[happypants23]

> Do you really want an init system that replaces a ton of functionality poorly like dns, ntp, syslog, xinetd, etc etc etc?

SystemD is not just an "init" system. You have to look at the larger vision for it being a set of building blocks for Linux system and service management.

I think this is a very good thing. Its about time that Linux had a unified and self-consistent approach to system management and configuration.

[pmoriarty]

"SystemD is not just an "init" system. You have to look at the larger vision for it being a set of building blocks for Linux system and service management."

This was not the way it was sold. It was originally sold as an init replacement.

If at the start the systemd guys had come out and said, "We aim to replace much of the core of Linux with some kind of Windows-Linux conglomoration: replace not only init but dns, syslog, turn all system log files binary, replace intetd, fuck with account naming, and oh, by the way, there'll be no easy way for distros that go with systemd to give their users a choice to use something else" then I'm not so sure how many people would have gotten onboard.

Basically, systemd has been a retooling of the core Linux ecosystem by people who think they know better. Well, this might be news for systemd fans, but they don't necessarily know any better than the rest of us, and the rest of us would like some choice in the matter. Instead we're force fed systemd and our operating system are no longer Linux but some bastardization of Linux and Windows.

"Nobody shoved anything down anyone's throat, least not the SystemD developers."

Tell that to the significan number of RedHat, Debian, and CentOS users who strongly object to systemd yet are forced to use it because that's all their distro supports.

"Anyway, in reality, software does not become mature and well-tested without early exposure to real users and systems. Chicken-and-egg problem there."

You don't have to test it out on all RedHat users, all Debian users, all CentOS, etc, etc. Getting a bunch of volunteers and letting them use a feature-complete version for five or six years before springing it on the rest of us would have been a good start. Instead you get an ever-morphing and ever-growing trojan horse.

[dijit]

You will likely have this argument again so I need to point out two things:

1) Debian does support sysvinit right now, although with some packages having hard dependencies on systemd it might not be long before you hit a brick wall.

2) systemd (the init) was used by Fedora for a long time before getting into RHEL/CentOS- which is of course before it got into Debian. So there were volunteers.

[mdekkers]

You have to look at the larger vision for it being a set of building blocks for Linux system and service management

Many people did, and didn't like what they saw. They also didn't like the idea that it was very difficult to replace for something they did like.