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  • It's a giant mess of interconnected programs that could theoretically still be disentangled, but in practice never are. It was very quickly and exclusively adopted by pretty much every major distro in a short period of time, functionally killing off any alternatives despite a lot of people objecting. Also, its creator was already pretty divisive even before systemd, and the way systemd was adopted kinda turned that into a creepy hate cult targeted at him.

    There's nothing actually wrong with systemd. I personally wish there was still more support for the alternatives though. Systemd does way more than I need it to, and I just enjoy having a computer that only does what I want.

  • I find it incredibly useful - instead of needing to learn a million quirks about the init of every distro they all use the same predictable system now, you learn it's quirks once and those skills transfer everywhere. Hopping from Ubuntu to Debian to Arch to Fedora is trivial now compared to the old days.

    That and systemd-boot and systemd-nspawn are awesome.

    • Hopping from Ubuntu to Debian to Arch to Fedora is trivial now compared to the old days.

      Another take of this is we're losing diversity which might have some consequences in the future.

      • Linux has also overshadowed BSD. Diversity matters, but so do standards. Code interaction contracts (think APIs and syscalls) are the glue to make a program that will run on a lot of diffrent software/hardware stacks (like diffrent OSes and hardware combinations). Sadly specific implementation diffrences make the genaric contracts (like UNIX/POSIX) unable to be implemented pefectly.

  • I use runit on Artix. I wasn't around for the init wars, but dove into the rabbit hole of Debian email exchanges, where lots of shade was thrown around because of suspicions over corporate influence on Linux, and Canonical dropping the ball because of their Licensing on their competitor init, Upstart.

    I reviewed videos of Poettering going on about it, adamently placing systemd as the hill he was willing to die on.

    I read the Torvaulds email complaining about Kay Sievers being an asshole. Looked at how Kay Sievers famously refused to fix early boot problems with systemd. Read Laurent Bercot's technical break down of why even from a software design level, systemd should be called into question.

    Its all interesting, and on my home desktop, I decided to only use Artix, Void, Gentoo, or Devuan over any of the others for as long as I can.

    At work, I don't care. Do I wish that runit or s6 was more predominant and widely used? Absolutely. Imho both init systems are just more minimal and their implementations are so solid, they are two of the very few pieces of software I can say are finished. No notes, no new features, and because of the minimal attack surface, barely any security patches have been necessary.

    Due to their following of the UNIX Philosophy, both runit and s6's source code can be reviewed in an afternoon, as opposed to systemd which has taken me considerably more time to parse through (though I'll admit systemd has some decent comments in their code that helps out).

    But at work, while I have my preferences and opinions, the systemd debate isn't even close to the top of my list on arguments I'd like to have at the work place.

    On Lemmy otoh, lol. 😁

  • I underatand, but I just don't care. Give me a functioning linux desktop and I will also run your garbage proprietary nvidia software. The alternative is windows, so I have to take what I can get.

  • For a desktop it's suitable for 99% of what you'd want to do. Might not be the best tool for large servers or something (I really don't know) but I'm sure all that depends on use case.

  • Its overly complicated for some use cases. Its also annoying that some software depends on it.

  • Pros: Really useful AIO program that does everything Cons: Really useful AIO program that does everything

    Great example:

    Systemd makes it very easy to bring up DNS with systemd-resolved, and it bridges a gap from the old resolv.conf file and newer DNS standards n stuff.

    But then it also means that any alternative DNS clients have to tell resolvd to go away if they want to run, or often times make a systemd service to autostart with systemd and ensure it works perfectly with every possible systemd setup.

    There's nothing inherently wrong with this method of having a centralized AIO thing that handles a a lot of stuff for you, but lots of early Linux people preferred the hardcore KISS principle and found it very beneficial to have everything neatly separated and modular with the service manager's job to only start and stop services.

    Overall, systemd has been remarkably (and relatively) stable and beneficial which people thought would be impossible back when it became initially popular.

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