Epiphany from 38c3 sixos talk

There are so many new insights from this talk, that I need to pin them down.

sixos: a nix os without systemd by Adam Joseph (Fahrplan)

sixos is much like NixOS but uses s6 instead of systemd and an alternative configuration mechanism for services called “infusion” instead of nixos’ modules. s6 is a set of small tools that together provide the functionality of process supervision, service dependency mangagement and more.

The s6 site provides A LOT of insight about how to do all of this conforming to the UNIX philosophy. Especially new and interesting to me were the bits about “chain loading” and this rant about systemd. The latter finally convinced me, that systemd is a bad thing and that I should try to get rid of it. - Sorry for being a bit late to the party.

I’ve a dream of creating a replacement for kubernetes. I don’t need such a thing right now, but it would heal some post-traumatic syndroms after two years of kubernetes support. The small and simple tools from s6 together with nix would already cover a lot of ground.

More interesting bits discoverd:

• “chain loading” aka “Bernstein chaining” are terms to describe a chain of processes exec’ing into each other. I didn’t know there are names for this. It’s actually so powerful that one can build a programming language on top of it: execline.
• libudev-zero - daemonless replacement for libudev
  • respectful-software - alternatives to CoCs and CLAs and more good advice
  • KISS Linux Community - I love KISS
• abduco - lighter alternative to SCREEN and TMUX

This find quote I want to learn by heart:

“If the users don’t control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the “owner” of the program, that controls the program and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.” — Richard Stallman¹

There is no hint to any communication channel for discussions about sixos. But Adam pointed to the tvl channel on hackint during his talk for people interested in improving Nix and he is actually operator of a channel #six on hackint. He is amjoseph on IRC.

Now I’m just curious whether there is a story behind the slogan “ca-bundle.crt is malware” that Adam had on his shirt during the talk.