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> 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 o

by 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.
        m45t3r 7y ago
        > or can't ship Gnome because of GDM's dependency on Systemd Void Linux is using GDM with elogind and seems fine: https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcpkgs/gdm/template https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcp... > even the Linux kernel with a BSD one You know, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is as most a fork of Debian as Devuan. They share most of the packages definitions, however some core parts (like the init scripts) are _very_ different. > but you can't replace the init system, even though several alternatives exist Well, you can. It is just that Debian maintainers don't want to maintain this complexity in their own system. Supporting only one init system is already difficult, imagine supporting N init systems like you're suggesting (and this includes bug reports: do you really think that this is a good usage of the time from maintainers to support that niche init system with 3 users?). However there is nothing impeding you to use your own Debian installation with any init system you want. Or even better: switch to Devuan.
- theamk 7y ago
  > “the maintainers" (i.e., Lennart and friends) Huh what? The Debian discussion was completely in the open, and I recommend reading it, so you know why people choose systemd. There was no Lennart’s influence, everyone was their own people. No one had red hat agenda. All they wanted a better init system, it ended up being a choice between systemd and upstart, and systemd won with a small margin. A later GR vote across thousands of debian debs confirmed the decision. Really, why do those theories gets repeated? We are not talking about commercial companies and back room office politics, it is all in the open.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    If they opted for gnome it was going to be hard to avoid also picking systemd.
    - m45t3r 7y ago
      Hard, not impossible. Void Linux is using elogind: https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcpkgs/gdm/template https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcp... And BTW, if you don't like the way that Gnome is going you can fork it or use another desktop. There are multiple desktops for Linux that are very polished and doesn't depend on systemd.

by m45t3r 7y ago

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.
      - m45t3r 7y ago
        > or can't ship Gnome because of GDM's dependency on Systemd Void Linux is using GDM with elogind and seems fine: https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcpkgs/gdm/template https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcp... > even the Linux kernel with a BSD one You know, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is as most a fork of Debian as Devuan. They share most of the packages definitions, however some core parts (like the init scripts) are _very_ different. > but you can't replace the init system, even though several alternatives exist Well, you can. It is just that Debian maintainers don't want to maintain this complexity in their own system. Supporting only one init system is already difficult, imagine supporting N init systems like you're suggesting (and this includes bug reports: do you really think that this is a good usage of the time from maintainers to support that niche init system with 3 users?). However there is nothing impeding you to use your own Debian installation with any init system you want. Or even better: switch to Devuan.
theamk 7y ago
> “the maintainers" (i.e., Lennart and friends) Huh what? The Debian discussion was completely in the open, and I recommend reading it, so you know why people choose systemd. There was no Lennart’s influence, everyone was their own people. No one had red hat agenda. All they wanted a better init system, it ended up being a choice between systemd and upstart, and systemd won with a small margin. A later GR vote across thousands of debian debs confirmed the decision. Really, why do those theories gets repeated? We are not talking about commercial companies and back room office politics, it is all in the open.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  If they opted for gnome it was going to be hard to avoid also picking systemd.
  - m45t3r 7y ago
    Hard, not impossible. Void Linux is using elogind: https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcpkgs/gdm/template https://github.com/void-linux/void-packages/blob/master/srcp... And BTW, if you don't like the way that Gnome is going you can fork it or use another desktop. There are multiple desktops for Linux that are very polished and doesn't depend on systemd.