Well for years there was pretty much no choice: sysvinit or nothing, now as a result of upstart/systemd there are a few choices of init systems and there could be more, not to mention more distros based upon them - so in a way this is a positive outcome if competition is desired. One can't really stop distros making the choice to switch to systemd - we may not agree, but it's developers who do the work, put in the hours and make distros available - and unfortunately it's big corporations funding that. Even your *nix of choice FreeBSD/PC-BSD has a relationship with Apple and receives sizable donations from google and others.

FreeBSD is also developed as a complete OS, a base system, so you really don't get to chose the init system anyway...

So really I think the anti competitive thing or "Red Hat takes over the world", is just digressing from your main argument which seems to be more about adherence to POSIX compliance and KISS principles? I can agree on that count, but systemd is not the only software of this type to creep into Linux distros over the years.

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Didier, please edit out the political commentary at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ml#post5123573 that has nothing to do with RedHat, systemd, or Slackware.

There are forums to discuss that topic and this isn't one of them.

I'll just quote Russ:

Full post: https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte.../msg00390.html

Some people react against closed code, a good side effect at least! WYSIWYG
interfaces instead win total acceptance. WYSIWIG interfaces are the Troyan Horse!

Mom is bad. Gramma gives me candies, Gramma loves me.

We were sold the personal computer like one more electrical household appliance. That was the origin of the lie.

Desktop? It was replaced by mobile devices. The origin of systemd.

Server? Today most companies out there will not lose a minute i.e. hacking Slackware rc files (more than the half of the "Slackers" here neither, they come here to cry because Xfce/KDE didn't do this or that automagically). Everybody wants to push the ON button and call the service when something is broken.

That education has been implanted long time ago by Microsoft and Apple. Server users, desktop users were educated in that way. What do you want RedHat do? To explain their clients Unix simplicity? It would break tomorrow doing that.

Now you blame Gramma. Gramma lied you.

Actually with FreeBSD this changed. There is a choice, but only because bsdinit is kept as the default. Runit is in ports collection as an alternative if you so wish to switch to it. Documentation and sample run scripts are all on the author's website. Gentoo's BSD creation uses OpenRC which has been looked into for ports but due to lack of someone willing to write up the port for it, it hasn't been ported in yet to the main FreeBSD project. ArchBSD has a package for it though with scripts and a build script.

It may seem a far fetched argument, and possibly conspiracy theory, but when too many facts start making sense, too much against the norm occurs, and certain parties of interest start doing thing publicly such as trying to trashing POSIX as part of a manifesto, attempt to disrupt BSD and UNIX's ongoing efforts to create a working desktop environment by denouncing ithem as obsolete, and then trying to play nice by saying they are all for GPL/LGPL while pushing out non-RH developed software for RH-developed and controlled, you get to a point where conspiracy theory isn't just a conspiracy theory, it's just a conspiracy.

But those are just my observations.

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Generally I'm skeptical about conspiracies largely because they're so hard to "pull off". That and I learned the old adage that "It is usually wrong to assume as malice, that which can be more easily explained by incompetence". Someone pointed out the lack of a single mind in corporations and with todays multi-layered, multi-national corporations not only does the right hand not know what the left hand is doing, they arm wrestle.

At this point it seems fruitless to attempt to see if this was a RedHat conspiracy. Even if RHEL 7 is a huge success nobody is going to release a statement saying "We lost share to Debian but only for a minute because we knew our machinations were in place that would turn them into 'also-rans' and we would once more dominate. Next is Microsoft. Salut!"

Since it is unlikely we will ever get reliable and direct confirmation all we can do is watch to see the fallout. The Init Wars are effectively over. Systemd already won in what feels like Blitzkrieg.

All that remains now is to see if RHEL 7 falls flat on it's face, confirming the worst fears about systemd, or if they make it work. I, for one, hope to finally find out what gains were/are expected aside from boot times. I still find this very cloudy.

With no other gains my path is clear - stick with or as close to SysVinit as possible perhaps watching to see if BSD gets a boost from all this "tempest in a teapot".

Thankfully, my distro of choice, Slackware, has at the helm a man more concerned with function than fad. It seems the most compelling reason to go to systemd is that udev was swallowed by it. Surely with all the die hard Unix devs out there, that can't be that hard to replace, if push comes to shove...and it has.

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I totally share this wait-and-see, sky's-not-falling attitude. No one is twisting anyone's arm just yet, and won't for another year at least. udev, like you say, can always be forked. systemd developers themselves may come to realize that things they denounced in the beginning will have to be implemented if it is to perform on servers, and then we may see things like plain text logs, rock-solid compatibility with traditional inits, and who knows, may be even excellent documentation. And if the only gain is faster boot time, then so be it. Can't say no to that.

Edit: post count for the win.

The way some of you guys incessantly spend so many hours talking about systemd, you'd think your lives depended on it. It's a 1980s init replacement. ReaperX7, is your life going to dramatically change if systemd becomes the standard? Do you think init is that bulletproof and flawless that it's the worst thing in the world if it goes away? If init is so important to you I'm sure you can help find a way to keep it around for the rest of your life. It's just kind of weird to me that you're so concerned about it.

If done properly systemd would have been more widely accepted, but it's not due to many factors we must again need to re-dig up.

The fact that it's a direct slap in the face to the entire legacy of nearly 50 years of contributions by the entire UNIX ecosystem on the whole is a major beef with me.

"Write programs that do one thing and do it well." - Doug Mcllroy on the UNIX Philosophy

This is not the philosophy of systemd nor it's creator.

Systemd is not a program that does one thing, and does it well. It's an amalgamation of up to 70+ subprograms that all try to do many things, yet doesn't do them well, it just does them, and if it screws up, there's no way really of knowing until the system is supposedly booted because systemd runs in a sealed environment like a locked hypervisor.

You also have to look at who designed systemd... Lennart Poeterring who stated that kFreeBSD was a toy OS, BSD on the whole doesn't matter, and any distribution that didn't adopt his monstrosity was lost, confused, and doomed to failure without it. This is also the man who said to take POSIX and dump it in the trash.

Sysvinit is an init program, all it is is an init program, and it's done it's job very well to the point that it's been only in maintenance mode. It's been supplemented by programs like perp, runit, and various other software to add extended functionality on top of sysvinit. It can even be reformulated with RC-init scripting (Slackware's init style which adds sysvinit native script support) to work like bsdinit to expand it's capabilities. Sysvinit rarely, if ever, has any issues at all so much so that since x86_64 architecture arrived very little patching has been required of sysvinit. yes it was inherited from System V UNIX, but it follows the UNIX Philosophy entirely. It's one program that does one thing, and does it exceptionally well.

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The sound design and operating principles of Unix **ARE** the value proposition delivered by GNU/Linux.

Linux was not conjured out of thin air, it was designed from the ground up as a freely available Unix-like operating system.

From kernel.org:

Removal or replacement of elements of that Unix foundation removes value from Linux, or replaces it with something else. And inasmuch as Linux is currently a major mover among the available free Unices, removal of Unix value from Linux has far reaching detrimental effects to the free Unix ecosystem itself.

Systemd, so far, has seemed to be a wholesale and broad assault on those underlying Unix value elements... little wonder those who appreciate and depend on those valuable elements are so "incessant" in their defense of them.

Speaking only for myself, I use GNU/Linux because it is a freely available Unix operating system. I use Slackware because it is the most Unix-like of the Linux distributions. If the Unix value proposition is removed from Linux I will have to use something else... I hope that does not happen.

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Exactly. Clone of UNIX, or not, all UNICES whether they are UNIX-based or UNIX-like all share some level of interoperability betwixt and between each other.

UNIX matters today now more so than it ever has. While AT&T's creation and Novell's patented UNIX haven't really done much, it's children have branched out considerably from the tree they all once called home. They've had children and their children have had children.

UNIX in some way runs phones, embedded systems, tablets, even MP3 players, and other systems of various origins.

Even Microsoft wouldn't be where it has gotten without UNIX. In fact Microsoft owes a huge debt to it's existence because of UNIX. If it wasn't for Xenix and the fact Microsoft couldn't compete with AT&T, Bill Gates would have never been able to buy the rights to that obscure 86-DOS (QDOS) from Seattle Computer Products he eventually redeveloped into Windows.

And without Microsoft the personal computer might have not made such as great an impact thanks to mass marketing by IBM.

Without the IBM personal computer, we wouldn't have had 386BSD developed as an alternative OS on the Intel platform, and without 386BSD being delayed due to a lawsuit, Linus Torvalds would have never developed Linux.

Even though Linux may never get 100% SUS or POSIX compliant, it doesn't mean that we have to ditch those efforts to move ahead. SUS and POSIX are long term goals of Linux, BSD, and all other UNIX-like systems. We might not be able to pay the money to get the UNIX rubber stamp of approval, but we can at least adhere to the standards put forth by the POSIX and SUS specifications as best we can.

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Agreement with ReaperX7. It's not just systemd, it's this whole wall of bad changes of which systemd is the kingpin. We can either despair and give up, or mind our own back yards and keep them in order.

Started poking at eudev today. It seems to be actively developed. Haven't compared it to mainstream udev yet to see how they've diverged (besides systemd).

Also, I found that I'd been laboring under a misunderstanding. Gentoo developers forked and develop eudev, but it is not the main udev replacement used by Gentoo (though it is an option for Gentoo systems). Gentoo also forked a later version of udev to free it of the systemd dependency, and are calling it "udev". This is the udev primarily used by Gentoo.

I'll give Gentoo's udev a spin once eudev's been spun. I'd like to see if eudev jfw with Slackware 14.1, and if it exhibits any problems with my various hardware (I have six systems to test it on). Will let you know how it goes.

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Gentoo's contributions to FOSS have been largely overlooked because Gentoo is non-profit. They've made a lot of projects that have really been snubbed at in favor of others by those from profitable sources.

If we look at the history of the USA, we see that when a group refuses to adopt the laws by which others have decided to live, the group will get to live in an Indian reservation.

When all major distributions have decided to adopt SystemD, Slackware boldness to not to adopt this new management platform will most likely result in reaching Slackware on a Indian-like reservation.

I, for one, I welcome the Big Bear overlord!

But Slackware will not be "a Linux" anymore...

Make no mistake, while I am not worried the sky is falling I am disturbed by systemd's strongarm methods and I do think peoples arms have been figuratively twisted. I also wonder how much of this is a play on RedHats' part to satisfy stockholders and recover from a market share loss to Debian/Ubuntu. Furthermore I have zero trust in LP. I don't like his manner nor his methods.

I am not freaking out because I am first and foremost a Slackware user but I am surprised the ripples at the Debian camp aren't more tsunami-like. If this is the time where Linux forks then so be it. I know which side I will be on and it isn't Lennart's unless I see some really compelling advantages and boot times is NOT one of them. So far even the more enthusiastic adopters have literally nothing to say as to why this is so compelling. Anyone have an answer for that?
.

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