Debian Policy Updated Following Recent Systemd "Init System Diversity" Vote

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Debian Policy Updated Following Recent Systemd "Init System Diversity" Vote

Following last month's Debian init system diversity vote where the Debian developers decided on a general resolution of focusing on systemd but support exploring alternatives, the official Debian Policy has been updated to reflect that...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Debian-Policy-4.5-Released

[ZeroPointEnergy]

Inb4 the usual battle between the haters and the fanboys.

[M1kkko]

Inb4 the usual battle between the haters and the fanboys.

Well anyway this decision should be good for both groups.

[ZeroPointEnergy]

Well anyway this decision should be good for both groups.

What are you thinking? This is the internet! We can't have a middle ground that suits both parties. You have to pick a tribe and then hate on the others! /s

[Guest]

If systemd is for starting and stopping services, why a lot of programs need libsystemd0 (such as Xorg)? Please, set free all the programs from (lib)systemd.

[Britoid]

If systemd is for starting and stopping services, why a lot of programs need libsystemd0 (such as Xorg)? Please, set free all the programs from (lib)systemd.

Because systemd includes udev for managing devices which something like Xorg probably cares about and doesn't want to spend time writing it all themselves.

[archkde]

If systemd is for starting and stopping services, why a lot of programs need libsystemd0 (such as Xorg)? Please, set free all the programs from (lib)systemd.

Because libsystemd is used to interface with systemd, e.g. for socket activation and logind functionality.

[Karl Napf]

If systemd is for starting and stopping services, why a lot of programs need libsystemd0 (such as Xorg)? Please, set free all the programs from (lib)systemd.

Libsystemd is the piece of code that allows program to use systemd functionality like socket activation, logging, logind, etc. while still keeping functional if systemd is not PID1.

If you remove libsystemd, then your program will either require systemd to be PID1 or not provide any of the features enabled by systemd. That is fine for distributions that are either systemd-only or totally anti-systemd, but definitely not an option for Debian which wants systemd but also tries to keep users happy that want to experiment with other init systems.

So basically libsystemd is the one library that keeps the non-systemd distributions in the business. The alternative is for them to maintain patches for all the binaries that want to use systemd features, which is something Devuan tried to do (they went to remove libsystemd dependencies in their first version) but failed (... and rolled back on that in their second version and all following ones).

[discordian]

So basically libsystemd is the one library that keeps the non-systemd distributions in the business. The alternative is for them to maintain patches for all the binaries that want to use systemd features, which is something Devuan tried to do (they went to remove libsystemd dependencies in their first version) but failed (... and rolled back on that in their second version and all following ones).

Devuan can be lucky that systemd is not modular and does support init freedom.

[DrYak]

Also, let's talk about kernel diversity! Too many GNU/Linux distributions are highly dependent on Linus' kernel. It's not modular and doesn't support kernel freedom.

And come to think of it, GNU isn't modular nor supporting userspace freedom of diversity neither.

(And given GNU/Hurd, GNU/kFreebsd, Android's definitely-not-GNU/Linux, it's only half joking)