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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, Informative) by tonyPick on Sunday September 28 2014, @10:18AM
Init isn't great, but it's been good enough for 20 or 30 years, and whilst systemd is sort of replacing init, it's also throwing in a much wider re-architecture of the basic system at the same time, and then pushing this onto most everyone else by breaking compatibility with "non-systemd" approaches and making sure Gnome requires it.
And, reprinting my comment from the last time we did this:
Fundamentally? systemd is trying to do Too Damn Much and weld it in via the init system, which could be better, but isn't terribly broken for most all the traditional use cases.
Removing and improving on legacy init is one job (which does need doing). The consolidation and centralisation of a grab bag of system capabilities into a common infrastructure is a different job; systemd is munging them both into one thing. Bad.
So for any core system update you're balancing risk, benefits and costs: As a developer/user (primarily in the mid-range embedded space) I'm seeing no solid benefits, large risks and massive knock on costs on the future of the infrastructure, as systemd becomes an increasingly pervasive dependency for everything from logging to authentication to networking etc...
It's not a "vi versus emacs" that if you don't like it you pick something else and go with that - it's becoming increasingly hard (as per TFA) to avoid the damn thing. This should be because it's *better*, but it isn't - it's because it's *different*. This is not a problem for Gnome and Redhat, and if you're looking at their distribution then this may even be a good thing, but the world is not RHEL, and we aren't all worried about containerised Gnome.
I could go on, but whilst I don't agree with it all this essentially covers a lot of what I would say: http://ewontfix.com/14/ [ewontfix.com] [ewontfix.com]
Now having said all that; I'd _like_ to be wrong, and for it to be a painless improvement, but having looked at it I'm not seeing anything persuasive from the systemd folks and from the sheer level of crud thrown about (e.g. the Kernel debug line debacle, wrong on *so* many levels) to the state of the docs (quantity != quality) to the source code in the repo (journal-qrcode.c? Seriously?) don't fill me with the warm and fuzzies.
See also: http://blog.lusis.org/blog/2014/09/23/end-of-linux/ [lusis.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Sunday September 28 2014, @11:30AM
That's the biggest problem. Just like Gnome 3 making sure you couldn't run your old Gnome 2 applications (not even by installing Gnome 2 on the side, due to conflicts between the libraries). And Firefox breaking some extensions on almost every update.
Thou shalt not create incompatible interfaces.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 29 2014, @03:18AM
That's the biggest problem. Just like Gnome 3 making sure you couldn't run your old Gnome 2 applications (not even by installing Gnome 2 on the side, due to conflicts between the libraries). And Firefox breaking some extensions on almost every update.
Thou shalt not create incompatible interfaces.
The same for Linux API. So what? Don't use programs that you don't like. I haven't had Firefox break any extensions I use on any upgrade yet, and I don't even use Gnome since it's slow and bloated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 29 2014, @11:54AM
I don't want to use systemd. I'd love to avoid it completely. But how the fuck am I supposed to do that if Debian forces it onto my systems? Now I have to give up Debian completely, just because they made a stupid decision in one area? That's bollocks! Total bollocks! Systemd just shouldn't be included in Debian at all. If users want systemd, make them switch to Fedora or one of the other shitty distros that uses it.