Evaluation criteria.

Cost of getting a task done X $ / hr.  & $ / keystroke

Summary:  
Cent8 we spent about 40 hr working on this and basically got no where.
	Score: cost infinity.

RH 8 took so much fooling around to get a sample we gave up.
	Score: cost not defined, never tried it due to complexity of
requirements to download.
	
Mint 20.1 wee have spent about 40 hr.  We could load it and it worked.
There were a number of ugly parts to this.

1.  It created a extanded fat partition to load the OS, this a 250G SSD
This is serious problem when you load a bunch of applications and they
are in /opt and /usr/local etc.

2.  The real killer is the absence of /root.  The fist login during
installation is "whoever", there is no option for "usid" or a home
directory that is other then /home/whever and userID = 1000.  We set up
users on /engr/users/whoever with a consistent user ID across all
systems.  It get started crooked and may not be fixable.  userID is my
choice and not sysemd's.

3.  Passwd and shadowpw, group and shadowgrp are a front - it apears
systemd keeps another set of files that it uses. It looks OK but these
are ignored.  Fixing things may be almost impossible.

4.  Serious Security flaw.
When you add "ftp" and "ssh" to system, on the next boot all the users
displayed on the screen have gone away.  Over night it somehow synced up
with our server and added a bunch of closed accounts from the server -
****
If you can get access to a network and attch Mint box it will create the
users that exist on the server even the ones that are set to mode 000.
These are Complete with account name and userID. !!!!!

5.  Last but not least:
I wanted to install KiCad using the SW manager.  It worked, crated the
icon and put the files in /usr/bin/1001/bla/bla/bla.  So I can install a
program.  A typical system in our shop may have 12 logins from engineer,
software engineer, manufacturing, purchasing etc and the list goes on.
So each has to load a copy of the program.  Remember owner, groups,
userID doesn't work properly.  you can inspect the passwd and group, and
they look good.  Run pwconv and grpconv to update shadows, run the check
programs it looks good, it still doesn't work.  I have not stumbled on a
way to set it up so it works. 

6. We downloade VMware 16, it install and worked.  Thank You VMware.  We
are going to buy it.

7. Now the real insidous part:  I used the sw manager to remove the
KiCad and it worked.  Ten minutes later I became root and tried to
install it again.  It worked but the install was the same place as
before.  I then removed it and went for another cafeene fix.  It was
still removing files.  What it was doing was doing was running rm -rf *
from /  as root.  All there disks about 1.5 T of file were gone.   Nice
programming botch. 
It tells you a lot lot about the lack of testing that has gone into
these systems. 
Just think if you did this on cloud setup result, a clear blue sky.

Fortunately we have several back ups.

	score: $4000 / 2 programs  - 0 working system  Not a costly as Cent8
and non available RH.
	Trashed DVD and removed.

Conclusion:  Systems using systemd are not able to be set up to do what
we need done. You basically have swaped "Bill" computer for "IBM's"
computer.  You can't set /opt and /usr/local/bin to other disks. We
don't use LVM.  I can only imagine the cost of running our 50 systems.

We chucked Cent8, and Mint 20.1 DVD's, and reformated Flash drives.

Next:  Devian - a fork in Debian with out systemd is next. Std UNIX
flavor and then we will try BSD.

If you look at Linux over the last 20 years it has gone no place. things
are still broken.  Contributors have spent time working on eye candy,
hiding functionality and trying to make it like Windows 10 - another
convoluted disaster. It is "moron aware" sw.

If Linux had any leadership group or company it could have been by now a
world class OS. the 20 years have been wasted, Windows 10 would never
have happened, you wouldn't have a zillion distrobutions that have the
same flaws.

SystemD is a pleague that will kill linux.  IBM will abandon the users
just as it did with the development of OS/2 and what MS did with windows
3.0.  Don't trust them.

My Boss's words.  Each keystroke or mouse click costs $,  If you measure
the time it takes to find and run a task the new scheme is many times
more expensive than running an app with a 4 char. name. 

Sill in search of 6.5 replacement

Larry Linder