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Earlier this week, KDE developer David Edmundson described in his blog how KDE would be tied to logind and timedated but not systemd itself, at least according to his claim that "The init system is one part of systemd that doesn't affect us at all, and any other could be used.".
Later, in the blog comments, he clarifies that starting with plasma 5.5, in 6 months, they'll drop "legacy" support, according to a decision taken in the plasma sprint.
Even if one can only guess why there is no formal announcement, it seems clear - unless somehow there is a shim or emulator, not only for logind but also for timedated, in 6 months KDE will be unusable unless you are running systemd. And the blog entry makes it clear that the plan is to remove more and more functionality from KDE and use systemd instead.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Friday February 20 2015, @02:55PM
The gist of it is this:
"systemd" is a bunch of different things, ranging from an init system and binary (ick) logger to programs that manage login sessions, date and time, etc. It's a blanket moniker for a group of programs that Poettering and co. have decided will be the standard components for Linux systems. With that mindset, they're not worrying about those parts depending on each other, because it's supposed to be a standard kit that you use all together.
(brief tangent follows)
It's sort of like how FreeBSD separates the base system, which updates all together at once, and is separate from the other packages. Except that where people approve of FreeBSD's doing the same thing, it's not being received well among Linux users for various reasons, ranging from the absurd (conspiracy theories, misinformed beliefs, "it's different so it sucks") to the reasonable.
Part of that is because of the personalities leading the project, because of a reputation for bad designs and even worse implementations that then take others years to fix into something usable. It also doesn't help that Poettering and Sievers act like arrogant, know-it-all shits, actively interfering with improvement of their software. It's not a design flaw, it's a feature. We don't care if it corrupts logs, breaks randomly, or prevents booting. You just hate handicapped people or you'd be agreeing with me. NOTABUG WONTFIX GTFO. If someone else, more receptive to changing the design of the components, and not responsible for abominations like pulseaudio, were spearheading the whole thing a lot of the contention probably wouldn't exist.
Another problem is that it's not the way Linux has traditionally worked, so you have a group of people basically pushing for high levels of interdependency at a low level, where it's always been a very mix-and-match affair. In a relatively short period of time, this small group has basically declared itself the final authority on the Linux userland and started ripping up all the fixtures to put in its own, without any consideration of the others that happen to live there.
Anyway, back to KDE. The parts of it that KDE is apparently going to require are just another bullshit dbus, hal, etc. type of thing. No init system requirement. Those parts are created with an expectation of certain things, which creates a dependency on the systemd init, but it can be circumvented, at least for now. Debian has a small package called "systemd-shim" that gives the other systemd pieces (logind, etc.) what they need to operate (just cgroups support I think?) while allowing you to install any init system (and thus logger) you want.
As long as the shim's being maintained, Linux users can still avoid those parts of systemd, which is important IMO because a lot of the systemd complaints are about the init and logging system, specifically. (That's where most of my gripes are)
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Friday February 20 2015, @06:21PM
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I feel the problems with systemd are more philosophical than technical (though there are definitely technical issues too), and while I'm no conspiracy theorist, anyone can recognize that it's a power play by Poettering and Sievers driving the rapid growth of the project. I'm sure they honestly want "a better Linux OS", but they are going about it in a dishonorable way.
But all that aside, what happens when the shim no longer exists? A shim is meant as a temporary fix, not a permanent solution. There are ultimately two paths for any GNU/Linux ecosystem project: Accept systemd or reject it. A shim is just there to allow one to take longer to decide.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 20 2015, @07:53PM
And by "dishonorable," we mean, "they were hired to make the technical decisions, and they made decisions I wouldn't have made. And since I don't have their resume, and can't compete for the decision-making job, waaaaaaaaaa. waaaaaaaa. waaaaaaa."
Your neckbeard is crying all over the floor, jeeze.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Friday February 20 2015, @08:47PM
Wait, you're saying that Poettering and Sievers are employees of Debian? What crack are you smoking?
And nice try with the "neckbeard" comment; your ad hominem is crying all over the floor.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 20 2015, @08:14PM
How are they being "dishonorable"? Their job is to create this system (they work for Red Hat, remember, who obviously wants this system). Other distros are adopting it, rightly or wrongly. Red Hat does not have the power to force other distros to adopt anything (or else we'd all be using RPMs right now), so obviously these distros are doing it willingly. How is that dishonorable?
I get the complaints about PulseAudio etc. However, the distros all adopted that willingly too. And for good reason: despite its many problems, it was better than the alternatives.
Basically what this all seems to me is: Lennart and company see a big problem with Linux, they cobble together a solution to attempt to fix it, and everyone else in their armchair bitches and complains that this solution isn't good enough. However, no one actually bothers to make their own solution; instead they seem to want to just keep using the broken stuff they've been using for 15 years and never change it. Ok, I get there's complaints about the technical quality (bugginess) of Lennart's stuff, about the way his cabal treats people, etc., but again, what alternative do we have? No one else wants to step and and do something similar. At best, we get other solutions which have far worse technical problems, like upstart, or we get solutions which simply don't go nearly far enough (OpenRC) to address the problems. I think we saw this with PulseAudio too, with competitors like ARtS.
As for shims, that's totally not true about them being temporary. I don't know where you got that crazy idea. Look at Nvidia's proprietary drivers for instance: they use an open-source shim to interface with the kernel. That's not a temporary solution; it's been that way almost forever, and isn't going to change unless the kernel devs suddenly decide to have a stable ABI for proprietary drivers (not going to happen). Or, if you forget about software, look at window shims: you use these to make your window square and level when you're installing it into your wall. Those shims are never removed; they always stay in between the window and the framing.
(Score: 3) by arashi no garou on Friday February 20 2015, @08:44PM
By "dishonorable" I mean the backroom tactics I've read about that led to the Debian decision. systemd may be a great piece of software, but if so it should compete on its merits, not on the whims of someone not even a part of the Debian group.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday February 20 2015, @09:26PM
What "backroom tactics"? I must have missed this. I thought the Debian decision was made by a vote between the people in charge of the project, not some outsiders. From what I remember, there was a lot of complaining by an Ian Jackson who seemed to be holding everything up because he didn't like it, but that's just one guy, and then when everyone else voted against him he got mad and quit the group.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Friday February 20 2015, @11:03PM
"Everyone else voted against him" is a lie. The 8-person vote was 4 in favor of systemd as their first choice and 4 in favor of the other alternatives. And IIRC the only reason systemd won that vote was because the guy who "broke ties" (whatever you call it when you have a plurality but a majority is required) was in the systemd voting block.
Go look up the original Slashdot/Soylent articles on the vote. I swear Debian made their voting system as hard to understand as possible.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Troll) by Grishnakh on Friday February 27 2015, @08:25PM
It's not their fault you're too dumb to understand Condorcet voting, or any kind of voting system where you're allowed to vote for your preference for candidates.
(Score: 3, Informative) by arashi no garou on Saturday February 21 2015, @01:52AM
It's my understanding that there was a split vote, some of the voters wanted more time to think about it, but some heavy pushing by LP and KS privately caused those requests to be ignored. The vote was rushed and the swing voter said what amounted to "fuck it, roll with it" and it was done.
That's what I read back when it was going on, though I've heard from some (admittedly heavy systemd supporting) sources that it didn't go down like that, that it was a simple majority vote without drama and the perceived drama was manufactured by the anti-systemd camp. I find that hard to believe though, given the amount of controversy on both sides.
Either way, I choose not to run systemd because of that very controversy; I don't need drama with my OS. Hell, my Raspberry Pi's OS has some systemd parts in it, it hasn't crashed and burned and sacrificed goats like some anti-systemd folks swear it will. But I'm looking forward to getting my new RasPi 2 next week that should be able to run Slackware without issues.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @09:14AM
Poettering puts code for Logind into Gnome, while also declaring (he had gotten maintainer status) consolekit as dead to the point of shutting down the relevant mailing list.
Then he turns around and claim that nobody wanted consolekit since nobody was maintaining the supporting bits in Gnome.
Err dude you already declared consolekit dead and logind as the path forward...
The guy twists words like a snake coils, and then turns around and yells at Torvalds for making the Linux community a toxic work environment.
There is a video out there of one guy doing a presentation about what he sees as absurd layers of complexity in present day Linux. One of the projects called out happens to be one of Poettering's, and he is in the audience. Poettering starts heckling the presenter, to the point of asking of the presenter has something against disabled people (because some of the complexity could be used to help them in some way). In the end the presenter calls it quits, and Poettering jumps on stage and grabs the mic (beer bottle in hand no less)...
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday February 20 2015, @08:38PM
Shim is a misnomer. One of the aims of modular development (aka the Unix way) is to enable the use of alternative implementations of some components - and that is exactly what these "shims" are, alternative implementations of systemd components without the coupling to the rest of systemd.
Key thing of course is that someone has to maintain the shims, but only a small fraction of the effort that goes into complaining about systemd would be required for that...
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Friday February 20 2015, @08:52PM
Key thing of course is that someone has to maintain the shims
That is exactly my point. What happens when the shim maintainer walks away because either she accepts systemd or moves on to, say, BSD? A shim is a band-aid on a bleeding gash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @06:53PM
I saw that video and felt the presenter was making some excellent points. Poetterng's behavior was surprising, childish and inexcusable. Systemd is being developed by a spoiled brat and while there are many other good reasons to avoid it, that fact alone is enough to turn many away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 22 2015, @09:01AM
Well the BSDs are monolithic projects from the outset.
Linux on the other hand has been more like a bag of Lego bricks, each independent but interlocking via defined interfaces.