Easier to simply use XFS, and never fsck again (or fsck constantly, depending on your perspective) ;-)

I have said it before and I'll say it again because I don't want folks like Alien to get discouraged. This entire thread is BS as Alien says. I have been using Slackware for over 16 years now. Plenty of packages have come and gone. No matter what happened SL has always proven itself to be a great distro. Pragmatism has to trump purity here though ( if there is really even an issue of purity ). PV has run this project for a long time. He has made great calls along the way, you folks need to trust him. He was even right about PAM at the time, thought it may now be time to revisit that.

There is no point in shipping a distro that none of the recent software people want to use will work on, and the Slackware community does not have the resources required to patch everything to run without systemd, even if we did those resources would be better applied elsewhere. Should it prove to be the case the a significant portion of the common gnu/Linux software stack is nolonger available with support for non-systemd environments. There won't be much choice but for Slackware to integrate systemd, and there won't be any mass exodus either because there won't be anywhere to go. There is much more to Slackware that makes it a great distro than a handful of init scripts. Sure I'll miss them when and if they are gone but that isn't going to make me abandon everything else I like about this great disto.

So please every lets let this thread die. It hasn't accomplished anything and it won't.

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+1

Amen!

Well said, mate! I've happily run Slackware since 2004; it is my main operating system and always will be. I greatly appreciate and value the work that Alien Bob has done for us. Without Alien Bob we would not have 64 bit Slackware. I think the negative commentary in this thread is not indicative of Slackers in general.
I hope that Mr. Volkerding and his team have a restful, peaceful holiday. Praise bob.

1 members found this post helpful.

It's fear.

1 members found this post helpful.

One thing, that may be a little bit new: Red Hat did not create most of Linux. This is very different than Microsoft. Microsoft either bought, or developed, it's technologies. Red Hat is taking the work of developers who thought they were contributing to the community, and Red Hat is using all that contributed labor to benefit Red Hat, and nobody else.

2 members found this post helpful.

I used to work at Red Hat for about 5 years, and left in 2008 so have a pretty good idea of what goes on.

The part of this that is true is that Red Hat do indeed take open source community projects, package them up and sell them as part of their packages.
They also employ many developers who enjoy working being able to work in the open source ecosystem whilst being paid for it. Red Hat also contribute many fixes and new features back to the upstream projects.

Red Hat helped cement the adoption of Linux within the business arena, and Linux probably would not be where it is today without Red Hat.
Do Red Hat want to be able to control more of the ecosystem? Of course they do - it makes things easier for them. Anybody running a business would want to do that. Shuttleworth tried it with Canonical. That's just the nature of business.

I have seen this a lot. And while I agree with this, I am afraid that people who post this may be missing the point.

Systemd completely craps all over POSIX, and the UNIX philosophy. Systemd could mean the total elimination of the kind of freedom, and choice, and openness, that Linux users have come to enjoy. Systemd means everybody marches to Red Hat's drum beat.

Changing over to systemd means way *way* more than losing a handful of init scripts. Systemd is *much* more than an init replacement.

Has nobody noticed the scope creep of systemd? It seems to take over more, and more, every day. Where does it end? And what has happened so far, has happened without a complete takeover. What happens when the takeover is complete?

Once systemd has taken over, Red Hat will be in complete control. Red Hat will be the Microsoft of the Linux world. And your Linux system will, effectively, be just as closed as Windows - if you are running systemd, you are halfway there already.

2 members found this post helpful.

That might work for Red Hat, but I am not sure it should work for Linux end users.

Red Hat is being sneaky, if not downright dishonest. Systemd is like a Trojan Horse, it seems like a gift, but it is hiding the killers inside.

If Red Hat came out and admitted what they were really doing, how do you think the community would take it?

What is dishonest? People know what systemd is and what effects it has. Not liking something doesn't mean it's dishonest nor sneaky.

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It is deceptive if not also dishonest to pretend as systemd did at first that it would not become an octopus wrapping it's tentacles around so many parts and functions having nothing to do with basic init and then leverage that for ever more. Do you really trust someone that asks for an inch and takes a mile?

I absolutely agree that this is how corporations work and I'd go so far as to admit that I might even do the very same thing because then, under those circumstances it would likely be in my interests. However I am NOT on the board of directors nor do I own stock in RedHat. My interests are in smaller SOHO networks and Desktops so therefore I resist the destruction of flexibility and choices and don't mind what little extra work that might take. Furthermore I wish to OWN my systems, not be a lessor, dependent on the whims of some self-appointed landlord.

Of extreme importance to me is cost/benefit calculation and I'm going to have to see something a helluva lot more important than possible reduced boot times as a benefit to accept the costs of many difficulties that can occur with parallelization at PID 1 and binary logs and who knows what else next.

Steve Jobs already "borrowed" nearly $1 billion dollars worth of code and remade Apple with it. At least he didn't destroy BSD by doing so. It seems as if Lenny and the Boys, considering how much he has admitted admiring OSX, wants to one-up Steve, utilize some $2 Billion worth of code AND diminish the Linux community in the process. How is that acceptable to anyone who does not have a vested interest in RedHat?

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@enorbet

Did RH did something illegal or breached a license or copyright in the process of developing or promoting systemd?

Did RH forbid anyone to use, develop or promote another software?

You are free to dislike and not use systemd, others are free to like and use it.

This has been enough discussed in this thread and other ones, me think.

Oh, and in case you didn't notice, FreeBSD (for instance) is an OS, but Linux is a kernel.

AFAIK RH didn't hurt the Linux kernel in any way, let alone destroy it. If you disagree with the evolution of the Linux kernel, you should address you complaints to its lead maintainer, not to RH.

@Didier Spader This thread and any other related one I know of here on LQ is not about the legality. It is about the desirability and perhaps about community loyalty and deference. I think you are vastly over-simplifying the possible results. I have no problem with freedom, whether to use it or not. I do however have a problem when somebody elses' power squeezes me and others like me out. I'm not at all content to not pass Go and go directly to Jail and I truly don't understand why anyone would be unless they have something major to gain as compensation. I have yet to see that gain other than possibly RedHat stock.

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Again, desirability is matter of personal opinion.

About community loyalty and deference, I remind you that no software is developed by a "community", only by individuals, be they paid for that or not (but as drmozes already stated, people from RH already made many useful contributions that benefit to users, even those who never paid them anything).

About deference, in my opinion it's good enough that they have some for their customers and employees, and for upstream developers of components that they incorporate in their systems. I fail to see on what ground they would ought you and me any deference.