[lazyguy2]

> Systemd is monolithic,

It's monolythic in the same what that the GNU project or FreeBSD is monolithic.

It's a large number of utilities, tools, and daemons that is designed to provide the low-level features application developers and users demand from a modern operating system.

> It's much more than an init system;

Systemd is a init system, but systemd is also a major project that has taken on the task of unifying low-level Linux OS features.

> "Linux monoculture" is a real thing, and systemd makes it seriously more monocultural.

FreeBSD is a monoculture. OS X is a monoculture. Solaris is a monoculture. OpenBSD is a monoculture.

All these systems have their own init systems they designed with no regard towards Linux and replaced older systems and obsoleted them.

> It was not entirely gently pushed on everyone by Red Hat, by making Gnome dependent on it.

Lies and misrepresentations.

> OTOH the history shows that technically poor, and even terrible, things can get wide enough adoption and stick with us for a long time; X is a good example, SysV init is another.

Which is why people are working on replacing both X and SysV.

You want to know the real problem with anything-but-systemd crowd?

This:

> Of course, this approach is not viable if it turns out that too few people are interested in init system diversity sufficiently to do the reasonably substantial implementation work required to maintain a competing implementation of the systemd unit features we care about.

There is no 'If' there. Some people don't want systemd, but the only people doing the work are Systemd. So their choice is to stick with Linux from 2000's or use systemd. Because nobody wants to commit to making any alternative actually work.

Making noise online is annoying, but it ultimately is not something that goes into the decision making of people designing operating systems. People willing to do the work are the ones that get to make the choices.

If somebody comes along and makes a better init system then systemd then they can do it and if it is better it will get adopted.

You can pretend that this is all Redhat's fault, but they are the only real enterprise that made the transition from sysv in Rhel 5, to upstart in 6, and then to systemd in 7.

And, ironically with systemd, migrating to another different init system is massively simplified compared to the work it took to migrate from sysv init. So now moving to a new init system is easier then ever.

Why do I say this?

Because systemd has unified OS design for Linux in a way that never happened with sysv init. Sure people were using 'sysv' and all used shell scripts, but they were all fundamentally different from one another. Only the most complicated shell scripts imaginable (think Apache init) or the most trivial could be made to work on more then one Linux distribution. Meanwhile systemd uses a declarative configuration syntax that all you need to do is create a parser and you could effectively import any systemd application configuration into a system with equivalent or better capabilities in any operating system.

The same can't be said for any of the bash scripts developed by any of the distributions prior to this for their own sysv variant.

[AdieuToLogic]

> > Systemd is monolithic,

> It's monolythic [sic] in the same what that the GNU project or FreeBSD is monolithic.

The FreeBSD system initialization artifacts are not monolithic.

> > "Linux monoculture" is a real thing, and systemd makes it seriously more monocultural.

> FreeBSD is a monoculture. OS X is a monoculture. Solaris is a monoculture. OpenBSD is a monoculture.

This is straw man incarnate.

> > It was not entirely gently pushed on everyone by Red Hat, by making Gnome dependent on it.

> Lies and misrepresentations.

Not according to here[0].

If you want to be a "systemd warrior", fine, feel free to be so. But don't lump FreeBSD and other Unix systems into your crusade.

BTW, when you wrote:

> Because systemd has unified OS design for Linux ...

Know that an init system, any init system, does not design nor define an Operating System.

And while your disdain for shell scripts is readily apparent, what you proffer as the benefit of "... systemd uses a declarative configuration syntax that all you need to do is create a parser ..." ignores the fact that POSIX shell scripts provide this feature by definition. Including, but not limited to, being able to source other files which define requisite variables.

0 - https://www.quora.com/Why-does-GNOME-3-require-systemd

[diffeomorphism]

> The FreeBSD system initialization artifacts are not monolithic.

And nobody claimed that... . The claim was that FreeBSD is monolithic in the same way that the systemd project (logind, nspawn etc. ) is monolithic.

> Not according to here[0].

Okay, let's click on that. First sentence "It doesn't". What were you trying to argue again?

> Know that an init system, any init system, does not design nor define an Operating System.

Are you purposely confusing systemd-init and systemd the project? Because your argument is the same as "GNU does not design or define an OS", which many people would call plain wrong.

[AdieuToLogic]

> > Not according to here[0].

> Okay, let's click on that. First sentence "It doesn't". What were you trying to argue again?

And the second sentence says:

  What it requires is a service that
  implements the same set of APIs as
  systemd-logind.

Since GNOME requires either systemd-logind or something that behaves exactly as systemd-logind, how does that not express a transitive dependency on systemd?

So what are you trying to argue again?

> > Know that an init system, any init system, does not design nor define an Operating System.

> Are you purposely confusing systemd-init and systemd the project?

No, what I stated I thought was quite clear: an init system does not design nor define an Operating System.

This is orthogonal to the question you present.

0 - https://www.quora.com/Why-does-GNOME-3-require-systemd

[ldng]

You are missing the point (and probably on purpose at that). Most people do not complain about systemd as init but evrything else. Furthermore Systemd try to replace software that works better than the alternative it proposes. So your argument nobody is doing it is moot. You're comment, using a part for the whole, is misleading and used every time someone criticizes systemd the umbrella, it's getting old.

[yyyk]

> Some people don't want systemd, but the only people doing the work are Systemd.

IMHO, that's not the best way to say what I think you really meant.

There are alternatives for just about every single systemd function (e.g. there are other init system that are not sysvinit). It is true though, that the people implementing these alternatives are far more levelheaded regarding systemd than the haters - at least in my experience.

[aduitsis]

> FreeBSD is a monoculture. OS X is a monoculture. Solaris is a monoculture. OpenBSD is a monoculture.

I dare say there's bit of an irony in that assertion. 4 different operating systems, each of one of which uses a different init system. Pardon me, but that looks like the exact opposite of a monoculture.

Also, the rc system in FreeBSD could probably be ported with not too much effort into other operating systems, as it uses pure sh (not even bash). Surely, that cannot be considered monoculture. I would dare say that porting systemd into FreeBSD (or any of the other OSes you mentioned) should be more difficult.