Debian Developers Take To Voting Over Init System Diversity

[AnonymousCoward]

I used systemd on Debian since well before it was even part of the distribution, it was really quite good then

Must be because of your custom twiddling, because debian jessie beta did not even finish booting on my machine, so much that for the first time (and I am here since potato) I reverted from a beta to an older stable version of debian.

, and now it enables like... half the important infrastructure for a decent workstation or desktop, including many things that didn't work well or at all when systemd was birthed. It isn't more memory-intensive than other init systems, it is generally faster, it is dead simple to configure, it is the default on every major distribution, it is maintained well by a dedicated team of developers.

Then you load up ubuntu on an otherwise decent lenovo t410, it's slower booting than mxlinux (sysvinit booting with some systemd components for compatibility sake), it is slow overall, its bigger footprint yields less apps because for some reason they run snaps instead of debs, the usb installer has lost functionality reverting to a simple dd, while mxlinux has a great usb installer and great live tools making debian-live pale in comparison... but at least ubuntu shuts down faster. Which is much appreciated because shutting down is a relief. BTW Alpine linux on servers is lightning fast. Voidlinux manages to do everything fast using runit.

There is no good reason to impose the cost of maintaining non-systemd init scripts on every Debian package maintainer, to satisfy a group of people who appear to have few or no valid practical concerns. If your init system is so great, go ahead and write the missing units/scripts for it yourself, like I did many years ago with systemd; if it's too hard for an intermediate user to accomplish that, is your init system even worth considering?

If that were the case, debian would sail peacefully and not have meetings about returning to... be a UNIVERSAL operating system. Probably it is happening what conspiracy theorists (about systemd being a way for redhat to turn linux into a windows-like admin revenue stream) feared.

[oiaohm]

systemd is a system developed by a IBM affiliated called Red Hat, it his no standard to anybody..

When I mean a Open Standard... I mean it.

Not quite right.
Please notice where systemd is hosted.

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/

That right

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/

The reason why systemd interfaces are so well documented is that systemd is hosted on a site for prototype open standards and finalised standards for Linux computers.

So it is no standard is not exactly right. Systemd is a prototype open standard like it or not.

The way Freedesktop on standard create is that you have to have working well documented implementation before you formally submit finalised standard. No point approving something if it cannot work.

Also please remember sysvinit did not have a official open standard either. No init system I know of has ever had a open standard. Maybe systemd will be the first.

[Candy]

Freedesktop.org has never been a "standard" kinda website for Linux. Only to correct this misinformation. Freedesktop.org is a selfdeclared standards website created by former GNOME developers. Just because there is some "interaction" with developers from other projects, still doesnt make it a Linux standards declaring page. People only meet there to get information hin how to fix their software from the insanity that has been made up there.

[reavertm]

You appear to be hinting at the claim that in order for "systemd" to win, it will need just a plurality against all other options, not a majority?

I'm going to ignore that obvious trolling attempt with "fascism" and "freedom"
(...)

It's not trolling (about other distros providing better freedom and being less exclusive towards sysadmins and devs) though, it's a metaphor. Apart from limited PID 1 freedom, Gentoo-based distros do allow customising packages via USE flags which in turn allows syadmins not to build apache, php or other nonsense on their own via Makefiles or roll-out own rpms/debs just to workaround some distro packaging decisions they find unacceptable, making it more welcoming environment for them.

[intelfx]

Freedesktop.org has never been a "standard" kinda website for Linux. Only to correct this misinformation. Freedesktop.org is a selfdeclared standards website created by former GNOME developers. Just because there is some "interaction" with developers from other projects, still doesnt make it a Linux standards declaring page.

Every standards body is self-declared at first.

Collaboratively-developed body of information that facilitates interaction of independent working groups is, by definition, a standard, regardless of who published it.

Or do you want an ISO standard on init systems in Linux?

People only meet there to get information hin how to fix their software from the insanity that has been made up there.

Obvious trolling attempt rejected.

[intelfx]

It's not trolling (about other distros providing better freedom and being less exclusive towards sysadmins and devs) though, it's a metaphor. Apart from limited PID 1 freedom, Gentoo-based distros do allow customising packages via USE flags which in turn allows syadmins not to build apache, php or other nonsense on their own via Makefiles or roll-out own rpms/debs just to workaround some distro packaging decisions they find unacceptable, making it more welcoming environment for them.

Yes, it is. Even if what you wrote is factually correct to some degree, the distinctly non-neutral language you use puts your post firmly in the “trolling” category.

Also, I assume, there will be no other objections to the substance of my reply?

[rtfazeberdee]

What naive assessment ? Systemd's designed was enough bad to make a DE (GNOME) depend on an init system ! I do not think we need more.

Rubbish . IF Gnome didn't want to use systemd features, it didn't have to. Poettering actually offered Gnome some stand alone software to allow Gnome not to use systemd but they didn't take it up. Plus ConsoleKit was not being maintained. Basically if anyone writes software that depends on systemd, that is their choice, they could write it to use any system they like if they want to maintain it. Its not systemd forcing them, devs just see the benefits.

If systemd's devs were the least competent, they would have done the work of making different systemd's components available independently themselves, not let Gentoo's devs do it.

systemd devs produce lots of subsystems that take advantage of systemd and they are all optional. If Gentoo doesn't want to take advantage of systemd then that is THEIR choice so they have had to do the work themselves - good for them.

[ZeroPointEnergy]

So many angry systemd fanboys in this thread

[microcode]

Must be because of your custom twiddling, because debian jessie beta did not even finish booting on my machine, so much that for the first time (and I am here since potato) I reverted from a beta to an older stable version of debian.

I did my testing on Wheezy, it worked straight out of the upstream git repo, I forget where, but I also got a bunch of premade cross-distro unit files, so all but one service was immediately booting without sysvcompat.

I don't know what they screwed up for Jessie on your machine, I had already switched to Fedora and was waiting for Arch to switch to systemd, by the time Jessie was entering stable.

Then you load up ubuntu on an otherwise decent lenovo t410, it's slower booting than mxlinux (sysvinit booting with some systemd components for compatibility sake), it is slow overall, its bigger footprint yields less apps because for some reason they run snaps instead of debs, the usb installer has lost functionality reverting to a simple dd, while mxlinux has a great usb installer and great live tools making debian-live pale in comparison... but at least ubuntu shuts down faster. Which is much appreciated because shutting down is a relief. BTW Alpine linux on servers is lightning fast. Voidlinux manages to do everything fast using runit.

That has nothing to do with the init system, and everything to do with mainstream desktop distributions just having a LOT of software enabled by default.

If that were the case, debian would sail peacefully and not have meetings about returning to... be a UNIVERSAL operating system. Probably it is happening what conspiracy theorists (about systemd being a way for redhat to turn linux into a windows-like admin revenue stream) feared.

No matter how reasonable systemd is, somebody will be derailing conversations to complain about it in the abstract, without providing any actual concerns that could be addressed.

[microcode]

Can you please clarify that statement?

It takes effort to make and maintain more than one implementation of these systemd-based features. Others are welcome to do that, but core maintainers run systemd, and so do most of their users.