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!

  • @[email protected]
    0•8 months 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
      4•8 months 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
      1•8 months ago

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

        • Alex
          2•8 months ago

          I only gave that example to prove my point

            • Alex
              1•8 months 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.