[kwlug-disc] What is all this about systemd?

[Andrew Kohlsmith (mailing lists account)]

On Sep 9, 2014, at 4:37 AM, William Park <opengeometry at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Personally, I wouldn't mind that happening for distros.  Having 6 major
> distros and their variations is becoming wasteful.  There should be one
> Linux.

I strongly disagree. There isn’t “one Linux” because the needs of various Linux installations are so different. Come to think of it, there isn’t even “one Windows” for the exact same reason.

I haven’t taken a side one way or the other with respect to systemd, but I do feel very strongly that this “one userspace kernel-like entity to rule them” mentality is very wrong. A binary configuration store? Opaque models for all of the interfaces? Core dumps being stored in a systemd-only accessible way? Hard requirements for dbus and other heavy IPC that are only useful for a (admittedly large) subset of the installations?

I guess I have taken a side in the whole systemd mess after all. This will end up becoming fragmented much like the existing, proven systems as people create *-lite versions of the heavy bits.

-A.