Hail to yee all!

I write this topic to introduce myself, as a new member, which I will do soon. But first things first:

A. I'd like to salute *Éric's fantastic job to provide to the free community this fantastic tool that Obarun is and that allows us to:

go on using Arch without systemd (for those of us who were already running Arch) or come to a systemd-free Arch (for those who were not yet running Arch previously) — there are other ways to run Arch without systemd (Artix being the main other one) but I can "feel" that Obarun is the most correct one;
install Obarun from a live-session (afaik, it's a recent feature). Nonetheless! I would not have dared installing Obarun without this ISO;
bring this fantastic tool that s6 seems to be — although I must admit I have not explored it yet. But, having followed a bit the forum threads and read the documentation before setting my choice on Obarun, it does seem quite a good tool.

* I have some serious reasons to think Éric is French or, at least, French mother-tongued. In which case, Éric spells with a diacritic on the initial E, even if it's a capital, contrarily to what our ignorant teachers taught us at school. (Yes, I am a bit touchy on typography, and French typography is an art: it's precise and subtle. Just consider the rules of non-breaking spaces use.)

B. I'd like to salute Fungalnet for the fantastic job with the Wordpress systemd-free. (I've been following this not-as-much-a-blog-as-a-now-true-site for several years. But it's only recently that I posted my first few messages.) Fungalnet, that's thanks to you restlessly promoting the beauty of the "Obarun Way" (and thanks to Éric's documentation too) that I finally overcame my fears and installed Obarun on my main computer two months ago, setting as a symbolic act to start 2020 on Obarun.

C. I'd like to thank Jean-Michel (another Frenchie?) for his involvement and expertise and for his answers. Man, you really saved my day two weeks ago with your "patch" of dbus & polkit. Had I not found the answer to my issues in your post then, I was about to (Oba)run away, haha!

D. I'd like to say hello to anyone who lands on this page. We may have several things in common. And even if not: hail to thee!

Now, "please allow me to introduce myself", as Mick's lyrics go.

As for my 1st point, I am a bit part of both categories and a bit of none. (How is this possible?) Well, I had run several Arch-derivated but never installed a "vanilla" Arch so far. (Back in the days before systemd, I run ArchBang half a year and then Manjaro two years — if my memory serves me well, it was 2011-2014.) During this period, I wouldn't install vanilla Arch because I was a bit too afraid — and also not inclined enough to consume the time necessary to build down-up to get a system that works. More recently, I would not have cared to install Arch anyway because I don't see the point of installing one of the distros (if not the distro) that avant-garded the spreading of systemd. — I still remember it with sadness and anger: I was running Manjaro during the forced transition from sysV to systemd. Until then, Manjaro (Openbox flavour) had been a terrific distro, the almost perfect compromise of power, leightweightness and usability. Until Arch (and hence Manjaro) defaulted systemd, I had been a happy (end-)user during two years.

For, yes, although I completely migrated to Linux 12 years ago now, I am still what they call an END-USER. Just a few examples:

I DO NOT: sys-admin, run a site, run a blog, build distros, github, code anything, read any computer language, debug, bug-report, run anything in a virtual machine, irc, youtube a video, write distro reviews, get paid for it.

I have tried thrice to run a blog, on self-webhosted solutions (on blogspot, wordpress and tumblr) and it was already too much of a nuisance to me. Plus, I was not happy with the default (un)abilities to format text and images — I'm a perfectionist.

(Oh yes, I was about to forget: I DO NOT: CSS, html, Drupal, & so on.)

(Sooo, if anyone here can suggest me an elegant solution of blogging or even micro-blogging, that suggestion will be much welcome! But do not suggest Facebook, please — even though it can be, indeed, used for micro-blogging.)

Before posting my very first comment on sysd-free two weeks ago, I had never posted anything anywhere (site or forum) FOSS-related. I had never posted anything anywhere anything-related — I do not facebook, diaspora or reddit either. And my first post in this forum was to thank Jean-Michel.

Several of my friends say that I'm a man from the 18th Century. Some others say 17th. I was even told 16th (I'm a reader of Étienne de La Boétie).

And YET, it's been 12 years I managed to never use Microsoft crapware anymore. (I do not need to emulate it either because I do not game.) And YET, although I once had a Macbook running Snow Leopard (one year approximately) because someone gave it to me just in case I could get something out of it (its OS X was so diseased it could not launch any application, so much for Mac's reputation of being immune to threats), it's not precisely thanks to Apple that I got free from the Microsoft de facto monopoly. (Anyway, escape from one jail for another? No, thanks! But Snow Leo was a good system. But even so, I always thought the Finder was lacking some very basic features.) And YET, I have run Knoppix, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint, CrunchBang, ArchBang, Manjaro, MX, just to name a few. I also (very briefly) tried Bodhi, Semplice, TrueOS, GhostBSD, and NomadBSD. Played a bit with Haiku a few years ago (I can't wait they reach 1.0!) I tried Artix too, three years ago.

And YET, I have now two boxes running a non-systemd system: a 64-bit ThinkPad running Obarun for now two months and a 32-bit netbook running Void for a few days.

Despite I had no special interest for the computer or its OS when I started using them in 1994 (all I wanted was my MS-Word processor to work and its styles not to loose my italics), of course, I have had time since to get interested into the odyssey of computing, in particular Unices. I'm even getting a bit interested in the basic Unix commands I had not learned before all these years — thanks to Obarun "kiss" simplicity!

I've been verbose. A French writer of the 17th Century once wrote privately something that could translate: "Madam, please excuse this long letter, I lack time to make it brief."

What I have written so far does not help you to know anything essential about me.

I'll be brief, this time. At the beginning, I started using computers to write poetry, store my thoughts and print my own mini-books. (It doesn't say it all but it says much.) Now, I also use my boxes to sort my many photographs.
But my main areas of interest are Philosophy, Tao, Drama (which I teach), Tarot-reading and Dreams (hence my pseudonym).

Because, after several decades of writing, semiotics and acting, it appears clearly to me that dreaming is the core/kernel of all our symbolization and creative abilities. It's the matrix of any telling/taling. I started oneirocritics (the interpretation of dreams) on myself, as the "royal path" of self-knowledge. Since, I also came to interpret the dreams people can tell me (and I'm told I'm good at it.) I often use dreamings as a metaphor when teaching drama. It's powerful.

Dreaming is the hugest playwright that I know - and I've read and acted a few, including Shakespeare (both in French and English). And I reckon both as my deep conviction and as a FACT that a society is really civilized just so as much as it relates to dreaming, to dreams and to their meanings. (And I'm not speaking here about the "dream industry" that Hollywood pretends to be.) That's to say that a society where even inside the closed doors of the family, people do not count their night-dreams to their relatives in the morning… is quite a sick society. Isn't it?

So have good dreams. :) And try to remind them.

Regards!

Oneirosopher