I’m not an anti-systemd extremist. I use Void because it is a simple distro that doesn’t break as often as Arch does, while also being very up-to-date.
I do have some things I dislike about systemd though which is why I will continue avoiding it in the future.
- It doesn’t follow the Unix Philosophy. This is a big problem for me, I want to be able to switch out different parts of my system as I please. Systemd is a collection of projects that are all so deeply integrated that you can’t use them without also running the Systemd init system. And now Desktop Environments are starting to depend on Logind for example and there’s no alternative for non-systemd users. (Except Elogind but that’s just Logind ripped out of SystemD)
- It’s bloated and has many features I don’t use. I just need an init system to start all my services at boot and restart them if they fail. Nothing more
Also using a Distro without Systemd is not really that hard
I really need to meet irl somebody who got it’s arch system breaking by itself, because i installed it dozens of times and it never happened to me
Because they can.
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead
But there’s no sense crying after every mistake.
You just keep on trying 'til you run out of cake.
And the science gets done, and you made a neat distro.
For the people who are using linux.
Me using runit, I agree
By importance, descending:
First, I don’t like people promoting systemd. I don’t need it more than other init systems. It’s about picking the right group.
Second, I want a simple distribution so I use Void, which famously uses runit. It’s about being lazy.
Third, I don’t like the idea of it sprouting dependencies which it shouldn’t. It’s about paranoia. See recent news with a backdoor which wouldn’t work if not for this.
Why Void? Genuine question.
I was trying different distros to replace my Zorin, I tried NixOS (didn’t like the setup), GoboLinux (really like the idea, but it’s very buggy). I ended up using EndevoursOS (arch btw) and I really love pacman/AUR, but I’m still not married to it
I actually don’t remember why I lost my patience and just tried Void then (4 years ago). Maybe had something to do with installing a Linux on a laptop after using only FreeBSD for some time, and sound setup and brightness control being confusing (actually everything in Linux is more clumsy and messy, so wanted a simple distribution).
Debian I like, but it has a bit older versions of packages, as everyone knows, and also kernel versions, thus hardware support.
Fedora - I don’t like the culture.
OpenSUSE - I like it, but didn’t bother back then and now why change anything.
Arch - I don’t like the idea of regularly solving problems which can be avoided by maintainers. AUR is attractive. The culture of clueless people proud of the fact that they installed Arch is a bit irritating.
Gentoo and Funtoo - I like them, but time spent on compilation could be used better.
Slackware - my favorite distribution, but it’s a bit manual, so even more chores than with Arch. I think I might try it again.
And also Void has something just a bit similar to FreeBSD ports. I’d prefer it to be a real ports collection like in CRUX (which I might try some day), and I use pkgsrc anyway for such things now.
AUR was a security hell for me. Same goes for Fedora, which is ironic.
Arch btw
One thing that is really annoying me in AUR is how frequently thing break. Just the other day I had to tweak my settings because Hyprland pushed a breaking change.
The comment change?
If so that was fun, I updated my hyprland / hy3 flakes and I was bombarded by flashing red notifications indicating I’d caused Satan to return. Trawling through all my hyprland Configs I eventually put an end to the chaos.
If not, I guess I’ll find out next time I update my flakes lol.
the logo is cool :)
Sysvinit on gentoo here. Its so simple and clean, all can be managed and hacked via bash scripts.
I see no benefits in my use cases for systemd. Boot speed is unneeded, service auto-restart is done via Monit, anything else I don’t need.
This is true for all my server -and- all my workstations and laptops as well.
Systemd never solved a problem needed to be solved to start with.
Now that it also does coffee and cream for you, i start seeing some benefits like auto-restart services. Was it worthwhile? Meh, dunno.
At first it seemed another case of “I am too young and I want stuff done my way just because” and redhat shoved it down everybody throath to gain marked dominance. That they did.
At least now systemd looks like mature and finally start making sense. I was even contemplating testing a migration on one server.
Then I remembered, I like freedom of choice and keeping up being an old fart, so I didn’t (yet).
(No, for Wayland and network manager I think they are both welcome and needed from the start).
It didn’t help the main Dev suckass attitude, that didn’t made friends.
- OpenRC just feels nice
- Runit is simple
- S6 is really fucking fast
- Some distros (e.g. Guix, Void, Gentoo) come with non-systemd init systems by default, but I use them for other reasons
As for why I sometimes use musl, I like BSD. Also, Alpine Linux uses it by default, and most glibc software I’ve tried works just fine with gcompat.
Does Alpine Linux count as “running”?
SystemD just isn’t necessary for every Linux install.
Linux has thousands of uses that aren’t “running on bare metal on my customized gaming rig at my computer desk to play steam games and pretend to look like Mr. Robot”
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I use distros with systemd but damn, pretty soon it’s not gnu/linux anymore, it’ll be systemd/linux. systemd already manages services, bootloader, dns and networking. Maybe they’ll replace coreutils next and the transition is completed.
Linux is becoming more akin to BSD with the introduction of systemd.
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I don’t find that to be a problem. Systemd manages my system, I would not prefer having 10+ tools to do the same
That’s the very opposite of the Unix philosophy though.
And?
The kernel is already monolithic enough without adding another piece of monolithic software that everything depends on. IMO the Unix philosophy means we should have interchangeable parts.
There’s some amount of user error here but when I did use systemd I had a hard time turning off services I didn’t want because they were in the wants-to-have entry of other services. It’s like a separate config area to maintain with a specific maintenance tool software instead of flat files.
I’m unfortunately using distros with systemd now tho.
The developer of SystemD was mildly rude to some people back in 2009
That means everything he makes is pure evil by definition and explanations as to why it’s bad will be invented post-hoc to make it make sense.
Linux developers are famous for how civil they handle their arguments. Especially that Linus Torvalds guy.
Fuck you
You forgot "Nvidia, " part
Don’t make me say it to you too
Especially that Linus Torvalds guy.
Wait until you learn about the beloved OpenBSD leader Theo De Raadt.
Imagine being so hard no other but frigging Linus Tolvards says you’re “difficult”.
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Dunno…
Wanna ask my OpenWRT router that?
Also, is Android not Linux anymore?
Guix uses shepherd so yeah
It’s a give and take honestly.
System-d has better logging. Until you have something that needs to really really log. You can argue that if you have something that’s that dependent on logging it shouldn’t be logging through the console but it’s worked fine for decades. Auto pruning of logs isn’t necessarily ideal. Getting console logs and assist logs as a pain in the ass.
Same goes for service dependencies we had this sorted it was answered via run levels and naming. It wasn’t necessarily the most elegant solution but it was simple and there was very little to go wrong.
The tools to manage the services and logs are needlessly complicated. Service start, service stop, service status, service log, service enable, service disable. And I shouldn’t have to reload the Daemon every time I make a change.
This isn’t to say that it’s all bad. It’s flexible, and for most workflows, it’s very automated and very light touch. The other pruning on the log file says probably saved a lot of downtime, a whole lot of downtime.
It’s really well suited to desktop.
Service creation is somewhat easier.
Dependencies are more flexible than run levels.
To be honest I wouldn’t go out of my way to run in a non-system distro but I would feel a little sigh of relief if something I was screwing with was still init.d
Gentoo comes with OpenRC as default so I roll with it. And it’s simple and it works.
Plus the idea of having to randomly wait for some obscure stuff to block for a minute the boot/shutdown is not my thing.
You have to compile everything though, even from a stage 2 installation. I haven’t attempted one for like 15 years, but I imagine it’s still not quick.
Did you know Gentoo has binary packages now?
Dafuq?
That goes against everything I know about Gentoo…
They are also shipping x86-64 v3 packages. Something that on arch you still rely on 3rd party repos.
or you can use cachyos. running V3 packages on vanilla arch makes it more prone to breakage.
It’s not too bad. I very rarely recompile everything from scratch and after I do that I just create a snapshot with btrfs. Are usually then chroot into that snapshot and compile everything natively overnight for that 5% Theoretical performance boost.
Most recently I took that snapshot and then used btrfs send to adapt it to a laptop as well and that worked quite well actually.
Everything I install is typically through flatpack or distro box just like silver blue. This means install times are pretty much okay but I have a huge amount of flexibility in the way the system works
Also heaps of binary packages as well, so that’s not too bad. The binary packages much slower than both arch and Alpine but not a lot slower than for example Fedora.
I just skip all of that and go with the next best thing, Arch 😉
The cool thing with Gentoo is that you can just decide one day to switch to systemd and it’s about as easy as changing your profile and updating your system (and maybe recompiling your kernel)
I can actually configure and understand everything the UNIX way, which is actually important to me, because I do some wacky shit with my system + I’m a developer, I physically need to understand my system so I can debug it when it starts to eat shit
Although, seriously, if you’re not a developer and don’t intend on doing something specific with your system, just pick a mainstream distro and roll. I install Mint MATE or Ubuntu on my secondary systems too.
