General Question: why does debian use systemd
 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but debian aims to be the most "unix like" GNU/Linux right? And part of that over methodology is to have one program do one task, do it well and play well with other programs?

And systemd is very inverse to this method right?

Anyhow, just curious.

a bunch of them where all sitting around drinking beer, got super drunk, then one of them spoke up and said, lets go systemD and they all agreed?

big dussness made them do it.

cuz someone felt it was time for a change

just like X11 is a changin'

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’

I can't say for Debian, but Archlinux also moved to systemd, and the reasons are listed here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic....49530#p1149530.

No, that is Slackware's part. Debian is the "Universal Operating System", aiming at providing a distribution that is as free as possible, in a reasonable way.Well, that is one part of the UNIX philosophy, but it is only one philosophy about application design and does not apply to everything. Prime example for software that anyone uses that does not adhere to this philosophy is your browser.

Anyways, the change to systemd was discussed for more than a year on the Debian developers mailing lists, there where Wiki pages made for information and in the end the Debian technical committee voted in favor of systemd. No conspiracy, not "we do it just for the change", if you are really interested in the reasons and discussions look at the Debian mailing list archives.

Thanks. I've been reading up on systemd vs init and upstart and others. It kind of all goes over my head but one thing I did find interesting is that systemd only works on x86/64. I'm curious why it's limited to these platforms.

Maybe it's not. systemd is running on my raspberry pi2 with fedora.

This article seems to have a pretty good summary of why Debian moved to systemd: http://arstechnica.com/information-t...ge-since-1993/

Right... the pi is Arm right?

without wanting to branch too far from the original post...I am assuming that in the fullness of time someone can fork systemd? Or parts of it? I gather the problem with the latter is the all encompassing nature of the development. I think where I am heading is that it can be spun in a slightly different direction should that be desired?

Cheers

systemd is using the LGPL 2.1+ license, so anyone is free to fork it and do with it whatever he wants, within the limits of the LGPL license. Given that systemd has a whole bunch of developers (around 500, IIRC) it might no be a simple thing to maintain a fork, but projects like LibreOffice have shown that it is feasible to fork such large projects and thrive well.

All decisions are made by weighing up the costs and benefits of each choice. Debian's developers obviously decided that the benefits of adopting systemd outweigh the costs, despite reservations at those costs. If at any point the costs look like outweighing the benefits, they can always fork the systemd project (but that would be a decision in itself, with its own costs and benefits).

Frankly, I'm not a great fan of the project, but purely on principle. So, until it actually starts negatively affecting my work experience, which it hasn't done to date, I'm going with the flow.

There seem to be a lot of cases where the complicated is preferred over the simple (UEFI, Grub2, btrfs, systemd) because some people will get some benefit, and those who won't just have to go along! Sometimes it really is progress: I once used an OS simple enough for me to patch it in assembly language. Would I like to go back to it? No.

I may be wrong there, but I think you mean complex, not complicated. Anyways, nobody has to go along, you can always start a project to tackle things in a different way that you perceive as being better. Or at least maintain codepaths that you want to remain in projects, if they are to be removed.
In the open source world it is those that do that set the direction, simple as that.

Yes, a 32bit ARM

Both! Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms says
Luckily this site has many who understand the complexities of computing, although sometimes their explanations may be complicated.