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Controversy is nothing new when it comes to systemd. Many people find this new Linux init system to be inherently flawed in most ways, yet it is still gaining traction with major distros like Arch Linux, openSUSE, Fedora, and soon both Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux. The adoption of systemd for Debian 8 "Jessie" has been particularly fraught with strife and animosity.
Some have described the systemd adoption process as having been a "coup", while others are vowing to stick with Debian 7 as long as possible before moving to another distro. Others are so upset by what they see as a complete betrayal of the Debian and open source communities that there is serious discussion about forking Debian. Regardless of one's stance toward systemd, it cannot be argued that it has become one of the most divisive and disruptive changes in the long history of the Debian project, threatening to destroy both the project and the community that has built up around it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by _NSAKEY on Sunday September 28 2014, @07:19AM
Pulse Audio has never worked for me adequately (Only solution is to apt-get purge it and fall back to ALSA, which has never caused me any grief), so I don't exactly trust Lennart Poettering and co to deliver anything that works. Combine that with all the arguments laid out against systemd in previous stories, and it all adds up to a desire to move to something else and watch the systemd-enabled distros burn. This is actually a good thing for small, up and coming distros since it has the potential to shake things up and make a lot of entrenched players irrelevant in a short amount of time (Just look at what started happening to Ubuntu once it started trying to forge its own way a few years back). Fragmentation sucks, but it's better than what we're getting now.
That being said, if Debian doesn't reverse course or a Debian-based fork doesn't take off, I'll probably switch to a BSD full time after Wheezy is EOLed.
(Score: 1) by jbernardo on Sunday September 28 2014, @07:46AM
According to the church of LP, repeating the fact that pulseaudio has issues is an ad hominen attack on their god, the infallible developer Lennart.Just check one guy posting as "interested" on the "boycott systemd site" thread on phoronix.
I really should reply to him, but it is like punching walls.Nothing gets through - and worst, as he has such a view of LP and his works that even the facts that pulseaudio was unusable for ages and is still unstable could all be false, he won't acknoledge that no mather waht, the issue is always alsa drivers or users...
(Score: 1) by Arik on Sunday September 28 2014, @08:52AM
BSDs are great but hardware support is very limited. You can keep the linux kernel with expanded hardware support and still avoid systemd quite easily, use Slackware or Gentoo.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Sunday September 28 2014, @10:36AM
If systemd becomes a core part of the dependencies for logging, networking tools, system login, user sessions etc. how long do you think Slack & Gentoo can avoid it for?
(Score: 1) by Arik on Sunday September 28 2014, @01:33PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28 2014, @07:45PM
Code doesn't bit rot. Keep on keeping on with an old version of gnome ( 2 or 1) and IDE. The different point releases are so far removed from each other they should be considered separate projects anyway, and separately install able. App armor or grsecurity completely mitigates against buffer overflow and other common attacks if you're worried about stable pieces of software having errors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28 2014, @11:52PM
That's total bullshit. New security flaws are discovered daily. Old code needs to continually be updated to address such flaws. The mktemp() is a good example of this. Old code that uses it needs to be updated, contrary to your bullshit claim that "code doesn't bit rot".
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tempest on Sunday September 28 2014, @02:47PM
If systemd becomes that widespread, I'd assume Gentoo and Slack will see a surge in uptake. At that point no systemd becomes a core feature people want in the distro, and I'd assume many more would put the effort in to keep it that way.
I'm mostly a BSD user, but Linux fighting against systemd is very important for the BSDs as well. As desktop enviornments and software become dependant on systemd, they become inherintly non portable. Gnome 3 has pretty much written themselves off as Linux only. It's easy to sit back and laugh at the latest Linux cunundrum (one of the perks of being a BSD user), but in the process of fleeing systemd, you may find much of the software you want will no longer run on ANYTHING without it (Linux included).
Also the "BSDs have no hardware support" thing is overblown in my opinion, so I wouldn't let that discourage you from trying it if you want to. One thing I don't think we need are Linux refugees, the people who use Linux because they hate windows, but now use BSD because they hate Linux. Use BSD because you love it :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28 2014, @07:28PM
I use Debian now, but I'm going to be switching to Gentoo.
Systemd is actually a good litmus test of how sensible a distro's leadership is, as a collective. Smart leadership will, collectively, not put up with systemd. They'll be able to see its insurmountable technical flaws, as well as the way it can totally divide and devastate a distro's community. Debian's community is in tatters now thanks to systemd and how it has been forced on so many unwilling participants.
I can't trust Debian, as a project, any longer. If they made such an obviously bad decision in this case, I can't help but think that they're making similarly bad choices when it comes to other decisions, some of which I may not even be aware of.
Since I can't trust Debian, I can't trust the software they put out. The only sane thing for me to do is switch to a distro that hasn't gone all stupid and started using systemd.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by forsythe on Sunday September 28 2014, @06:11PM
I can't speak for Slackware (though I've heard very positive things about the dev team), but I know Gentoo has been willing to fork udev [gentoo.org] to get around systemd integration before.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Sunday September 28 2014, @07:08PM
Gentoo has had systemd available for a while. You can actually choose what your init will be. http://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Comparison_of_init_systems [gentoo.org]
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 28 2014, @12:06PM
When was the last time you tried to use FreeBSD? It isn't 1997 any longer. FreeBSD has quite good support for a wide range of hardware. If we do see more and more people move to FreeBSD instead of bastardized shitheaps of systemd-infected Linux, then I think we will surely see FreeBSD's driver support improve to cover obscure edge cases that aren't currently supported well.