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Most people complaining about systemd wouldn't even notice if their whole OS was just a single binary. This attitude does not help the Linux stack, because the

by voidr 3y ago

Most people complaining about systemd wouldn't even notice if their whole OS was just a single binary. This attitude does not help the Linux stack, because the one thing software vendors do not have time for is to test against 10+ init systems[1]. I don't need both Wayland and X11, I just need one of these that is reliable. I also don't need both Flatpak and Snap, I just need only one that does not have crippling bugs. I also do not want to care about what version of glibc is on the target machine, I just want to compile a blob that anyone using any distro can run. Choice is good, however not when it comes to the base system, the base system needs to be there and it needs to be reliable and people should build good stuff on top of that, init systems are not exciting things to build. [1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Comparison_of_init_systems https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Comparison_of_init_systems

lproven 3y ago
That's all perfectly fine and a perfectly understandable attitude. The thing is, it's not really what Linux is about, or FOSS or plain old human nature. Different people like different things. They want choice and the same choices don't work for everyone. If you have a whole group of Unix computer users all hacking away on what they like and they want, you get diversity and options. So that means that there are lots of types of Linux with different choices and tools. That's a good thing. It's one of the things I like about Linux. If you want the one best choice for everything, the democratically-arrived at moderate sensible path of compromise, then go try FreeBSD, which does that but also embraces modern commodity hardware. You still get a wide choice of desktops and things, but much less wide. But the choices of FreeBSD didn't suit everyone, and as a result there are also OpenBSD and NetBSD and DragonflyBSD and a lot of divided effort that results in slow overall progress. Me, I am old and grumpy and I want stuff that Just Works™. So, because I can afford it, my home desktop is an iMac, because by and large, macOS Just Works. But I dislike Apple's modern keyboards, and pointing devices, and lack of ports, and a lot of other things about their laptops. So I use Linux laptops. And there, I do not find that systemd helps me... but the mainstream distros all use it so I just put up with it. And it keeps making my machines fail to boot randomly, and it's not getting any better. I keep eyeing up distros without it and stroking my greying beard thoughtfully, though. The moral here is that there isn't, and can't be, One Best Option that suits everyone. It's not possible because different people want different things.

by voidr 3y ago

lproven 3y ago

That's all perfectly fine and a perfectly understandable attitude. The thing is, it's not really what Linux is about, or FOSS or plain old human nature. Different people like different things. They want choice and the same choices don't work for everyone. If you have a whole group of Unix computer users all hacking away on what they like and they want, you get diversity and options. So that means that there are lots of types of Linux with different choices and tools. That's a good thing. It's one of the things I like about Linux. If you want the one best choice for everything, the democratically-arrived at moderate sensible path of compromise, then go try FreeBSD, which does that but also embraces modern commodity hardware. You still get a wide choice of desktops and things, but much less wide. But the choices of FreeBSD didn't suit everyone, and as a result there are also OpenBSD and NetBSD and DragonflyBSD and a lot of divided effort that results in slow overall progress. Me, I am old and grumpy and I want stuff that Just Works™. So, because I can afford it, my home desktop is an iMac, because by and large, macOS Just Works. But I dislike Apple's modern keyboards, and pointing devices, and lack of ports, and a lot of other things about their laptops. So I use Linux laptops. And there, I do not find that systemd helps me... but the mainstream distros all use it so I just put up with it. And it keeps making my machines fail to boot randomly, and it's not getting any better. I keep eyeing up distros without it and stroking my greying beard thoughtfully, though. The moral here is that there isn't, and can't be, One Best Option that suits everyone. It's not possible because different people want different things.