sysvinit still possible?

[Snap]

Yes, sysvinit shows its age. But works fine. Also runit is a great modern and simple alternative. I don't really know if it can be run on Debian easily. I haven't checked OpenRC yet. It's on my to do list.

The problem I see with systemd is that it's not an init system anymore (though it was born like that). Now it controls the whole system. If systemd goes wrong everything goes wrong. But aside of this, you are tied to it. Before systemd you can choose your init system if you want that. Now if a distro uses systemd you cannot revert back. It was possible switching init systems in Wheezy and even in testing before Jessie was released. Now if you install a system with systemd you cannot get rid of it. You need to prevent it to go onboard in advance. It doesn't happen with any other init system I know. Only systemd.

Finally, (I don't want to start one more systemd war). The way I see it, due to systemd Linux is going to be in hands of RHEL. A corporation. The Unix style "do one thing and do it well" is going downsouth. systemd does to many things. The old claim that Linux is developed by the community has all gone. Linux is now developed by a corporation. Bits of of Linux, yes, github (to mention one) still goes strong, but the bulk of it is by developed by RHEL. Whatever they want to do, will go all over Linux. systemd is in charge of it. They also tried to assault the kernel but Torvalds took good care of it. That would have been the last bit to get the full control. For now systemd, pulseaudio and gnome are all over the place and rule the *nix world. Thus RHEL rules Linux. If they want to make the systems to call home or violate your privacy in any way like collecting your data and/or forwarding it to third parties (like Ubuntu already did) you cannot complain if you choose to use their stuff. Not just RHEL, simply a RHEL driven Linux as most main distros already are. If anyone's is fine with that. Then it's all good. If not liking all that, like me, better step out the boat while you can. I can see a clear split.

[VastOne]

I am profoundly conflicted on this one...

On one hand I see Jed's point and agree with his assessments and agree also with Debian's wisdom to go forward with systemd

On the other hand, it scares the fuck out of me that linux is in the hands of the RHEL/Corporation movement...

This conflict has made me want to throw in the towel on this baby of mine on more than one occasion

... not to mention the rock and hard place we find ourselves mired in

[superwow]

It's been awhile since I have posted on here but after reading snap's frustration I want to officially mirror snap's concern. Before anyone reads, please don't castigate me for voicing an opinion!! I know I'm not on here a ton, especially recently, but VSIDO is really the forum I call home!! So, if you're a systemd fan, caveat emptor, I have antipathy for it.

[tirade]

When running only VSIDO, it was systemd that borked my system. First audio. Fixed it. Then x. Fixed it. Then network connectivity. Omg what abject buggery and prestidigitation to fix that. Then a long list of floggings. I jumped to Debian SID, which I confess, was marvelous. Actually the Debian SID build your own taught me a lot. Then, systemd and the 4.0 kernel tag teamed me - borked that too. Pavlovian condition. Done.

I have moved on from the ashes of the once great Debian. I won't use that steaming heap anymore.

Systemd was implemented despite the outcries of the linux community. Foisted upon users. In a concerted cross distro effort. What was the impetus for this? To speed up start times like everyone says? Sorry, that smells like kyarn to me. I don't believe that for a moment. What unseen, unheard, behind the scenes effort could have so rapidly coerced so many distros to systemd? For what purpose. I can only speculate.

I'm nurturing a multi install system. I'm not happy with it yet, but learning a lot. If you're looking for a systemd free alternative which is Debian, Antix is pretty solid and reminds me a bit of VSIDO, only without the SID.I have it just in case.  The SID version is a systemd-viant. Other Debians, Devuan and Dyne, are trying to rock it sans systemd. As I said, I have been conditioned away from Debian at this point. The systems I'm trying to set up are Alpine and Gentoo. Gentoo is taking me a while but it is very interesting to learn. One thing I'm learning is patience Alpine was not quite a snap to install (mainly because their instructions tell you to use fdisk, which I did, on my gpt system (sending me back to GRUB/MBR/part school) but once running, I found its package managment, apk, a ports system, very easy to learn/use; it feels like a cross between apt and git, but simpler and smarter. Alpine has a goodly number of setup scripts, quite handy. It's not perfect: chsh doesn't seem to be available to me, and I cannot seem to change the shell from ash to zsh, the repos aren't as large (no cwm, no ranger, no bsd-games, no cli candy like cmatrix, screenfetch, figlet, etc) but it's a different distro to learn and hella hella fast. Thankfully it has other software I use though, Openbox, Fluxbox, Awesome. And it feels like VSIDO in the sense of being minimal.

I don't know how long I'll stick with those distros. I came to linux because of 'live free or die'. systemd is not living free. systemd=die. It could well be the deathknell to the spirit of linux.

Snap: I'm with ya.

[/tirade]

I know others have had better experiences with systemd, but mine has been very rough, and the amount of info I have learnt seems to be better used elsewhere. If you can all live with systemd, go for it. I can't.

[Snap]

IMHO, it's not about how good or bad systemd is or would be. (my personal experience is not as bad as yours, thankfully). The real problem I see it the purpose of it. We see all the time that when something good and nice grows and gets some popularity, if big corporations sniff a good way of making big money, they put an absurd amount of cash on the table and buy it. Sometimes to make a crap of what once was nice and brilliant. Just remember Youtube, Andriod, whatssap, etc...

The Linux case is different. It doesn't have an owner. It belongs to noone, so you cannot get its property or rights. Otherwise be sure it would be on private hands right now and maybe closed coded too. You cannot buy Linux, but you still can conquer it. First, struggle hard (for years) to put your code everywhere. Then make everything to strongly depend on your code to the point that it's almost impossible to run a Linux system without it... Enter: systemd. Mission accomplished. What they will do now? Who knows. But RHEL is a multibillionaire corporation that it's on it for the money... I don't expect very good and nice things from them...

PS, We can still run certain distros without systemd because of the kernel. if they manage to get the kernel one day (they tried and surely they will try again) we can say goodbye to the free Linux we used to know and love.

[jedi]

(  caveat emptor;  I'm not a systemd fanboi, and this is not meant as an endorsement of systemd, and some of you will remember some of the scathing, loathing, diatribes I wrote against systemd )

I'm still not really sure what the "fear" of RHEL is?  They are one of the original distro's iirc, circa 1993 or '94.  I'm sure that most everyone has heard of CentOS?  ("Community ENTerprise Operating System")  It is (or was, or started out as) an exact clone of RHEL using their publicly posted source code, and aamof, RHEL actually dropped their legal actions against CentOS, and even have/had their own paid employees working with the CentOS devs.   

The reason I mention CentOS is because it started out as an EXACT copy or clone of RHEL, resulting in CentOS getting sued by RHEL. They very quickly came to their senses!  (CentOS used to have a blurb on their website about the then pending legal actions)  This multi-billion dollar corp. as you refer to it, is now allowing it's own paid employees to work on AND support an exact clone of their original OS!  How scary can that be?  To me, this sort of makes moot all of the arguments that systemd is a 'monster in disguise', designed to take over the Linux world as we know it...  (can you imagine the hell-fire that would rain down on anyone attempting to make an exact copy of M$ or Apple?)

Here's a quote from the CentOS website;  "Since March 2004, CentOS Linux has been a community-supported distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by Red Hat."

Oh yeah, you mention Android!  Guess what?  It is the largest, and fastest growing Linux distro in the world now!  Yes, Android is the "largest Linux distro" in the world.  Do you know what else?  It does not use systemd!  From what I read it never will.  (at least any time soon) 

The latest systemd 'Sid' .deb file has 623 files listed in it.  The actual /lib/systemd/systemd file on my system is a whopping 1.4 Mb in size.  Today's monster desktop systems and even ones from 10 years ago easily handle systemd.  It is measurably faster than sysvinit-core.  Yes it is bigger.  The Linux Kernel is considered to be 'monolithic'.  I'm not sure how you could classify systemd as being 'monolithic'.  The last time I checked it contained less than 70 binaries and you can compile it according to your needs.  In other words, the parts you don't need aren't used!

And finally, (whew)  sysemd is hosted at, wait for it, here it comes, YES, at freedesktop.org!  No one 'owns' it.  Not RHEL, not Lennart Poettering.  I'm thinking it is a great thing that RHEL remembers their past and still contribute a helping hand to the 'at large' Linux community.  To me it says they haven't forgotten where they came from.  Not that they are trying to "take over the world"...

At the time of this posting, systemd, journald, udevd, and logind combined, are using less than 13 Mb of RAM.  With a total of 16 Gb's of RAM, systemd is a 'speck of dust in the universe' kind of thing to me.  I would think that any Linux box you had that had at least, say, 256 Mb of RAM, and an 850 Mb HDD would run splendidly with systemd.  I personally can't imagine running a machine with those specs in today's world, with today's computing demands, but I suppose there are lots of user cases I'm not thinking about where such a machine would or could be utilized...
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