s always been around. And of course it’s also the basis for a large number of other popular desktop distributions such as Linux Mint. The next version of Ubuntu (14.10) is just around the corner. But you can get it right now if you want to download the daily build. Linux Screenshots also has a screenshot tour of Ubuntu 4.10 if you want to take a trip back in time to see what Ubuntu looked like ten years ago. Ubuntu 15.04 to have codename Vivid Vervet Speaking of Ubuntu, the codename for Ubuntu 15.04 is based on a monkey. Phoronix According to Phoronix: Mark posted a new blog post a few minutes ago entitled V is for Vivid. In the post he explains the focus of Ubuntu 15.04, “This verbose tract is a venial vanity, a chance to vector verbal vibes, a map of verdant hills to be climbed in months ahead. Amongst those peaks I expect we’ll find new ways to bring secure, free and fabulous opportunities for both developers and users. This is a time when every electronic thing can be an Internet thing, and that’s a chance for us to bring our platform, with its security and its long term support, to a vast and important field. In a world where almost any device can be smart, and also subverted, our shared efforts to make trusted and trustworthy systems might find fertile ground. So our goal this next cycle is to show the way past a simple Internet of things, to a world of Internet things-you-can-trust.” He ends with naming the Ubuntu 15.04 release the Vivid Vervet, continuing in his tradition of progressing through the alphabet and using an adjective followed by an animal name. More at Phoronix You can also read Mark Shuttleworth’s announcement about Ubuntu 14.04, and be sure to see Wikipedia’s excellent background article on Vervet monkeys. While the codenames are silly, they also add a bit of levity to every Ubuntu release. It’s always fun to read what the next name is going to be, and if it will outdo the previous name in terms of goofiness. What’s your take on all this? Tell me in the comments below. Open Source