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It is completly optional, also it is optional to use home encryption (this comes up a lot when people want to log in on a remote server with a user that uses ho

It is completly optional, also it is optional to use home encryption (this comes up a lot when people want to log in on a remote server with a user that uses homed). homed users and conventional users can exist side by side.

sverige 7y ago
Funny, that's what I heard when systemd was introduced: "it's completely optional." And yet today I don't think I would use both hands counting the Linux distros without systemd, though far more than that number tried and finally gave up.
- eropple 7y ago
  I'm sure they all gave up because of politics, too, and not because systemd gets way more right than it gets wrong despite a vocal minority of noncontributory angst.
  - sverige 7y ago
    Unfortunately, it will probably take ten years to see the real effects of these decisions on the ecosystem. I hope you're right that this is the way to go, but I fear I'll be right that Linux will be at least as opaque as Windows to anyone who wants an entry point into learning about operating systems and systems administration without having to pay to take classes.
    - johnny22 7y ago
      I much prefer my system with systemd, because it's less opaque than when i started using Linux in 1998 (attempted earlier, but failed).
- m45t3r 7y ago
  > though far more than that number tried and finally gave up. I think people either should try to maintain their own distro, be a maintainer for their distro of choice or stop complaining about the decisions maintainers from their distro take for them. I mean, at least in Arch systemd seemed to be the obvious choice: it reduced the complexity for the maintainers. Arch used to be a combination of multiple shells scripts maintained by Arch package maintainers. Since systemd they can use the .service file that multiple programs already have upstream, or they can write themselves one that is much easier and less error prone than the shell script approach used before. I am sure that the maintainers from Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Madriva, etc. all analyzed the advantages/disadvantages of migrating to systemd vs. maintaining their in-house solution (that they all had before, one way or another). If you still discord from them, why are you using one specific distro? You can pick any other one that is not using systemd, like Devuan, Void Linux, Alpine, etc.
  - sverige 7y ago
    My point was that many who tried to avoid systemd found it to be very difficult, despite the vague assurances up front that it would be "optional." Now "the maintainers" (i.e., Lennart and friends) are contemplating making the file system more opaque. Instead of saying it will be optional, just say it up front: this is what Red Hat wants, so it's coming to your distro soon too, whether you like it or not, because it will become a dependency of systemd, or vice versa. It's the lying about it that I can't stand.
    - m45t3r 7y ago
      > My point was that many who tried to avoid systemd found it to be very difficult Avoiding systemd is not difficult, it is just that using systemd makes things easier. You have one codebase shared between multiple distros where most of your init logic is, instead of having to maintain your own init scripts somewhere by yourself. > because it will become a dependency of systemd, or vice versa. This is not true. I don't know many things that are dependend of systemd running as a init system.
      - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
        > Avoiding systemd is not difficult Well, for sysadmins who are in charge of hundreds of systems in datacenters and are accustomed to upgrading regularly, it's really not that easy.
        addicted 7y ago
        Is the complaint that systemd is so useful that nearly every distro includes it?
        dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
        The distributors have no choice. They have to bend over backwards if they want to be inclusive. Gentoo has their own Udev fork for that; Devuan folks realized it's easier to fork a whole distro. Basically at some point you had a choice: you either ship Systemd or can't ship Gnome because of GDM's dependency on Systemd. At this point we knew we're royally screwed up. It's almost funny that in Debian you can replace any element of the system, even the Linux kernel with a BSD one, but you can't replace the init system, even though several alternatives exist. Our problem with Systemd is the lack of choice.
- SahAssar 7y ago
  Where did anyone say that using systemd would be optional on distros built on systemd? It's the init system, if the distro provides an alternative it's "optional", if the distro doesn't it isn't. Sounds like your beef is with a specific distro, not systemd in general.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
I hope what you say is true and will remain true in a year or five. Because I was happy about Systemd at the beginning (it looks like we have another init, good). Then it turned out it wasn't engineered to be an independent init system and it practically killed any possibility of replacing it with another init should the user want it. The distributors capitulated one by one. The last big one, Debian, didn't give up without a fight and produced Devuan. But because it's not an official Debian variant, if your living depends on it, you will hesitate before you use it for long-term projects. That's the sad consequence of a few design decisions plus a bit of politics.

sverige 7y ago

Funny, that's what I heard when systemd was introduced: "it's completely optional." And yet today I don't think I would use both hands counting the Linux distros without systemd, though far more than that number tried and finally gave up.

eropple 7y ago
I'm sure they all gave up because of politics, too, and not because systemd gets way more right than it gets wrong despite a vocal minority of noncontributory angst.
- sverige 7y ago
  Unfortunately, it will probably take ten years to see the real effects of these decisions on the ecosystem. I hope you're right that this is the way to go, but I fear I'll be right that Linux will be at least as opaque as Windows to anyone who wants an entry point into learning about operating systems and systems administration without having to pay to take classes.
  - johnny22 7y ago
    I much prefer my system with systemd, because it's less opaque than when i started using Linux in 1998 (attempted earlier, but failed).
m45t3r 7y ago
> though far more than that number tried and finally gave up. I think people either should try to maintain their own distro, be a maintainer for their distro of choice or stop complaining about the decisions maintainers from their distro take for them. I mean, at least in Arch systemd seemed to be the obvious choice: it reduced the complexity for the maintainers. Arch used to be a combination of multiple shells scripts maintained by Arch package maintainers. Since systemd they can use the .service file that multiple programs already have upstream, or they can write themselves one that is much easier and less error prone than the shell script approach used before. I am sure that the maintainers from Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Madriva, etc. all analyzed the advantages/disadvantages of migrating to systemd vs. maintaining their in-house solution (that they all had before, one way or another). If you still discord from them, why are you using one specific distro? You can pick any other one that is not using systemd, like Devuan, Void Linux, Alpine, etc.
- sverige 7y ago
  My point was that many who tried to avoid systemd found it to be very difficult, despite the vague assurances up front that it would be "optional." Now "the maintainers" (i.e., Lennart and friends) are contemplating making the file system more opaque. Instead of saying it will be optional, just say it up front: this is what Red Hat wants, so it's coming to your distro soon too, whether you like it or not, because it will become a dependency of systemd, or vice versa. It's the lying about it that I can't stand.
  - m45t3r 7y ago
    > My point was that many who tried to avoid systemd found it to be very difficult Avoiding systemd is not difficult, it is just that using systemd makes things easier. You have one codebase shared between multiple distros where most of your init logic is, instead of having to maintain your own init scripts somewhere by yourself. > because it will become a dependency of systemd, or vice versa. This is not true. I don't know many things that are dependend of systemd running as a init system.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
      > Avoiding systemd is not difficult Well, for sysadmins who are in charge of hundreds of systems in datacenters and are accustomed to upgrading regularly, it's really not that easy.
      - addicted 7y ago
        Is the complaint that systemd is so useful that nearly every distro includes it?
        dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
        The distributors have no choice. They have to bend over backwards if they want to be inclusive. Gentoo has their own Udev fork for that; Devuan folks realized it's easier to fork a whole distro. Basically at some point you had a choice: you either ship Systemd or can't ship Gnome because of GDM's dependency on Systemd. At this point we knew we're royally screwed up. It's almost funny that in Debian you can replace any element of the system, even the Linux kernel with a BSD one, but you can't replace the init system, even though several alternatives exist. Our problem with Systemd is the lack of choice.
SahAssar 7y ago
Where did anyone say that using systemd would be optional on distros built on systemd? It's the init system, if the distro provides an alternative it's "optional", if the distro doesn't it isn't. Sounds like your beef is with a specific distro, not systemd in general.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago

I hope what you say is true and will remain true in a year or five. Because I was happy about Systemd at the beginning (it looks like we have another init, good). Then it turned out it wasn't engineered to be an independent init system and it practically killed any possibility of replacing it with another init should the user want it. The distributors capitulated one by one. The last big one, Debian, didn't give up without a fight and produced Devuan. But because it's not an official Debian variant, if your living depends on it, you will hesitate before you use it for long-term projects. That's the sad consequence of a few design decisions plus a bit of politics.