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A developer affiliated with boycottsystemd.org has announced and released a fork of systemd, sardonically named uselessd.
The gist of it:
uselessd (the useless daemon, or the daemon that uses less... depending on your viewpoint) is a project which aims to reduce systemd to a base initd, process supervisor and transactional dependency system, while minimizing intrusiveness and isolationism. Basically, it’s systemd with the superfluous stuff cut out, a (relatively) coherent idea of what it wants to be, support for non-glibc platforms and an approach that aims to minimize complicated design.
uselessd is still in its early stages and it is not recommended for regular use or system integration, but nonetheless, below is what we have thus far.
They then go on to tout being able to compile on libc implementations besides glibc, stripping out unnecessary daemons and unit classes, working without udev or the journal, replacing systemd-fsck with a service file, and early work on a FreeBSD port (though not yet running).
Responses from the wider Linux community are yet to be heard.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arashi no garou on Sunday September 21 2014, @12:50PM
First, car-computer analogies always have and always will suck. But given this analogy, you are forgetting that there is a certain class of computer user/car owner out there. There are people who are technically proficient enough to be their own sysadmin/mechanic, even if they don't do that by trade. I have every right to change my own oil, inspect my own tires, and hell, I even helped with the rebuild of the engine in my truck. In that sense, I also have every right to decide what kind of tires I want, what kind of oil to use, what type of camshaft and intake to install. Going back to the systemd issue, I'm the kind of person for whom the switch to systemd does matter. So far, the negatives outweigh the benefits in my case. I almost never restart my workstation (generally only for a hardware change or a kernel update), so boot times are irrelevant to me. I do like to be able to parse logs as plaintext files; this is impossible under systemd. I like being able to use text based init scripts; it's simple and just works. I enjoy being able to control mounting myself, using fstab; it's simple and works. Do you see the pattern?
Simply put, systemd isn't for everyone. It may make life easier for Red Hat sysadmins, which is why they invented it. Kudos to them for designing what they see as the perfect hammer for their nails, even if their nails are sometimes screws or staples. But for me, well I'm going to stick with distros that haven't adopted it, as I don't get any real benefit from it and quite a few drawbacks instead. But that's just me.
For you to take the position that systemd works for everyone and everyone should just shut up about it, speaks volumes. Everyone I've encountered who is so insistent that systemd is the One True Way has come across as a severe control freak, to the point that all they hear anymore is their own voice. You should maybe consider that not everyone has the same needs in their init as you do.
(Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:52PM
My comment would have been something along these lines: Linux is NOT Windows. A way higher percentage of "users" (and not just sysadmins) absolutely do have a skin in the game. It's kinda what a major part of the whole Linux eco-system is based on...
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 3) by cykros on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:49PM
I miss the days of the old installers. They didn't give you defaults as often as they asked you what you wanted. You didn't get dropped into a DE the distro thought was what would be best for everyone, you got a list and asked which one you'd like to choose (perhaps with a default selected if you really did just want to hit "Enter" to continue).
Somewhere along the way, installers changed in many distributions. People started using LiveCD's, and stopped selecting their software (how much EASIER it was!).
And then they get mad when the software installed isn't what they'd have chosen.
Just a reminder...most distros still HAVE these old style installers available. You'll just need to grab something that isn't a LiveCD to make use of it. The place where something seems pretty fishy, however, is that none of these appear to give the WM/DE style selection with the init system, despite there being multiple available. What gives? Is this new system so much better than the old that you have to manipulate people into installing it, even when they've gone out of their way to use a more choice oriented install method? Just because Apple figured out how to perfect choiceless Unix doesn't mean everyone else needs to aspire to it as a goal...
(Score: 1) by arashi no garou on Sunday September 21 2014, @10:47PM
I miss the days of the old installers. They didn't give you defaults as often as they asked you what you wanted. You didn't get dropped into a DE the distro thought was what would be best for everyone, you got a list and asked which one you'd like to choose (perhaps with a default selected if you really did just want to hit "Enter" to continue).
You just described Slackware's installer, which is not only my favorite installer but also my favorite GNU/Linux distro. It was what I cut my teeth on; I had started with Red Hat back in 1999 or so, but I didn't care for it and dropped it after a few weeks. Then I tried Slackware, and almost immediately felt at home (I had come up on DOS as a high schooler back in the early 90s so I was happy on the command line). The distro has changed very little since then, and almost always for the better. The only thing I didn't like about it through the years was the hostility towards Gnome, but in retrospect I think Pat was right.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:22PM
And I wrote it on a Slackware64 installation :-).
But while Slackware may be the only distro whose main installer takes this form, this wasn't always the case. I started using Linux back in 2000, and back then even Mandrake (think of it as the Ubuntu of its age, but based on Redhat instead of Debian) had a similar style of installer.
While LiveCD's are a fantastic tool to actually make use of a distribution without bothering to install it, I've never thought of them as a particularly good method of installing a system. A lot of distros jumped all over them thanks to requiring just about nothing from the user, but then, you get what you "pay" for, so to speak. Luckily, as I mentioned before, there are things like the Ubuntu Alternate Install ISO, which gives you at least a bit more choice and an ncurses interface for installation, for those who go looking for them. It's a shame they're not more well known or commonly used...a lot of the things that get complained about heavily in Linux communities everywhere are usually pretty easy to avoid by just taking the few extra minutes at install time to make a few choices...
And I would agree at this point re: Gnome. Not that it ever would have bothered me, as I've yet to see a DE that didn't feel like an unnecessary layer of abstraction to bloat things up and get in the way. But what was at the time an unthinkable removal of perhaps the most popular DE in use looks almost like an "of course" move in retrospect. Besides, nothing stops anyone who wants it from grabbing Dropline Gnome [droplinegnome.org] which is a third party package for installing Gnome onto Slackware if they really choose. Just like how you can install Pulseaudio from Slackbuilds.org [slackbuilds.org]. Keeping the distro trimmed down to a sane set of software that makes a complete system while additional software generally considered optional off at third party repositories...one of the MANY things I love about the distro in the first place.
(Score: 1) by arashi no garou on Monday September 22 2014, @12:08AM
Believe me, I'm familiar with Mandrake; I ran it alongside Slackware for a while. It was ok, but I just never developed a sense of being "at home" on RedHat based distros. I can't stand Fedora to this day. I'm sure it's a great OS for those it appeals to, but I just don't jive with it.
Regarding LiveCDs, I think they were awesome back in the days of Knoppix, when one might need a Linux distro without having to install. I kept a Knoppix disc on hand for data recovery purposes for many of my clients. Windows ME and XP were notoriously unreliable, though the latter gained a lot of reliability after the first two service packs. In those days being able to pop in a LiveCD to diagnose the drive and other hardware, and pull critical files if necessary, was a godsend.
Then Ubuntu popped onto the scene, and LiveCD based installs became the Next Big Thing. Thankfully distros like Debian and Slackware still offered their non-graphical installers.
Regarding the Gnome on Slackware situation, I never did find the replacements like DLG and GSB to be stable enough to use daily, so I just switched to Xfce. These days I prefer Openbox to any other WM, but Xfce seems to have gotten better and better with time. As far as I'm concerned it's the perfect Gnome Classic replacement.