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> "Systemd is winning because they showed up and basically nobody else did" I can't see how you would qualify this statement, which is utterly false. Specifica

> "Systemd is winning because they showed up and basically nobody else did" I can't see how you would qualify this statement, which is utterly false. Specifically, systemd adoption was the result of political pressure by LP (the author), who works at Red Hat. There are plenty of other choices out there. The idea that systemd won because of some kind of meritocracy is wrong. It was mostly political with some technical discussion at the edges. Most people "making the decision" actually just outsourced their critical thinking to the Debian Technical Committee. That's how we ended up with most distros adopting systemd. Systemd is better than sysvinit (for some values of "better"), and that is what the Debian TC voted on, and what caused them to adopt systemd. Not that systemd is better than other, more modern init systems.

justin_vanw 10y ago
What are the other choices? Upstart was awful, and init is a hundred years old.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  runit, openrc, s6, later nosh, bsdinit, take your pick.
- yedpodtrzitko 10y ago
  OpenRC
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  launchd, solaris smf, etc. There were tons of choices that were thrown away for silly reasons.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    launchd is almost as bad, as is SMF (XML - Yuck). But at least they're still mostly focusing on process and service management.
georgyo 10y ago
systemd is by far the best linux init system. The options are sysvinit, OpenRC, Upstart, and systemd. Of those, the only reasonable choice is systemd. Upstart was almost good, but its really frustrating to use. OpenRC is decent, but confusing. systemd solved problems, not only that it solved them well. The scope creep of systemd is something that is a bit alarming, however even with the creep it's doing a good job. The tools that it is building work fairly well, and its a relatively new project.
- fapjacks 10y ago
  The one thing that is painfully obvious about the situation with init systems is that people have strong opinions about their preferences. And that makes the systemd situation even more terrible, since it's a choice unwillingly foisted upon a huge number of people. This situation really deserves some choices. For me, that is the number one reason I do not like systemd, even if it's solved some problems.
  - georgyo 10y ago
    I agree with your reason, however for me they get outweighed by other factors. If I am a maintainer of a popular distribution, I want my distro to have the best init system, and I want that init system to have the largest user base. EL6 and its derivatives was upstart, debian and its derivatives was upstart. The vast majority of linux systems were upstart for a long period of time. Other systems did not switch to upstart, because it introduced headache. Switching init systems requires quite a bit of work. The fact that they all switched to systemd shows that beyond political pressure, they needed a better system.
    - fapjacks 10y ago
      The choice that was put before the Debian TC was literally "Should we use systemd instead of sysvinit" and did not consider any of the many other init systems. In fact, a motion was put forward to the Debian TC to consider other init systems, and guess what? Pro-systemd TC members pointed to the original motion ("Should we use systemd instead of sysvinit") as the reason not to consider other init systems. That is pretty much as political as it gets.

justin_vanw 10y ago

What are the other choices? Upstart was awful, and init is a hundred years old.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
runit, openrc, s6, later nosh, bsdinit, take your pick.
yedpodtrzitko 10y ago
OpenRC
Sanddancer 10y ago
launchd, solaris smf, etc. There were tons of choices that were thrown away for silly reasons.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  launchd is almost as bad, as is SMF (XML - Yuck). But at least they're still mostly focusing on process and service management.

georgyo 10y ago

systemd is by far the best linux init system. The options are sysvinit, OpenRC, Upstart, and systemd. Of those, the only reasonable choice is systemd. Upstart was almost good, but its really frustrating to use. OpenRC is decent, but confusing. systemd solved problems, not only that it solved them well. The scope creep of systemd is something that is a bit alarming, however even with the creep it's doing a good job. The tools that it is building work fairly well, and its a relatively new project.

fapjacks 10y ago
The one thing that is painfully obvious about the situation with init systems is that people have strong opinions about their preferences. And that makes the systemd situation even more terrible, since it's a choice unwillingly foisted upon a huge number of people. This situation really deserves some choices. For me, that is the number one reason I do not like systemd, even if it's solved some problems.
- georgyo 10y ago
  I agree with your reason, however for me they get outweighed by other factors. If I am a maintainer of a popular distribution, I want my distro to have the best init system, and I want that init system to have the largest user base. EL6 and its derivatives was upstart, debian and its derivatives was upstart. The vast majority of linux systems were upstart for a long period of time. Other systems did not switch to upstart, because it introduced headache. Switching init systems requires quite a bit of work. The fact that they all switched to systemd shows that beyond political pressure, they needed a better system.
  - fapjacks 10y ago
    The choice that was put before the Debian TC was literally "Should we use systemd instead of sysvinit" and did not consider any of the many other init systems. In fact, a motion was put forward to the Debian TC to consider other init systems, and guess what? Pro-systemd TC members pointed to the original motion ("Should we use systemd instead of sysvinit") as the reason not to consider other init systems. That is pretty much as political as it gets.