[McDyver]

That's good for you!

Isn't that a selfish view, though? "Works for me,so I don't care that systemd is creating dependencies everywhere for everyone else".

I appreciate that it simplifies some things, but I can't understand that you can't choose which parts of it to install, or even replace parts of it with alternatives.

Isn't linux about choice? It feels we're going on a downwards spiral where choice is being taken away from us in every domain

[jabl]

> I appreciate that it simplifies some things, but I can't understand that you can't choose which parts of it to install, or even replace parts of it with alternatives.

You can? The system where I'm writing this uses systemd, yet networking is handled by NetworkManager and not systemd-networkd. Time keeping is handled by chrony and not systemd-timesyncd (or whatever the systemd NTP client was called). Etc. Systemd in fact has many components that are optional. Of course, there are also parts of it that are non-optional, just like many other collections of related software.

> Isn't linux about choice?

Linux is "about choice" to the extent that the source code is freely available, and if you don't like what upstream is doing, you have the choice to fork it and do whatever you want. "Linux is about choice" does not extend to upstream maintainers being obligated to cater to every whim of every end user.

Case in point, Devuan: Not being satisfied with the path Debian was taking, they exercised their choice and are now doing their own thing. Good for them! And to the extent this has reduced the frequency of systemd haters starting yet another anti-systemd flame war on the Debian mailing lists, it seems to me Debian has won too. Hooray!

[embedding-shape]

How is it someone's else's fault for that systemd has dependencies or that others depend on systemd?

If I use and like Firefox, and others depend on Firefox, or Firefox depend on others, then it's Firefox fault for you choosing Firefox?

I really don't understand the argument you're trying to make. You had choices before systemd, and you still have choices even though systemd is widespread, what's the problem? It isn't modular enough? Use something else then that is modular.

[benterix]

OK you're missing the historical context here. To make this story extremely short, the author of Systemd was already known for another project that was causing problems to Linux users but was shipped early. And when Systemd was released, it has several issues, too, so some distros like Debian withheld the switch. But at some point the folks at Red Hat decided to tie Systemd to the login mechanism for Gnome. I don't believe there was any hidden agenda here, it was just more logical for them. However, this caused huge headache for package maintainers of non-Systemd distros. There was the whole drama with voting, Debian project leader leaving, Devuan appearing and so on.

I believe most people moved on, but the way it was all done somehow didn't feel right.

[blell]

Red Hat created hard dependencies on systemd in all of the popular software they develop to ensure its adoption.

[direwolf20]

If Google spends millions of dollars pushing Chrome on everyone, then it's their fault everyone is using Chrome.

[blueflow]

With everything depending on systemd interfaces, its an exhausting uphill battle to run anything desktop-like without systemd.

Want to run xterm? Requires Xorg. rootless Xorg requires udev, udev turned into a systemd component. want to run xterm without systemd? good luck, you are now the maintainer of your own LFS.

[PunchyHamster]

You can turn most parts off. Maybe don't talk about stuff you have not much idea about ?

There is point to complain about distros turning it on by default but you could have systemd where systemd just does unit management and not much more.

The hardest part to get rid of would probably be journald as this parasite's log format is just... not good in any metric but it isn't easy to replace either if you want to keep systemd functionality

[direwolf20]

You have the choice to use either Debian or Devuan.