The mass exodus if Slackware uses Systemd
 

Guys I know I am new to this forum but I first started using Linux in 1997 and I currently run slackware on a laptop. This is my second post on this forum and it is bound to be very controversial. I am putting this post here because it has to do with systemd (which is desktop orientated obviously not good for servers) and because I run slackware as a desktop on one of my laptops currently.

I read the interview with Patrick Volkerding, from 2012, on this forum and in it he basically said that Slackware might be forced to use systemd one day. If that happens I know I will migrate to FreeBSD or OpenBSD. I know this is a Linux forum but I personally think everyone that uses Slackware here should do the same. Actually, being a user of Linux since the 90s I have seen Linux go from being exclusively for Geeks to seeing a non-geek less Unix-like distros like Ubuntu take the lion share of Linux market and this is dismaying. You can see that the new users want something like Windows and don't care about Linux being Unix-like. We have seen young developers like Poettering cater to these people and sell out by programming stuff that breaks the Unix philosophy. The end result is modern distros that are not very flexible and *nix distros are supposed to be flexible all the way down like Slackware and the *BSDs.

Actually, in the 90s my first distro was redhat (hurricane) 5.0 and then I went to Debian. I also did alot of distro hopping. I did try Slackware but never stuck with it. Then around the year 2000 I switched over to FreeBSD and fell in love. However, sometime around 2006 or so I got a laptop and it wasn't a Thinkpad (so OpenBSD wouldn't run well on it and FreeBSD wasn't optimal for it. So I decided to install Slackware on it. My previous FreeBSD experience made me really appreciate slackware and made slackware easier for me to use than something like Ubuntu. That laptop's motherboard eventually fried and then I ran OpenBSD on a desktop for a while and then a windows laptop with putty and xforwarding through SSH to a FreeBSD server with SCSCI RAID. So I was running Windows with a seamlessly integrated FreeBSD environment I had samba setup too. Anyway, fast forward until today : I have a Thinkpad laptop with Slackware 14.1 on it. Now I must admit I prefer the *BSDs because they are more Unix-like but I'm running Slackware on my laptop instead of OpenBSD (which runs better on Thinkpads than FreeBSD) simply because I need USB support for Calibre for my Kobo Aura HD, because I need usb passthru on my virtual machines and because slackware's official packages plus slackbuilds has more packages than OpenBSD. The former two are the real reasons though. I simply don't have the time to code the usb stuff for OpenBSD right now. So basically I'm running Slackware because it is more suited for the desktop. Slackware is really the only Linux distro I will run because it is the most Unix-like and has BSD flat tree init boot scripts.


However, there are somethings I think Slackware users need to understand. This is not the 1990s anymore. Currently Slackware users have more in common with FreeBSD and OpenBSD users than they do with modern day users of distros like Ubuntu. Ubuntu is to Linux as MacOSX is to FreeBSD. Now, Systemd should be the writing on the wall for Slackware users to realize that the larger Linux community no longer gives a shit about Unix and its design philosphies. The *BSDs are still very much extremely Unix-like and if Slackware is forced start using Systemd I recommend every to start using FreeBSD, OpenBSD or DragonflyBSD exclusively and if you find they are rough around the edges for desktop then roll up your sleeves and start coding ! I know I will be doing that if that day comes upon us.

I respectfully disagree, sir, on a couple of points:

First, there's a slow-motion backlash reaction to systemd happening right now. It remains to be seen how it plays out, and could go any of a number of ways. See, for example, debianfork.

Second, several Slackware users have declared, in this forum, that if Patrick decides to adopt systemd, they will trust his judgement and continue using Slackware.

Some people would leave Slackware over systemd, but calling it an "exodus" seems a bit melodramatic.

My guess would be that, if Slackware adopts SystemD at some point in the future, the only place left to go to escape it by then will be a BSD.

I like dogs so I'd go Puppy.

Richard Stallman doesn't care about the UNIX philosophy either - so I find it odd that Poettering and co are getting all the flack for this. The GNU operating system was devised as a free operating system - UNIX was just what it was modeled on - they never really set out to emulate it or adhere to it's standards - it was always about the GPL and GNU philosophy (copyleft licencing). "GNU's Not UNIX" is probably a good enough hint, or you can read RMS' own statements on the matter. Or look no further: https://www.stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
The Linux kernel is more of a reimplementation of UNIX than GNU is, but Torvalds never said that he was a UNIX purist nor that the kernel was going to be targeted at such an OS.

Neither Stallman nor Torvalds have come out and criticised systemd, in fact Torvalds seems ok with it:

http://www.itwire.com/business-it-ne...ons-on-systemd

If you want a free *nix-like OS just stick with a free *nix-like OS (e.g. *BSD, openindiana, etc), not something which resembles it as you will only find disappointment. A lot of operating systems could be said to be "UNIX", *nix or UNIX-like, including Mac OS.

I really don't see the sense in advising Slackware users to just switch to *BSD.

I've been experimenting with FreeBSD since versions 6.x. There's much to be said for FreeBSD: great documentation, great community... unfortunately there's always the same showstopper factor with hardware support. My daily job consists in migrating all sorts of hardware from Windows to Linux, which includes configuring very recent laptops, exotic printer-scanners, crappy video cards or no-name webcams, and unfortunately, FreeBSD will choke on some of these things... where Slackware is just perfect.

Besides all that, I trust Patrick Volkerding to make sound decisions, and if this means shipping systemd in the future, well, so be it.

Maybe I'll try PC-BSD but this has a very low priority in my TODO list.

Should Slackware ship systemd as a whole, that won't be in the upcoming release, so I'm not in a hurry, and anyway I'd (fairly, IMO) give it a go if/when that happens before making a decision to move or not.

Also, if Pat is driven to adopt it, that could pretty well be because systemd will have become a dependency of all or almost all desktops that can fit in Slackware. If that occurs, who knows if a *BSD will be itself able to ship a decent desktop without systemd? That's not that I be a desktop user myself (I run fluxbox) but take that as an example.

In short, I keep a wait and see attitude.

[OT]IMO, the mission of LP in developing systemd at Red Hat is to gather a bigger market share of the desktop users for his employer. And if I'm true he's doing a pretty good job in that direction so far.[/OT]

Whilst I strongly disagree with the way systemd has been pushed, there are a great many other things I like about Slackware. Init is not a make or break issue for me, nor do I really believe that it is for the majority of users. I can't see why we should sacrifice everything great about Slackware just to avoid systemd.

Who here selected Slackware purely because of its init? I'm not saying it wasn't a factor for some people but I doubt it was in the primary selection criteria for most.

I strongly believe that most Slackware users are pragmatic enough to realise the same and also to appreciate that if Slackware adopts systemd it will most likely be because nothing else is viable anymore in Linux land.

So no, I doubt there will be a mass exodus from Slackware if the day ever comes that systemd is the default.

On the plus side, if systemd does appear in Slackware and those who can't tolerate it run a mile, at least the systemd threads will die and we can get on with discussing more interesting stuff. If there is one thing I hate more than systemd, it is all the mind numbingly stupid threads about it that currently infect this forum. Particularly when most of the posts just rehash the same issues to death and rarely result in anything constructive.

Not Black Lab?

Anyway, I don't think I'd be part of the mass exodus, but I'd welcome a good reason to experience a BSD (which I haven't done yet).

I'm not so sure about that. Contrary to other enterprise class distributions like Suse Linux Enterprise or Ubuntu LTS, Red Hat has never been interested by the desktop market.

Well, I'm pretty anti-systemd and can't stand its creator, but I don't think I'll be dumping Slackware if and/or when it's adopted. Like ruario says, there's more to Slackware than its init. Of course, there's more to systemd than init too, a complete makeover of Linux if the Cabal get their way. If...if...if. Nobody's sure what's going to happen, so I'm not making any definite plans.

Ok, well, welcome back to LQ (and I hope you will stay, because we need a diversity of coherent opinions like yours), but, uhhh... if you were here regularly you would know that we've already had so many systemd conversations that there's really nothing new to be said. Anyone who's ever read a Slackware vs. systemd thread should probably skip the rest of this post...

But now it's almost 2015 and Slackware-next still has not yet been forced to use systemd. If today's -current becomes slackware-14.2 and is released in 2015, then we will all still have a supported non-systemd Slackware Linux in 2020.

And that's why my personal threat level is currently set to DON'T PANIC.

Well, with respect, in that hypothetical eventuality you would be free to do whatever the heck you liked. I personally think that I would also be free to do whatever the heck I liked.

Well I'm on FreeBSD forums and this is typical FreeBSD user attitude there: OMG!!! 7 Linux users have registered here in last 2 months, there's a mass exodus of Linux users to FreeBSD!!! One guy there even went on to claim that some former Linux gamers were converting to FreeBSD...I mean WTF!
I like FreeBSD but leaving Slackware because of systemd sounds naive.

Regards.

I stopped reading here. You should learn more about systemd before participating in some mass exodus.

Till now?

sure, because Redhat makes its most money with it's desktop edition

hm, no, I think the responsible persons from Slackware have obviously a better understanding about facts than you and that's why I trust them more.

redhat has realized that server ppl usually put whatever they use on the desktop
and i don't see what systemd brings to the servers at all (except useless info in logs and silent errors, looking at the bug reports)
so that lessens the reasons to correct the OP, a bit

anyway
exodus !

I'll hang on to Slackware and keep its old init. However, FreeBSD 10.0 and 10.1-RC have really caught my eye as an easy-to-administer casual desktop machine. [Open Office won't save spreadsheets on any of my PCs, though, so I have to use LibreOffice there.] Currently, I have no interest in knowing how other Linux distributions do things, whereas normally I'm at least a little bit curious. It's either Slackware Linux or no Linux for me, and I'll be glad to have my modern Linux knowledge base and skills fade into obsolescence as a result. So no, it's not an exodus for me, but absolutely there is a momentum shift. It's not just systemd by any means, but systemd does threaten to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. systemd is the one that affects my actual job and is not just another bloated, slow, myopic, ego-self-stroking FLOSS-related side project that I can simply avoid.

Should your hardware be supported, FreeBSD 10.0 is worth a look.

There is an interesting write-up about systemd here: Why systemd? (The author states he is not a fan of systemd, mainly due to it being huge.)

Also, there is this: http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/. A relevant quote:

My experience with the BSDs tells me that while I prefer its userland to GNU, the kernel is not as modern and robust as Linux. I use NetBSD myself, but my hardware only correctly works with Linux, especially X and ACPI. A few days ago, I configured a USB printer on OpenBSD and got a kernel panic. I don't remember when I had that happen on Linux to me the last time. So when Slackware switches to BSD (similar in spirit to the ArchBSD project, I guess), I'll switch to Void Linux or CRUX.

though I do not like the politics surrounding systemd, I am more interested of what I can do with my operating system after it has booted. So, I guess I will just trust Pat on the init system choice.

I don't have the horsepower for Gnome 3. Besides. I was just pointing out Puppy does not use systemd either.
I think Black Lab would though, No?

It seems to me that one of the main selling points of systemd is to facilitate virtual servers. Instead of each virtual host running an entire kernel+userland, you can run one kernel with each virtual host running its own systemd+userland.

In this case, I'll be on Slackware anyway. But yes, I'm not sure that systemd is good way.

Exactly what solarfields said
 

Man, I wish I had the gift of being this succinct.

sed -i 's/my thoughts/Exactly what solarfields said/'

For me, I'm with Slackware so long as Slackware is rock-solid, boots every time, and doesn't break if someone so much as farts upwind of the patch server. I'm less concerned about how it boots than that it boots every time. For me, what's running on it is more important than how.

The adoption of pulseaudio with no chance of other options would be a deal-breaker for me. Granted, it goes against the Slackware philosophy to not at least let the user install something else. (Even now, you *can* install systemd, if you so choose.) So I'm not too worried, even if it should start using pulseaudio. There would likely be a workaround and/or new packages for jack or something. :)

I trust Patrick to make the best decisions for slackware. I've used distros that use systemd and have had no problems with it. Actually I'm indifferent to it honestly. I'm happy as long as my system boots up and has no issues (other than those self-caused).

I'm planning on sticking with Slackware for as long as it's feasible to do so. I'm also heavily experimenting with LFS and custom system building to avoid using systemd at any costs. I've used it, I hate it, I wish it gone, destroyed, and utterly forgotten in a perfect world. Sadly this world is imperfect.

I feel as long as Slackware enforces the usage of sanity and sane software without conforming to trends and fads, then we'll be safe possibly even for years to come. The only problem we face is Greg Kroah-Hartman's kdbus. If it is ever pushed into the Linux kernel, then unfortunately we'll be locked into whatever final version of udev or eudev still supports netlink, unless Patrick starts experimenting with mdev, hotplug2, etc. udev alternatives with uncertain lifespans. The only alternative would be to wait for kdbus to be reimplemented outside of systemd, or move to systemd, which honestly is not an option for me.

To be honest with you, I have no qualms about activating the bail-out rocket and flying to FreeBSD world. I've been using Free/PC-BSD for a year or so, and have learned a great deal regarding it. Yes, hardware support is forthcoming in slowness, but I would expect a huge surge in developments if FreeBSD suddenly was infused with users and developers, maybe even package builders, and distributions leaders as well. Maybe we may even see Slackware-BSD rise from the ashes of Slackware-Linux if Patrick were to hop on board also.

The arctic climate in the FreeBSD forums can be quite lethal to tropical species migrating from the warm gulfstreams of the Slackware forums on LQ. :)

I'm already used to them, plus we do have our own *BSD forum here as well.

There are mass exoduses happening all the time...

...it's called distro hopping.


Nothing new here :P Enjoy your new X for reasons Y.

Debian just had an exodus to Slackware, so I think the proof is in the pudding of how the demographics against systemd are what they are. People have tried it, find it annoying, hate it because it's so needlessly complex, and just refuse to deal with the absurdity surrounding it. People know what works for them, and they know what they like. Sure we've had stuff come along before that were annoying packages, but this one truly takes the cake and ice cream both.

Further to this, from my limited understanding of the Debian project, they never really committed themselves to Linux (as in the kernel) either. IIRC, they once regarded it as a temporary placeholder until GNU HURD was ready.

Isn't it funny how things can change?

Both links were very interesting reads. Thanks for posting them!

I'm trusting Pat and his thoughts about systemd.

However, I don't want to see PulseAudio and Avahi/Zeroconf being pushed as default components of a base Slackware install for example.

If that ever happens, I will switch to something like Archlinux.

Don't get me wrong, I like Slackware a lot and it's the OS I use for my studies because of its stability. :)

A few things:

Desktop oriented? Not useful for servers? Yet the only advantage I have found that is clearly real is for virtual-server farms.

If Mr Volkerding accepted SystemD it would force me to re-evaluate it from scratch. No guarantees, but it's the only case where I would, at this point, reconsider allowing Mr Poetterings software to run on my machine.

Third, I've been relying on the linux kernel since '94 and I am not about to go over to the *BSDs as long as it is still viable. They are good systems, and they have my respect, and I am happy someone else is using them so they continue to be developed.

A couple of more general points - I dont at all mind people trying to use *nix to create a system that clueless users can use. I suspect most of the projects trying to do that are worse than useless - because they dont have any understanding of clueless users - but it's still their right to try. What really chafes me though is when they start demanding upstream changes that cause me problems. SystemD is a perfect example for anti - because it does not actually solve any sort of technical problem, does nothing to make things easier for the clueless user, it's all just an excuse, just politics, just a move for Redhat stock to move up. If it has any relation to the clueless user that relation is exploitation, not service.

I used to be neutral-to-positive towards RH and systemd has changed that. I no longer own any of their stock and I am rooting for their bankruptcy.

My thoughts are this: what do people want a desktop/server to do and how can slackware get us there? Desktops come and go, but ultimately, what do people want from them? I'm not advocating creating new desktops, but using what is available now, what do you (the collective you) want slackware to do for you? Instead of discussing what has gone on previously and using what is available now, what would you like to see slackware do for you? This is a pretty large and knowledgeable community, just saying that "systemd sucks and I'm going to leave" isn't really doing much to improve anything. Not thinking of any one desktop or window manager, what would you change, and what would you keep the same? And then thinking of desktops and window managers, how would/could you get there? I have no IT background and am no developer, but have come to love the linux and slackware community because anything is possible because of the knowledge-base it draws from. If it can be conceived then there is a way to make it happen.

The next problem of going to systemd, I see anyway, is that it becomes anti-teaching of core UNIX fundamentals that translate well across operating systems, while pushing it's own fundamentals that aren't cross-platform and Linux proprietary.

You can easily learn everything possible in Slackware, migrate to FreeBSD, and have a good idea of what to expect on some level with minimal re-education.

By striking out core UNIX fundamentals such as learning scripting, basic plaintext file configuration reading, and low-level service startup methods, it hinders the educational process of learning not just GNU/Linux on the whole, but a set of core skills transferable to any flavor of Linux, BSD, or UNIX.

I, for one, used what I knew from Slackware to work FreeBSD. It took a few reading sessions of the handbook and other documentation, but the transition was smooth because a lot of the core UNIX fundamentals translated easily into FreeBSD. For me, the statement, "You learn Slackware, you learn GNU/Linux", wasn't just limited to GNU/Linux. To me, Slackware went a bit further in being, "You learn Slackware, you learn core UNIX cross-platform fundamentals."

Really and truthfully, other than the obvious, how different is FreeBSD in design layout to Slackware? There are some differences, but overall there are a lot of similarities.

We need to keep a system design framework that is less proprietary and more cross-platform, maybe even more inclined to be POSIX-like (if such a term does exist) educationally. If that principle is abandoned, then I honestly see no reason to stay around to learn something that limits education and only harms educational growth.

I don't know if Patrick ever intended Slackware to be an educational tool, but it has gracefully been accepted as one.

I agree. That is one major aspect of the break with the Unix-y foundations that is implicit in many other arguments on the subject, but not often noted explicitly.

I have in fact made a few notes for (yet another) LQ post I hope to put together in the next few days, but perhaps it is just as well to point it out here where it already has some exposure. The main idea I am developing is how the switch to systemd will, and has to some extent already devalued the storehouse of knowledge available on LQ and other places.

What first brought this to mind was that I recently responded to a question about how to force fsck on reboot. I responded by pointing out shutdown -F, and how it creates the {/etc}/forcefsck file detected on startup - simple, elegant, flexible, unixy goodness.

After posting I wondered whether systemd would support that same paradigm, and searching the systemd docs online it appears that it does not... so I edited my post to say that it might not apply to systemd based systems.

Then I realized that whole classes of answers will now need to be qualified as pre- or post-systemd, meaning at least two answers for many questions.

This really creates a needless schizm in the available resources. For example, I often search for quick answers on various GNU/Linux topics and frequently find an answer to a 13+ year old thread that is still perfectly applicable to my current systems. In fact where init and runlevel related questions are concerned, the older posts are usually the best and most useful.

But for new users, with new systemd based distros, there will exist a discontinuity of useful information, and a profusion of "old" posts that no longer apply and will only confuse them and require further filtering.

The discontinuity of usefulness of accumulated knowledge will, I think, become another major disruption in our sphere.

And what a waste! One more way that the change to systemd discards the best of what has gone before instead of building on it...

Indeed, it's actually a subject I've rarely thought about until today about how well Slackware and distributions on par with it, like Gentoo, LFS, and CRUX all offer some level of "teaching" core UNIX fundamentals, not just GNU/Linux.

I think about the other aspects of systemd and what it involves, but the educational aspect was one I had not thought about to heavily. Usually it's been the overt complexity, the author being a total prick, and the fact that it's taking Linux down a dark path it shouldn't go.

I never actually thought about the educational aspect until this topic actually asked about switching to another distribution, and I thought about "how could I insert myself into XYZ system with minimal re-education?", and that's when it hit me. You'd have to already know some level of cross-platform fundamentals of UNIX to even start out on another operating system.

You're right, at least several decades worth of knowledge fills books, videos, audio files and portable media, websites, wikis, etc. All that is being cast into the proverbial pile all waiting to be willingly burned.

I've been experimenting with the most recent stable FreeBSD and I've run into some of the same issues I've had with Debian/Arch/etc. Everything is fine for a week or two and then some package installation/upgrade/removal doesn't go as planned. In my case it was related to trying to get Dillo running under FreeBSD (which should be simple), but Dillo locks up X after 10-20 seconds of usage. This occurs whether I install the binary Dillo package or build it via ports. It's probably bad luck on my part, but I just never experience anything similar happening in Slackware.

The only thing that would make me potentially jump ship from Slackware would be forcing some type of automated dependency resolution on the package manager, but I think I could live with systemd (although I prefer the tried-and-true init scripts).

At the moment I happily dual boot Slackware with OpenBSD. If Slackware is forced to adopt SystemD I'll continue to use it. As I've stated before on several occasions I trust Pat's judgement.

If the responses in this thread are representative, it sounds like most Slackware users will simply trust Patrick and continue using Slackware if systemd is ever adopted.

For those thinking of switching, most are eyeing FreeBSD. I confess to sizing up NetBSD as a possible fallback position, myself. (Two of my friends are NetBSD devs, so I'd have a lot of help getting up to speed.)

An alternative might be to fork Slackware, following its evolution on the most part, but based on sysVinit and the classic services (crond, inetd, pm-utils, etc) systemd seeks to replace.

I mean no offense to Patrick or the dev team by raising the possibility, and such an effort would depend heavily on their ongoing work. I'm just curious how many Slackware users who are considering jumping ship to a BSD might prefer a systemd-free Slackware-derived Linux distribution.

Presumably for some of us (myself included!) part of the appeal of Slackware is that Patrick + co are well-known and well-liked, with a long-established methodology marked by pragmatism, conservatism, and proven best practices.

Authors of such a fork would be comparatively unknown, and some users might prefer a BSD over putting their fate in the hands of strangers, at least until the "new guys" demonstrated themselves worthy of trust (if ever; Patrick's example sets the standard pretty high).

This is all extremely hypothetical, of course. As has already been pointed out, the upcoming 14.2 release looks to be systemd-free, which means we'll have a Linux/classic Slackware supported until at least 2020.

I don't know if I can say it for those of us who who are anti-systemd or not, but it's not that we don't trust Patrick. We trust Patrick, just not the upstream developers who change things on whim out of amusement or want rather than general need.

The problem comes from the cascade of having to viciously relearn everything we've known for years now, some of us 10+ or more years in UNIX and UNIX-like systems, in short amounts of time off of documentation that either doesn't exist yet, is still being drafted since systemd is still being actively developed (added onto in reality). For many of us having to tear down our own knowledge-bases and pulling a proverbial Yoda laden, "You must unlearn what you have learned" only to start all over from scratch on the key structural point of the entire operating system and environment, is aggravating to say the least (you might even dare get a few people willing to pull a virtual Linus Torvalds saying "F*** YOU" to Nvidia but with a redirect to Lennart and systemd).

Yes there are wikis but what system administrator with more than 20+ years in the field suddenly wants to have to drop everything he's known for all this time, and then suddenly relearn everything from scratch and try to make sense of it all on a package that has no signs or reasons to be "finished" yet developmentally? Yes there are wikis, courses, videos, etc. but gained practical knowledge isn't easily replaced as a book on a shelf. Unlearning is a process and it's not often the easiest process for people. Not everyone is going to have the time, willingness, and overall patience to learn a new system.

It is funny that you mention that because I had the opposite experience with BSD. Before Switching to Linux I never had my system freeze at all with with OpenBSD and FreeBSD. I used both for like 9 years. FreeBSD, for example, handles extreme network loads better than Linux. The other day I had Slackware Freeze on me, several times, for a significant amount of time. I suspect it had something to do with swapping and maybe the flash plugin for firefox.

Anyway, based on the responses of a significant amount of Slackware users saying they would stick with Slackware if Patrick switched to Systemd (meaning they don't give a shit about the Unix philosophy) and the fact that Slackware froze on me made me decide to install OpenBSD, on my Thinkpad, and stop using Slackware.

If even most Slackware users can't respect the Unix philosophy then that means Linux is now hopeless since Ubuntu is like a windows-clone so mainstream Linux distros don't respect the Unix philosophy either. I am clearly in the wrong community I belong back in the BSD community. The BSD community still respects the Unix philosophy.

In the beginning, Linux was pretty cool. It was free (always a plus), had a rapid development cycle, a moderately knowledgeable user base, and a funny mascot.

Then the pinheads arrived.

I'm not a pinhead so I'm switching back to OpenBSD.

As noted in another thread, you seem to have arrived with an agenda other than intelligent discussion.

This issue is divisive enough without pot-stirrers...

Respect for others is another character trait that Dennis Ritchie built the Unix philosophy upon - it isn't all about the technology.

It's fine if not all parts of the UNIX philosophy are followed, but some things should be respected regardless such as Doug Mclroy's portion of writing quality software that does what it's supposed to do without feature creep. Equally, while GNU/Linux isn't always adherent to the POSIX specification as well, maintaining some level of interoperability between systems should be adhered to as well. Following philosophy and respecting philosophy are different things entirely.

As far as my stance of the knowledge issue, I only want to say this, only an ignorant fool throws away knowledge willingly, while a wise person keeps and maintains knowledge without hesitation.

I was going to keep out of this topic but this just screams for a reply.

You have been beating the Unix philosophy drum for ages and now you come out with this. You can't have it both ways you know, you are not the person who gets to pick and choose for everyone else (neither are the creators of systemd). Just because you think something doesn't follow your type of Unix philosophy, that now appears to be creeping into a fence sitting philosophy on anything except systemd, doesn't mean it is bad.

Your posts until this one have always indicated it's an either or situation, someone is either Unix-philosophy or they're not, an application is either created along the lines of the Unix philosophy or not. Why are you now starting to straddle the picket fence?

There is no room for elitism. If you want Unix, and the strict Unix philosophy, use Mac OSX or a BSD. If you are happy to fence sit and use something that gets the job done on a much wider range of hardware than a BSD or doesn't become a "hackintosh", like most of us, then use Linux.

An "exodus" would imply a mass departure of people. Do you have evidence of this, because if not I call bullshit. And no a couple of vocal people on a mailing list saying they might try Slackware again is not evidence that Debian users are flocking to Slackware on mass.

systemd aside, maybe they should switch to Slackware but without evidence I do not believe for a second that there is a flood of ex-Debian users over to Slackware.

People who want UNIX philosophy in their software, shouldn't use any of the GNU software either, because well- GNU is not UNIX. Shouldn't use Perl ever, also any IDE. Never should think parallel and should try to save trees.
Also, shouldn't even use Linux because it was just UNIX-like, not UNIX.

If I look and dress like Gandhi, will I be supposed to act like Gandhi? F*ck no! I'm gonna make the invaders die of hunger, not myself.

All this adhering to UNIX philosophy shout out makes me wanna use Windows10 for some time and then come crying back to Linux to feel better, even if it's not UNIX.

Regards.

What I personally follow and support of the UNIX philosophy is my personal preference and point of view. I don't have to agree on all points of the philosophy which is what I've always said, but its the main core universal fundamentals I think should be adhered to. If I didn't say that in plain enough English, then please by all means show your point of view as well. Likewise goes for POSIX. Even if something doesn't exactly follow a standard as law doesn't mean it can't try to achieve, meet, or exceed that standard.

What I choose as my personal preference as a system is none of your concern. You can say I'm fence sitting, but honestly, what's wrong with that? What's so bad, wrong, or evil about wanting a sane balance of quality and quantity? Everything needs balance, but that balance must be kept within reason and it is delicate. Yes, I am an elitist in that area, wanting quality in balance with quantity, that, to me, is having sanity in software. I'm likewise an elitist for maintaining knowledge and development of educational foundations built in universal fundamentals that any one can use regardless of system. Again, what's wrong with wanting better education into UNIX on the whole rather than one specific method? After all, isn't that what Slackware is about? Learning UNIX universal fundamentals and learning core, low-level GNU/Linux systems that can be used anywhere? Sorry if I take my Linux seriously, but why not?

As far as numbers of users? I honestly don't know, how can I except seeing people on LQ here say they switched? Sorry for sounding blunt but last I checked we didn't keep records of who was using what. There was an exodus, but honestly, not I, nor you, can give any accurate number on that. I didn't generalize so please, don't twist arguments to say specifics when none was given.