Who's Afraid of Systemd?
Now that systemd is uneventfully running the latest releases of major distributions like Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu, you might imagine that opposition to it is melting away -- but you'd be wrong. Instead, the rumors are as common as ever. Devuan, the anti-systemd fork of Debian, is still trudging towards a release while making the same arguments as ever. Devuan's home page asks: Have you tried to opt-out of the systemd change in Debian and stay with sysvinit? You will quickly notice that "Debian offers no choice." Yet a search quickly unearths instructions for making an install image without systemd and for removing systemd from your system.
Nor does the claim that systemd violates the Unix design principles stand up under scrutiny. Systemd is actually a general name for a series of related, similarly structured commands. From this perspective, systemd conforms to the principle of one program doing a single function in much the same way as the Linux kernel or a command line shell does. It is a suite of programs, not a single monolithic one. Systemd may not be ideal, but systems continue to boot and function the way they are supposed to.
In fact, not only are the most common anti-systemd arguments easily discounted, but they are surrounded by a vagueness that raises suspicions. Wild claims are made without any attempt at substantiation. The result is an air of secrecy and danger that, however appealing and reminiscent of freedom-fighting that it might be, does nothing to justify the anti-systemd rhetoric or make it plausible. Devuan's mailing list mostly shows the same dozen or so posters, and has raised only 7934 Euros. Supporters sound as though they are doing more fear-mongering than constructive effort.
Nor does the claim that systemd violates the Unix design principles stand up under scrutiny. Systemd is actually a general name for a series of related, similarly structured commands. From this perspective, systemd conforms to the principle of one program doing a single function in much the same way as the Linux kernel or a command line shell does. It is a suite of programs, not a single monolithic one. Systemd may not be ideal, but systems continue to boot and function the way they are supposed to.
In fact, not only are the most common anti-systemd arguments easily discounted, but they are surrounded by a vagueness that raises suspicions. Wild claims are made without any attempt at substantiation. The result is an air of secrecy and danger that, however appealing and reminiscent of freedom-fighting that it might be, does nothing to justify the anti-systemd rhetoric or make it plausible. Devuan's mailing list mostly shows the same dozen or so posters, and has raised only 7934 Euros. Supporters sound as though they are doing more fear-mongering than constructive effort.
This is exactly what the problem is, SysV-init already worked perfectly before systemd. systemd doesn't bring anything to the table except for complexity and more dependence on the Redhat and Gnome group. That's why we oppose.
It only makes the job of OS distributors easier, that's why it's accepted all around. Debian guys no longer need to write any init scripts, they can just copy them from Redhat. That's why. Users opposing systemd are all bitten by it in some way or another. They criticise, and try to expose the flaws of systemd, but users' opinions don't matter in the free software world. Since no money changes hands, the developers are free to do whatever they like. See how GNOME went down.
Yeah, another funny thing. Imagine you go to a car dealer and the salesman pitches you some car. You tell him you don't like some aspect of the car and the salesman tells you "Let's see you do any better!". This is what it is.
People aren't doing systemd replacements because:
1- It's a bad idea. The goals of the project are broken, why should anyone try to imitate shit when they can already get shit ready made.
2- Surprise surprise, SystemV-init still works. If you run an older udevd (or eudev, I haven't checked it out) without systemd support, there is no impact on anything really. On my simple desktop machine at home, I have exactly one init script for the system. That's my replacement for systemd.
3- Nobody cares enough about this to allocate significant resources to it. You see, in the free software world, whoever commits his resources wins. It doesn't matter whether they are doing a good job or not. It reminds me of the demise of the Bluetooth support under Linux.
Shitty stuff is always like this, once its starts going around, it generates lots of talk. We could do a whole big discussion about how systemd fails but what's the point? Systemd proponents will still go "la la la I don't hear you, everybody is using it".