Before anything else, I would like to say that I admit systemd has brought great change to GNU/Linux. sysvinit wasn’t the best, and custom scripts for every distro is a pain I’d rather not have.

With that said, Poettering now works for Microsoft, systemd has basically taken over all of the common/popular distributions (if this is about the argument of “systemd making it easier for developers”, disclaimer: I don’t know. I’m not a developer), and this has led to a rampant monopolisation of the init system.

Memes aside, this has very real consequences. If you don’t want another CentOS-style “oof, sorry, off to testing” debacle happening with your init system, might want to look at the more “advanced” distributions that let you choose the init system.

I am well aware that systemd works well for the most part, and that gamers and most other people likely don’t care - which is fine, at least for now. I do expect to see a massive turnover in sentiment if something ever happens to systemd (not that I’d like for that to happen, but no trusting RedHat anymore), but I suppose we’ll get to it when we do.

My sentiments are well enunciated in this recent post on the Devuan forum: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=5826

Cheers!

  • nachtigall@feddit.deEnglish
    49·
    1 year ago

    and this has led to a rampant monopolisation of the init system.

    You will be shocked if you find out that virtually every distro runs on the same kernel. Pure monopolisation! For the freedom to choose!

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
      23·
      1 year ago

      You will be shocked if you find out that virtually every distro runs on the same kernel. Pure monopolisation!

      FUCK! What’s next? Everything using glibc?

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
          7·
          1 year ago

          I’m a proponent of musl with Alpine, Gentoo and Void. I’m all for it.

          Not binary compatible with gibc, so I guess it’s a victim of the glibc monopoly then.

      • The_Pete@lemmy.world
        6·
        1 year ago

        I hear it’s completely ready but they only built an ipv6 stack so as soon as everything finishes the quick migration to ipv6 we can all switch to it.

    • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.worldOP
      4·
      1 year ago

      A different kernel would lead to a completely different OS. I do think the BSDs should be used more, but that is not the point of the post.

      • Tobias Hunger@programming.dev
        5·
        1 year ago

        Why? Slab sysv-init (or openrc or s6) and the gnu tools the onto it and you will hardly be able to tell the difference :-)

        That is actually the thing I like about systemd: They expose a lot of linux-only features to admins and users, making the kernel shine.

    • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      every distro runs on the same kernel.

      Still it is super easy to change the kernel in an installed and running system, but compare that to the real PITA to change the init environment on the same system.

      • Tobias Hunger@programming.dev
        4·
        1 year ago

        Last time I tried it was an apt install followed by a reboot. If your distribution claims to support several inits and it is harder than that: Your distribution did a poor job.

      • Alex@feddit.ro
        1·
        1 year ago

        But that kernel is still some version of Linux. Good luck installing the Darwin kernel or FreeBSD kernel on arch

              • Alex@feddit.ro
                1·
                1 year ago

                The person I replied to said that it’s really easy to change the kernels on distros, but hard to change the init system from systemd. However, most custom kernels on distros are just Linux with patches, but the core functionality and API are mostly the same. I’m pretty sure it would be easy to change the init system to a fork of systemd with some extra patches.

                I don’t have any issue with other init systems, the only reason I use systemd is because NixOS was built to use it.