I recently discovered that init was basically phased out, it's replacement was not modular and hence not linux like as in 'Keep it simple'. Is there an effort to offer a init replacement that is more like init and not like systemd?

Some distros may still be using the init system. I know PClinuxOS still do. Also, the BSDs are still using the init system.

The linux developers want linux to get better and better for the desktops, the servers, the embedded devices and mobile devices even if they have to break old traditions of unix. As long as linux continues to gain more popularity they will not hinder the progress of linux.

The good thing about linux is we have choices to use distros with systemd or the init system. The only question is how long will the init system last in linux.

Have to admit the whole "systemd" debate hasn't interested me

For some time I've been using Debian testing (Jessie currently)
A little bit of sid (unstable) , at the time for raid5 'like' support with btrfs.

from what I understand Sid is now systemd

I trust Debian, when systemd gets to Jessie (testing) I'm confident it will be reasonably stable

I like the 'kiss' principal but recognise that 'complication' can lead to better solutions.

There are many init systems available for Linux, systemd and init are two of them. Linux is about choice, you can choose your init system even if some a$$hole shoves one down your throat and tells you to like it.

It may be worthy to note that any thread started about systemd on LQ is probably going to be taken down by the mods, so don't waste too much time in these threads. I certainly won't.

I guess most of my interest can be summed up by the question ; why isn't init offered along side systemd with non enterprise distros like Mageia. When you are CHOOSING a boot loader ,you could also choose a program that launches processes. That along with how systemd is not modular makes it look suspicious ,open source or not to a linux purist.

There are several websites devoted to marshalling opposition to System D, of which this is the major one.

I simultaneously sympathize with their motives and consider the websites a waste of electrons.

I may put debian sid on 2nd hdd in laptop (dell studio 1735, I added 2nd hdd)
At the moment it is sandbox

I was thinking *bsd
But before that I can 'play'

Any systemd destos people are 'worried' about?
I'm in no rush to use second drive, just junk data at the moment

Thanks for the link. I will check that out.

This isn't actually a viable solution for any distribution, no matter what the init system is... However, much of the problem lies somewhere around this... Systemd offers some features that aren't exactly part of a normal init and tries hard to create a dependency hell around them.. The fear is that some developers will start developing software with a hard-dependency for systemd (thus making the init system a must have, with whatever it decides to take over).. For example, if you want GNOME, you must use the systemd init even if only logind (part of systemd) would suffice...

The major punch will be when systemd's udev will require kdbus (so even if Linus doesn't include it in the kernel, every distro with systemd will have to patch it).. Now, kdbus's only user-space library will be an integral part of systemd.. so basically, it will be an all-or-nothing deal... If Gnome, for example, decides to use the new IPC, it will implicitly create a hard-dependency on systemd...

What I'm trying to say is that the whole problem with the systemd init is not the actuall init part :P

An accomplished Linux user and sysadmin of my acquaintance recently said that, in his opinion, SystemD is an additional example that Red Hat considers the rest of Linux to be an appendage to its corporate venture. He said a lot of other stuff too, such as when it works, it's great, but, when it doesn't, it's a nightmare, its dependence on binary files is annoying, and so on.

One of the reasons I replaced Debian with Slackware on this here computer after four years was the move to SystemD in Sid. I had Debian set so I could boot to the command line, and SystemD broke that. I'd boot to the command line, log in, and then SystemD would start the display manager. It was most annoying.

I consider the biggest argument against SystemD to be the "I can do no wrong" arrogance of its creator. But that's just me.

Should I worrie about systemd?
Maybe I should try out sid on 2nd hdd

Any other disrtos I should try?
obviously, systemd has to be 'default'

Old hardware, dell studio 1735
'Desktop.. less prepared to piss about with, crap but does stuff

I just read a few of the links and they go in line with my interpretation of 3 blogs I read about systemd while trying to configure my logs on a suse 13.1 install. One blog was a conservative approach which stated that systemd was technically better in some areas ,worse in others and the better parts would not benefit linux because most linux distros don't need to boot fast ,etcetera. Of the other 2 blogs I read ,one was a well written guide that resembled a MS doc(boasted how integrated it was) and the other was a sales pitch that reminded me of a televangelist. Systemd's control factor over the entire distro looks extremely dangerous for 'free as in freedom' in my opinion, open or not. I was going to install gentoo next anyways.

All I care about is that it will work

i have old hardware, maybe systemd boots faster,
Not my concern, I have other bottlenecks

Greetings
I have spent quite a lot of time reading about systemd, both pro and con, and my main box has 5 operating systems on it, 2 of which are differing degrees of systemd adoption. I also subscribe to 2 other forums besides LQ and they have threads and comments about systemd, both from it's detractors and praise singers. To be clear, my Main OpSys is Slackware which has no systemd in it yet and doesn't look to anytime soon, so I am somewhat biased against it but I don't think unreasonably so, let alone rabid.

So far I can see only 3 advantages to systemd and none of them directly suit me, although I can now at least see that they do serve some types of users.

1) The commonly referred to "faster boot times" -

This is only partly true because it achieves this through containers and parallelization. This means that the OpSys multi-tasks during initialization so that several things are loading at once, speeding things up a bit. However, it also sometimes occurs that, because there is some randomness to sequence, if there are any "hiccups" such as one or more parts waiting on another which is waiting on yet another (and this does happen occasionally) the boot will hang for a bit until it sorts it out.

Since I really don't mind a few minutes of boot time, partly because I don't do it often, preferring to keep my main up all the time and only booting to a different one when I expect I will be spending a block of days in it, I don't consider this as either positive or negative, just different.

2) Deployment -

The biggest benefit I can see is for very large in-house systems where considerable time is saved because with systemd there can be very fast deployment/cloning of thousands even 10's of thousands of systems. This has been heavily supported and contributed to by Google, iirc, who needs to set up vast farms all working together.

This obviously affects very few of us directly for obvious reasons. However it does affect us all indirectly.

3) Security -

One direction that systemd is headed, through the use of containers and cgroups, is to considerably reduce incremental upgrades, some going so far as to prohibit them altogether which can work to try to prevent changes/hacks/viruses from occurring. Instead, the model used for these systems is much more like MacOS-X, where only tightly scheduled wholesale version upgrades are allowed. This also insures that at it's base, all systems are the same or at least in an extremely similar state, which does facilitate troubleshooting and repair.

This last feature is perhaps it's most wide-reaching and profound. There are distinct advantages to such tight control but it does come at a cost, largely because of moving away from simple text files, even in logs, to binary APIs. This is over-simplification but to make it easier for most to wrap their heads around this, it is something a bit like the Windows Registry, where it cannot be read directly and must be accessed through an app (such as Regedit) which does not lend itself easily to such time savers and user friendly tools like "grep" and "sed". If you've ever edited The Registry, you know there is a search function, but AFAIK, it will not pipe in the manner that grep and sed can be employed together for fast, deep work.

So, if you are a casual user or one that cares little for "what's under the hood" you will probably like systemd, at least a little, because in my experience using such systems, the changes you can feel are quite minimal, either positively or negatively, as long as you're only concerned with "driving". It is only when something breaks that you will find yourself ever more dependent on "mechanics". You can all extrapolate what that ultimately means for this "Linux business", users, good and bad.

On the other, more traditional side, there is BSD, Gentoo, and Slackware and such projects as "eudev" working to create a viable option to stay text-based and "Unix-like". Since there are far more "drivers" than "mechanics" and the shift grows more everyday, I suspect these will continue to be polarized and possibly marginalized, because systemd, or some offshoot of it, is poised to win a very large share, whether you like it or not. It doesn't play well with others. To borrow a phrase, "You're either on the bus or you're off the bus".

We all approach things differently which allows us a different perspective and this is mine.

When I looked into linux for the first time ,I would say that it's uses where mostly server , infrastructure for a computer enthusiast/Developer, and or a coder. Package Management was fully established but the learning curves is/was incredibly steep and if a 123 solution was not on a guide page or a forum ,your problem had a low chance of being solved or the user could not understand the solution.

Systemd to me does not look like something a computer enthusist/Developer, and or a coder would be as fond of or attracted to. It looks like windows but is open-source and presently free but not as in 'freedom'. These people do not want a cost-free version of windows. I don't oppose windows essentially charging for updates. I oppose them because I don't want to be eventually enslaved.

Systemd does look like something that Ubuntu ,fedora ,open suse ;and all enterprise Distros that have a free version available, would use. Systemd appears like it is steering Linux to a share-ware O.S and away from open-sourse. I don't hope this is true but after working for a conglomerate and being subjected to capitalism in the U.S , it is clear to me. Who has ever gained control of something and not used it for exploitation? No one.