6 ms·

Honest question, if nobody likes systemd, then why is it still around and why is it so difficult for me to find a distro that hasn't adopted it?

axaxs 6y ago
Running a distro is a ton of work. Writing your own one off init scripts per package is even more work. The short answer is...Red Hat has money and threw it behind systemd. Like them or hate them, they are in many ways the deciding fate of Linux systems. So, other distros fall in line. Ubuntu is a contender, but gave in and followed suit too. Void and Solus are both good distros that don't use systemd. I'd go as far as to call Solus the best out of the box distro ive ever used.
- dTal 6y ago
  You're half right, but writing init scripts is by far the easiest part of not running systemd. As a sibling comment lightly puts it - "various shims exist".
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - axaxs 6y ago
    Writing a few is super simple. But distros have tens of thousands of packages. Most people use it or a derivative of Ubuntu, RedHat, or Arch. All provide packages with systemd files. Heck, even most upstream packages are.
nine_k 6y ago
Easy answer: Gnome desktop. Red Hat produced systemd. Red Hat is the major contributor to Gnome. Gnome now refuses to run without systemd. Every major distro wants to carry Gnome, so... Well, at least some distros offer a choice. Some other distros (Alpine, popular for containers, Void, which powers my laptop) live happily without it. Various shims exist, logind exists to allow running things like Xfce without systemd.
- enriquto 6y ago
  > Gnome now refuses to run without systemd. Is that true? The gentoo documentation says that you can chose your init system independently of your desktop manager, and puts openrc+gnome as an example: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GNOME/GNOME_Without_systemd/Gentoo https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GNOME/GNOME_Without_systemd/Gen... You can also install GNOME on OpenBSD, which of course does not run systemd.
  - 0942v8653 6y ago
    Not GNOME itself, but Gnome Display Manager: > After the transition from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, configuring GDM is only possible through systemd as it no longer supports other init systems. https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/desktop_migration_and_administration_guide/gdm https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp...
    - enriquto 6y ago
      not a big deal then, there's plenty of display managers, and you don't even need one to use gnome
Spooky23 6y ago
It’s one of those polarizing things for which there is a small group of hyper vocal critics. When people discover something unexpected, they end up googling it and take a trip down the systemd rabbit hole. The majority of people don’t give a hoot about it.
darthrupert 6y ago
Because most people like (or at least tolerate) it, but those people are not yapping their mouths about it all the time. IMHO systemd is actually one of the best improvements in the Linux ecosystem in the last 10 years. You can see the same effect in e.g. politics.
dTal 6y ago
I was careful not to include any value judgements in my comment. I simply wanted to lay to rest this "init system" business. However, you ask a good question. Lots of people do like it, supposedly. But I think there's a large clue to its controversial nature in that people still call it an "init system", and pointing out that it isn't is interpreted by some as an attack. Basically, it started out as an init system, which was used by Red Hat / Fedora, which was positioned well at a time when certain distros, notably Debian, used crufty SysV init scripts which they wanted to move on from. When Debian adopted systemd, after some debate, every Debian-based distro did too. This wasn't considered a particularly invasive change at the time. But systemd started to expand into its "middleware" position, absorbing vital system functions like udev. Distros which adopted systemd found themselves along for the ride, while distros that didn't increasingly found that software was starting to break, forcing them to maintain forks, or chisel out the piece of systemd that made it work and run it standalone. So was created a network effect that forced even more distros down the path of least resistance into systemd. Meanwhile, amidst all the grumbling that this bait-and-switch was provoking, the systemd project leaders had an astonishingly bad attitude towards the maintainers of software that they were breaking, which fomented considerable personal animosity on top of the technical resentment. Not only were they driving a horse and cart through the standard ways of doing things, breaking a lot of stuff in the process, they were being rude about it. So, more or less, people resent systemd because it's difficult to find - or build - a distro without it.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > When Debian adopted systemd, after some debate, every Debian-based distro did too. This wasn't considered a particularly invasive change at the time. But systemd started to expand into its "middleware" position, absorbing vital system functions like udev. Your timing is off. udev became part of systemd in 2012. The big Debian debate was in 2013-2014, and was acrimonious enough to eventually cause several of the CTTE members to resign their position over it. One of the core issues driving the Debian systemd debate was the fact that GNOME was planning on dropping support for anything other than systemd-logind (or something like that), and there was definite concern that packages were already making decisions that were forcing everyone to adopt systemd as the only init system.
scaladev 6y ago
Because you only hear the loud minority that's been complaining for the last decade. I've never had a problem with systemd, I remember the days before it became ubiquitous with absolute dread, but I don't spend my days proclaiming my views on every corner of the internet like the opposite side does.
znpy 6y ago
Because people like systemd. It's one of those situations where the minority that doesn't like systemd is just a lot more noisy than the vast majority that likes it. Easy as that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

axaxs 6y ago

Running a distro is a ton of work. Writing your own one off init scripts per package is even more work. The short answer is...Red Hat has money and threw it behind systemd. Like them or hate them, they are in many ways the deciding fate of Linux systems. So, other distros fall in line. Ubuntu is a contender, but gave in and followed suit too. Void and Solus are both good distros that don't use systemd. I'd go as far as to call Solus the best out of the box distro ive ever used.

dTal 6y ago
You're half right, but writing init scripts is by far the easiest part of not running systemd. As a sibling comment lightly puts it - "various shims exist".
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- axaxs 6y ago
  Writing a few is super simple. But distros have tens of thousands of packages. Most people use it or a derivative of Ubuntu, RedHat, or Arch. All provide packages with systemd files. Heck, even most upstream packages are.

nine_k 6y ago

Easy answer: Gnome desktop. Red Hat produced systemd. Red Hat is the major contributor to Gnome. Gnome now refuses to run without systemd. Every major distro wants to carry Gnome, so... Well, at least some distros offer a choice. Some other distros (Alpine, popular for containers, Void, which powers my laptop) live happily without it. Various shims exist, logind exists to allow running things like Xfce without systemd.

enriquto 6y ago
> Gnome now refuses to run without systemd. Is that true? The gentoo documentation says that you can chose your init system independently of your desktop manager, and puts openrc+gnome as an example: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GNOME/GNOME_Without_systemd/Gentoo https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/GNOME/GNOME_Without_systemd/Gen... You can also install GNOME on OpenBSD, which of course does not run systemd.
- 0942v8653 6y ago
  Not GNOME itself, but Gnome Display Manager: > After the transition from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, configuring GDM is only possible through systemd as it no longer supports other init systems. https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/desktop_migration_and_administration_guide/gdm https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterp...
  - enriquto 6y ago
    not a big deal then, there's plenty of display managers, and you don't even need one to use gnome

Spooky23 6y ago

It’s one of those polarizing things for which there is a small group of hyper vocal critics. When people discover something unexpected, they end up googling it and take a trip down the systemd rabbit hole. The majority of people don’t give a hoot about it.

darthrupert 6y ago

Because most people like (or at least tolerate) it, but those people are not yapping their mouths about it all the time. IMHO systemd is actually one of the best improvements in the Linux ecosystem in the last 10 years. You can see the same effect in e.g. politics.

dTal 6y ago

I was careful not to include any value judgements in my comment. I simply wanted to lay to rest this "init system" business. However, you ask a good question. Lots of people do like it, supposedly. But I think there's a large clue to its controversial nature in that people still call it an "init system", and pointing out that it isn't is interpreted by some as an attack. Basically, it started out as an init system, which was used by Red Hat / Fedora, which was positioned well at a time when certain distros, notably Debian, used crufty SysV init scripts which they wanted to move on from. When Debian adopted systemd, after some debate, every Debian-based distro did too. This wasn't considered a particularly invasive change at the time. But systemd started to expand into its "middleware" position, absorbing vital system functions like udev. Distros which adopted systemd found themselves along for the ride, while distros that didn't increasingly found that software was starting to break, forcing them to maintain forks, or chisel out the piece of systemd that made it work and run it standalone. So was created a network effect that forced even more distros down the path of least resistance into systemd. Meanwhile, amidst all the grumbling that this bait-and-switch was provoking, the systemd project leaders had an astonishingly bad attitude towards the maintainers of software that they were breaking, which fomented considerable personal animosity on top of the technical resentment. Not only were they driving a horse and cart through the standard ways of doing things, breaking a lot of stuff in the process, they were being rude about it. So, more or less, people resent systemd because it's difficult to find - or build - a distro without it.

jcranmer 6y ago
> When Debian adopted systemd, after some debate, every Debian-based distro did too. This wasn't considered a particularly invasive change at the time. But systemd started to expand into its "middleware" position, absorbing vital system functions like udev. Your timing is off. udev became part of systemd in 2012. The big Debian debate was in 2013-2014, and was acrimonious enough to eventually cause several of the CTTE members to resign their position over it. One of the core issues driving the Debian systemd debate was the fact that GNOME was planning on dropping support for anything other than systemd-logind (or something like that), and there was definite concern that packages were already making decisions that were forcing everyone to adopt systemd as the only init system.

scaladev 6y ago

Because you only hear the loud minority that's been complaining for the last decade. I've never had a problem with systemd, I remember the days before it became ubiquitous with absolute dread, but I don't spend my days proclaiming my views on every corner of the internet like the opposite side does.

znpy 6y ago

Because people like systemd. It's one of those situations where the minority that doesn't like systemd is just a lot more noisy than the vast majority that likes it. Easy as that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]