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If at some point that is considered as "essential" as in "I can't boot a system without", then maybe. However, there's a way to avoid that path: Write a better

If at some point that is considered as "essential" as in "I can't boot a system without", then maybe. However, there's a way to avoid that path: Write a better init system than systemd. Or contribute the extra effort to make sshd, pam, samba, wayland, gnome, kde work without systemd. All that systemd does is offer a service. It seems to pay off for gnome and kde to rely on that.

vertex-four 12y ago
I can already boot a fully functioning system without half the stuff in systemd (and in fact, there's entire distros and the entire world of embedded devices which do so). GNOME and KDE did work just fine without systemd until they didn't. udev did as well. Samba, PAM, OpenSSH, and most of the rest of the services on my system, work just fine without it. I rather doubt that'll be the case five years down the line.
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Write a better init system than systemd. Done many times. ...Oh, wait. You mean to tell me that systemd isn't just an init system? And that it includes, but is not limited to, and I quote [1]: "init system, journal logging, login management, device management, temporary and volatile file management, binary format registration, backlight save/restore, rfkill save/restore, bootchart, readahead, encrypted storage setup, EFI/GPT partition discovery, virtual machine/container registration, minimal container management, hostname management, locale management, time management, random seed management, sysctl variable management, console managment, . . ." They are working on: "network management, Local DNS cache, mDNS responder, LLMNR responder, DNSSEC verification, IPC in the kernel, time synchronisation with NTP, stateless systems, factory reset, OS/container/app image format, sandboxing of services and apps..." [1] http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf So what people really mean by "Write a better init system." is "Write a second, competing hulking mammoth like systemd."
- EmanueleAina 12y ago
  One only need to re-implement the interfaces actually used by the DEs. IIRC GNOME had a page listing those interfaces on their wiki and systemd has remarkably good documentation about its public interfaces. Also consider that until now many of the things you listed were done by shell scripts that every distro reimplemented differently, so if you're happy with such ugliness you can pick it up as-is. ;)
JdeBP 12y ago
> However, there's a way to avoid that path: Write a better init system than systemd. Or contribute the extra effort to make sshd, pam, samba, wayland, gnome, kde work without systemd. The latter is the easier approach. However, it's still hard. The major problem is logind, and no-one has yet tackled writing a logind that layers on top of Debian-without-systemd. See: http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/debian-systemd-packaging-hoo-hah.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/de...

vertex-four 12y ago

I can already boot a fully functioning system without half the stuff in systemd (and in fact, there's entire distros and the entire world of embedded devices which do so). GNOME and KDE did work just fine without systemd until they didn't. udev did as well. Samba, PAM, OpenSSH, and most of the rest of the services on my system, work just fine without it. I rather doubt that'll be the case five years down the line.

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

Write a better init system than systemd. Done many times. ...Oh, wait. You mean to tell me that systemd isn't just an init system? And that it includes, but is not limited to, and I quote [1]: "init system, journal logging, login management, device management, temporary and volatile file management, binary format registration, backlight save/restore, rfkill save/restore, bootchart, readahead, encrypted storage setup, EFI/GPT partition discovery, virtual machine/container registration, minimal container management, hostname management, locale management, time management, random seed management, sysctl variable management, console managment, . . ." They are working on: "network management, Local DNS cache, mDNS responder, LLMNR responder, DNSSEC verification, IPC in the kernel, time synchronisation with NTP, stateless systems, factory reset, OS/container/app image format, sandboxing of services and apps..." [1] http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf So what people really mean by "Write a better init system." is "Write a second, competing hulking mammoth like systemd."

EmanueleAina 12y ago
One only need to re-implement the interfaces actually used by the DEs. IIRC GNOME had a page listing those interfaces on their wiki and systemd has remarkably good documentation about its public interfaces. Also consider that until now many of the things you listed were done by shell scripts that every distro reimplemented differently, so if you're happy with such ugliness you can pick it up as-is. ;)

JdeBP 12y ago

> However, there's a way to avoid that path: Write a better init system than systemd. Or contribute the extra effort to make sshd, pam, samba, wayland, gnome, kde work without systemd. The latter is the easier approach. However, it's still hard. The major problem is logind, and no-one has yet tackled writing a logind that layers on top of Debian-without-systemd. See: http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/debian-systemd-packaging-hoo-hah.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/de...