I give up enorbet, I'm not accusing you of anything deliberate (at this point) but I can't abide micromanagement. In good faith I've tried repeatedly to understand what you're asking for, even left, then come back to post in what I thought was in the spirit of the thread. I clearly can't decode your requirements, and I will stop trying and leave for a second time (lest I be accused of disrepect, which at this point is just absurd.)

Mostly polite, thanks for that-- obviously not clear, at least not to me.

And before I go I'll answer your question. I hoped that general metaphors were still alright, when made in direct response to other comments from people you haven't complained about. Hence my comments you are complaining about now.

I'm bowing out-- again-- and I'm not going to try to understand you further... only because my very best (and sincere) efforts to do so have proven fruitless. No hard feelings, based on your complaints you don't think I'm adding anything anyway. Thanks to everybody who made good points against systemd in this thread, I maintain that the philosophical matters here-- for reasons I've already explained in details. But no worries, we just differ on this. Ciao.

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Here's a quote from the Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook, chapter Booting and System Management Daemon.

As far as I'm concerned, I quite like systemd after having worked with it for the last two years or so. It just works, without drama, and some of its advanced features are actually nice.

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nice to see you around Niki

That is just the "opinion" of five people, it does not automatically get more weight just because they printed it on paper.
Why are those differences unnecessary and on whose authority do they get to decide that? Their own?
As far as I recall, choice has always been a major selling point for Linux. When did this change? Who changed this?
Furthermore,
Belittling and ridiculing the arguments that have been brought forth against systemd as "revanchists' disdain" and "protest theater" is, at least in my opinion, quite unprofessional. In fact, it convinces me that those people are just some paid shills who are supposed to paint systemd in a favourable light.

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You do realize Slackware does not (By default) use the "traditional" sysvinit they are talking about? This point might be relevant in a debian forum, but not here...

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No, Slackware uses bsdinit as does Crux. This makes for a faster boot because it has a simpler arrangement of scripts (each runlevel has one script instead of a directory full of script links). But it works in exactly the same way as sysvinit otherwise. It uses the same init program and the program does the same thing: it just runs scripts. I don't see how you can compare this minor difference with the difference between init and systemd.

There isn't any one single bsdinit, Slackware uses a collection of rc scripts which are similar to inits used by at least some BSD systems. While there are certainly overlaps with the init that debian used to have and Slackware, the way they are used is rather different and any points systemd proponents have against sysvinit in debian don't really hold ground here. It would make as much sense to argue against gnome3 in a KDE thread, this is what is called a strawman argument...

Personally I find the Slackware init to be well understood, easy to hack and reliable. There aren't really any significant ways that can be improved upon.

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Thanks for commenting, kiki, but could you expand with some specifics? I have never seen anything I would call other inits not also just working. I'd really like to hear about something more than just (sometimes) faster boot times that actually matters more deeply as a benefit. The speaker on the video I linked at start mentions handling processes more efficiently and I don't yet see that but I am curious.

However, I do see diversity as an important strength of Linux on the whole. I don't long for homogeneity.

Yeah, that's typical of the logic I would expect from systemd proponents (the quote from that book). It's rather condescending and insulting. Disingenuous, even.

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If you want an opinion of a former Fedora user, like I am, but not being a Linux developer, I could say I used an operating system driven by systemd, like Fedora, for years.

I had no particular problems with the systemd and I do not bothered about it, the single headache was to learn the syntax of the new systemctl. And I remember that I upgraded many, many times various packages using the Fedora tools, specially "yum", and I never hit the scary stories where a package upgrade crashes the init.

In the end, I switched (partially) to Slackware for various reasons, but no one of them was regarding its particular init system or the lack of systemd.

I am of opinion that the "commoners", the "just Linux users" really does not care about this systemd "issue", and about which init system have their favorite distribution.

They appreciate the operating system regarding the overall features it gives, but in my humble opinion, this init system "issue" is just overrated FUD.

I even read somewhere that that "systemd issue" is just a Russian experiment on social engineering, started before doing real tings, like trying to manipulate elections.

In fact, we should leave to the distribution maintainers to consider which is better.

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Yes, but up to where should go this "diversity" ?

In fact, any but any Linux distribution uses the same Linux kernel.

Everyone uses that GCC, and still there's no GCC-free Linux distribution.

And with the (even now) immature Wayland, everyone uses X.org for graphics and desktops.

In fact, why we switched everyone to X.org? Did you remember why XFree86 was abandoned?

XFree86 was abandoned due to the arrogance of the project leaders. Development was at a snail pace, and they tried to add a licensing clause for attribution that was the last straw. Pretty much as soon as it was forked, good things started happening.

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Well, permit me to offer some details about the "arrogance" of those project leaders, from what I know.

The XFree86 development model was a monolithic source tree, where everyone to contribute. The source code to be maintained only on that tree. If you want a better insight about their development politics, it was just similar with the one applied by Mr. Torvalds even today with the Linux kernel.

But, someday important companies like Intel and AMD wanted to develop their drivers in separate packages, with separate release cycles. There appeared the conflict, and in the end the moneys spoken, and so we get the X.org.

Why is important for us (and this thread) the story of XFree86 vs. X.org ? If initially the X.org was just a modular alternative to XFree86, after years nobody used the second one, and the drivers started to become antique. The XFree86 itself started to become obsolete.

I think that systemd is the "new X.org" and the refusal to use it will end a Linux distribution in the same position as trying to use today exclusively XFree86. Maybe it will work, but with really huge limitations. Just my humble opinion - like I said, I am not a Linux developer.

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@ZhaoLin1457 - I want to start by saying that I largely agree with your previous post in that all the flame wars and jumping ship of roughly a decade later seems like a tempest in a teapot to me now.

I see this as an obvious but good, if also a bit trivial, question since total diversity is impossible as long as there are only just a handful of CPUs, most being x86 at the very least in SOHO Desktop systems. So I'm speaking of pragmatic application, not some purist philosophy. The question is minor but it does have to be asked and answered.


Sort of... There are distros whose kernels have become so specific (often to accommodate automated package management) one has to jump through additional hoops to build a custom kernel from raw source.

For me that's sort of like noting that all humans are made from cells so we are all identical or that all Windows versions are identical because all are compiled with Borland (or were... I may be out of touch with that side of the fence). That's how fundamental AND flexible the compiler is.


Very good question because, surprising to me, I don't even though I lived through it. The change didn't affect me much and that actually applies in this thread since, albeit limited, my experience with systemd is that I barely noticed the change in any of the dozens of distros I've tried..

From my POV "diversity" reminds me of "competition". Consumers benefit greatly from competition but Corporations only love competition while they are low level but as they grow so grows their desire to squelch it. Diversity benefits Users but plagues some, maybe even most, developers. However while developers may feel the sting from time to time they also benefit if they are Linux developers because diversity insures survival and growth. Fundamentally that is more important especially with a large pool of developers and make no mistake, the diversified global pool of Linux developers is the primary reason Linux rules everywhere but Home Desktops.

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The first edition of that 1180-page paper dates back to 1983. It was called the Unix System Administration Handbook then. And the first widely available printed documentation about Unix. If you hate it, you can always read this Slackware-specific book.

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