If you’re a new user you’d be better off moving on from here and not paying much attention. It’s a hot topic full of opinions that everyone will want to force on you.
If you really want to swap out the init system there are some things you need to know.
First, do you need a desktop environment(DE)/window manager(WM)? If so you’ll need to find a DE/WM that is not going to demand you use the mainstream init choice which currently is SystemD. If you want to use Gnome from your chosen distro repo’s then chances are it will pull SystemD with it.
If you want Gnome but not SystemD you’re gonna be building that beast from source every update and for the most part you’ll need to go direct to Gnome for any issue/bug you fall over and this too will be painful.
Simpler WMs will be more forgiving and will only rely on either xorg or wayland and will happily run on any init.
There will be other packages out there that also demand you use SystemD, so you’ll have to find them and decide if you need them or if there are alternatives that don’t have a hard dependency on SystemD.
All the current usable inits are written in C or C+ (except for GNU Shepherd, this is written in guile).
The benefit of swapping out the init system is mainly down to choice, necessity but again this all boils down to what the installation is for and what will it be doing.
All of the init’s (except for epoch) provide parallel service startup so if boot time is a focus test each to find the fastest for your platform, Not all of them provide per-service config.
For example one can cobble together: minirc, busybox, syslogng, crond, iptables, lighttpd.
And the end result would be a relatively secure webserver with a small footprint, you could further extend this with nginx to sit in front of lighttpd to provide waf and cache features.
The biggest bug bear with SystemD is that it writes to binary log files and even though it can be configured to generate plain text, if it falls over in a bad way you will still only get a binary log file and if you’re in a situation where your only access is say busybox for emergencies. In this instance your only option is to boot from another systemd distro and mount the broken install and run:
Other than that many take issue with SystemD trying replace parts of the system that many say don’t really need replacing like sudo, fstab, resolv.conf, etc but again these statements get full of opinion and don’t help us truly way up the differences and some of the SystemD alternatives misbehave or become hard dependencies other projects which makes it harder to disable parts and swap out to your chosen package.
I’ve tried to be more objective with this response and keep as much of my personal opinion out of this, But here is mine:
I don’t really like it but to make it easier to get support for my OS I put up with it, I daily drive arch and so must accept it. I could rip it out or run artix, I’ve gone down this path and got fed up with jumping hurdles to get what I wanted so went back to Arch and now I disable parts of it I don’t need/want, have it generate text log files, use openresolv and other choices.
You should embrace systemd. It’s actually good. Replaces all startup scripts, logs to a common log, even has scheduled systemd jobs just like cron but better, since they can have proper dependencies. Want to run something right after network stack is up and working? Easy with systemd, more difficult with cron and more hacky.
Many years ago, I used to work in infosec. One of my employer’s clients was a big and famous brand well-established in the luxury sector. One day, a colleague of mine was sent to test their POS. Inside one, he found a single transaction for around 6M € from a credit card swipe. It wasn’t a payment made from a bank transfer or a check, just a single credit card swipe! At the time, I couldn’t even dream a card with such a credit allowance would exist. I had a pretty good living then, with money for the rent, daily expenses, and even some savings. Still, for an instant, I remember feeling like a poor child living in a house made of mud.
I agree. Seeing stuff like that and how, more often than not, the clients treated their employees and consultants was just bad for the soul. In such contexts, you understand why workers aren’t called people but “resources.” In the end, I got burned out and quit the job.
For a desktop user I don’t see any significant benefits to replace systemd. But also no-systemd distros works fine. I was impressed during my try on Alpine Linux, that uses openrc instead. The text printing during OS startup is so short that the terminal didn’t scroll. The bluetooth worked flawlessly. But it is a small community distro, and Alpine is limited by other things than the init system. The init system is a problem for people that have to deal with services.
On political aspects, IMO FOSS works easier with small and focused components that can survive with spare time developers. I can’t make critisicms on technical aspect, I’m not a good programmer, I just notice systemd seems to works fine. Red hat has man-power and capable of large contributions to Linux distros so they leads the innovations. All big distros switched to systemd, now its hard to avoid.
I would like to support smaller FOSS-friendly systems but I use Arch because I need recent versions and the anti-systemd arch-forks are harder to use. I’m a weak guy.
In short, as an user you should be fine by keeping normal Debian. If for political reasons you want a no systemd distro, the easiest is to use MX Linux with the default init.
SystemD replaced a variety of Linux init systems across different distros almost 10 years ago now but it is still resented by a significant and vocal section of the Linux community.
SystemD replaced a variety of Linux init systems across different distros almost 10 years ago now but it is still resented by a significant and vocal section of the Linux community.
No, it is not. It is always the same few people that repeat the same slogans that failed to convince anyone ten years ago. But that does not really matter: In open source the system that can captures developer mind share wins. Systemd did, nothing else came even close.
what you just wrote doesn’t seem to contradict what you quoted in any way. even if there haven’t been any people in the past decade who decided they prefer avoiding systemd (unlikely), there’s still that vocal minority of linux users that you yourself acknowledge, so idk why you’re posturing like you’re in a disagreement?
ooh, conspiracy stories? do tell, if you’d like. i’ve never seen conspiracy stuff in this debate, but conspiracy theories are a cognitive failure mode that fascinate me.
The contradiction is in the claim that the vocal minority is significant. One could argue that the lack of mainstream distros not using systemd is an indicator of the lack of a significant population against it.
“It has to stop” I agree. But how do I make it stop? There’s a lot of talking about what is the issue and its consequences, I say this also for climate change. But they don’t say what can we do about it
A possible solution could be to limit the personal (family?) wealth, fortune, possession, etc. to for example 100 million. That should be enough to live a luxury lifestyle and give your children’s children a ‘care free life’. Everything above that amount goes to the aid of the less fortunate, public and social improvements, energy transition, solving pollution problems, etc. (worldwide). In exchange you get a certificate with: “Congratulations you won capitalism!”
P.S. When you ‘cheat’ you get 1 dollar (or equivalent) and may start over. In addition and not exclusive of all possible legal proceedings.
P.P.S. The above is just an example to illustrate that there are possibilities. But this doesn’t solve all problems of inequality or everything else that is wrong on this planet.
P.P.P.S. Too many people think the have the possibility to also collect wealth above the 100 million ( or think they are entitled to an amount above that). They will protest and vote against any such solution. (I’m not talking about those 400 Americans from the website graphic).
Reminder that the money is printed out of thin air and it’s not really that we need anyone’s stored wealth. Not even liquidating a mansion or ten from a billionaire, or from all billionaires, is going to solve our problems. Sure they are worth a lot to one person, but how much is a mansion worth to society in effect? Not much really.
The system is designed to have poor people. It must so that there is incentive to work. Otherwise we would have to force people to work. I’m not trying to justify the ways things are, I just don’t see going after stored wealth as solving the problem especially when it is not their assets we need or their made up currency.
Marxism has a rich history of thousands upon thousands of books, millions of adherents, influential thinkers across nations, disciplines and social stratae; it’s not as if there is no-one with a solution on their hands. They are just being willfully ignored.
I think their question is more about how we would implement that. Marx believed that proletariat uprising would be the “how,” and that it is an inevitability of end stage capitalism. But the nature of capitalism keeps people from attempting that. This is a system that we are forced to participate in if we want to survive. We need food and shelter and we don’t want to get arrested and/or murdered by cops for revolting. With that in mind, we have to get to a point where we collectively have nothing left to lose.
With all due respect; do you think that Marx, let alone Engels and myriads of Marxist thinkers over the centuries overlooked the idea that people are dependent on wages and therefore not likely to throw their lives to a revolutionary effort? I think the historical intricacies of revolutions are perhaps the most studied part of history for Marxists.
That said, there is obvious truth in the fact that obviously people will not join a revolutionary mass movement today or even tomorrow in the world that we live in. The circumstances ought to be life-or-death for many of them to consider that much of a sacrifice; not that I advocate that at all of course, but revolutions have not historically been staged as fun and games for all those involved.
The sad truth is that the permanent solution to our woes is a revolution that can only really happen when things are already boiling.
See, this is the fucking problem right here. You are a commoner. The person you replied to is a commoner. Compared to the ultra rich anybody but that tiny tiny subset of people are commoners. As long as we keep name calling and pointing fingers at each other this shit will never change and we’ll be rolling around in the mud until we all fry under the sun.
I understand your frustration, we all feel the same way. Let’s direct that frustration at the people and the system that is telling us to turn on each other simply so we are blind to how we’re all being played for fools.
Not to be fatalistic deliberately, but what can we do about it? If we try to take on the system individually, we face the Plucky Ninja problem. If we try to coordinate, it’s too big a movement to keep secret, so the rich and powerful can subvert it before we get anywhere. (They’re doing a pretty good job of it already.)
My problem with systemd is that since I’m practically forced to use it that it’s flakey in starting services after boot (independent of service and distro). Since systemd I had to install monit to check if all services came up. Didn’t had that problem before. Or I forgot, it’s been a while…
Don’t worry about the downvotes, Lemmy is a systemd sausage fest. If you want negative “karma”, just write “systemd bad” or even “pulseausio bad” anywhere, and wait…
Well yes, if you don't provide intelligible arguments it doesn't deserve better. And a lot of the arguments really are like that: "systemd bad" or "is monolithic blob" (which it isn't).
Lol. Thanks. I really don’t care. I’m running linux servers professionally since the late 90s, which means I have seen one or the other WTF. And systemd had quit some of them, especially flooding log files and race conditions. For example see github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/7293. That took more than 2 years to fix. And if people like to downvote my personal experience with it they are welcome to do so. I mean all I did was answering a question why one might use a systemd free distribution. Oh and for the downvoters: SYSTEMD IS MICROSOFTS ATTEMPT TO KILL LINUX! Poettering always was their agent. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering😉
systemd does have one problem that also existed before: sometimes services come with buggy unit files (or copy/pasted from something else and modified), similar to how there were all kinds of buggy scripts before. Unit files are much simpler than scripts and it should be easier to get right but when the author sometimes doesn't consider dependencies or test fail scenarios...
Use systemctl --failed to see which services didn’t come up, systemctl status SERVICENAMEHERE to see some status info about a service, and journalctl -b -u SERVICENAMEHERE to see all log messages generated by a service since last reboot.
I knew the ultra-rich were unimaginably wealthy but this still blew my mind. Got through Bezos, expecting for the site to end, stopped when I saw the blue rectangle starting.
SysV init is crap, but so is systemd as init process. One example is that an admin needs to know why the system does not boot properly. In this case the kernel messages help. systemd is not helping here.
I've currently one problem that I need to solve, but I need 2 people, one to make a video, the other to press Ctrl+Alt+Del to capture an error message that appears for 0,1s after sending the key sequence, when my PC does not boot. This is crap! Why the hell it does not boot occasionally, I have no idea and I've been an Linux/Unix admin for 25 years now. Why I cannot find it? Of course because systemd doesn't even log it!
This is brand new when systemd appeared. I loved to see the kernel messages to full extent...
In a time where satire lags behind real events and dystopian fiction has become the best predictor of the future of the world, nightmares are but normal dreams.
None of these even want to include support for features found in the Linux kernel, so that they work can work on all Unix systems out there. Thatbis a design decision eachnofnthese made.
So none offers similar features to lock down services out of the box, as those rely on Linux specific kernel features. Of course you can hack that into the init scripts somehow. Sysv-init has shown how well that worked cross-distribution.
Systemd moved the goal posts for what a Linux init system needs to do. I doubt any generic Unix init system can compete.
None of these even want to include support for features found in the Linux kernel, so that they work can work on all Unix systems out there.
I’m assuming you meant to say that “none of these are sacrificing portability for features”? If so, absolutely, and that’s very much a feature, not a bug. Portability matters.
So none offers similar features to lock down services out of the box, as those rely on Linux specific kernel features.
If using Linux specific features was the only approach to security, I wonder how OpenBSD exists.
Of course you can hack that into the init scripts somehow. Sysv-init has shown how well that worked cross-distribution.
That’s a bit disingenuous. SysV Init has long term glaring, unrelated issues. It is really showing its age.
Systemd moved the goal posts for what a Linux init system needs to do.
On that, I very much agree. Moving the goal posts doesn’t mean “doing the right thing”, however, and this fact is a big part of the reason some people complain about it.
I doubt any generic Unix init system can compete.
With the feature set? Absolutely not, you are correct. But the same way, systemd cannot compete with their simplicity, maintainability, smaller attack surface, and the list goes on and on and on.
So in the end, it is down to your personal preferences.
Which is theoretically all fine; but practically, it stops being “all fine”, for some people, when you consider systemd’s aggressive disregard to being compatible with literally anything else.
The systemd project is the software embodiment of the “this works and it works well, so why would you ever need anything else?!” mentality.
People take issue with the facts that “aggressive disregard to being compatible with literally anything else” reasonably translates to “having absolutely zero room for mistakes” (which, to be clear, systemd failed to honor multiple times: it isn’t perfect, which would be fine, in a vacuum, but not with this mentality) and that “works well” varies drastically from case to case, and from expectation to expectation (in short, it does not, always, “work well” for everyone and/or in every use case).
TL;DR: systemd existing is totally fine, systemd being used by the majority is totally fine. systemd de-facto causing other projects to put in (sometimes radically) more work than they should have to, is not okay; and systemd de-facto making itself irreplaceable on the grounds that “it’s fine, don’t worry about it”, is not okay.
In general: Yes. In the specific case of an init system for a specific OS: Not so much.
This is nicely demonstrated by none of the non-Linux OSes embracing any of the options you listed. They all want something that plays to the strength of their specific systems over some generic Unix thing.
If using Linux specific features was the only approach to security, I wonder how OpenBSD exists.
It is the best approach we have on anything running a Linux kernel.
systemd cannot compete with their simplicity, maintainability, smaller attack surface, and the list goes on and on and on.
It is also easy to have really simple code that does nothing interesting whatsoever. And for something that does not do much at all, the fork-dance that e.g. s6 does is pretty complex.
Maintainability also does not seem to be a big issue for systemd at this point in time either.
The smaller attack surface is relative as well: systemd-the-init is a bit bigger than the ones you list. But the difference is not as big as you make it sound and an init system does not do many interesting things that can get attacked by either.
On the other hand systemd can seriously lock down any service it starts (and does so out of the box for anything from the systemd project and many upstream projects that ship locked down systemd unit files). The init systems you listed do can not do that directly and either need helpers (which increases their attack surface again) or just do not bother. Considering that a init system starts way more lines of code that do more security critical things than an init system: I think this lockdown does lead to a smaller attack surface of the system overall.
systemd de-facto causing other projects to put in (sometimes radically) more work than they should have to, is not okay;
Somebody has to invest work to make things convenient and easy to use. You either run with what everybody else uses and share the effort or you do not and do the work all by yourself.
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