Who's Afraid of Systemd?

by
in linux on (#FGW5)
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.

Re: Might be a bad idea (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-08-03 07:27 (#G8HT)

Great, one. Where? A friend of mine who runs Linux as his home OS is now seriously annoyed. A recent upgrade included SystemD. Something borked the video card driver. The interupt for boot isn't working. Nothing could fix the issue. Problem diagnosis was painfil. Liken this to regressing back to Linux of 1995. He solved the problem by regressing back and now has Upstart working. A huge waste of his time. For what? How does SystemD help here? Screwing with the init so users can't diagnose problems? Stuffing up the init order causing fatal boot? This is an end user. Today he has removed the problem - Systemd. Tomorrow he is looking for a new OS or an easy way to get rid of it.
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