this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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Many software decisions are more about strategy than philosophy. Compromising on ideals and principles to gain adoption. As mentioned before, I would not be surprised if dependence on machine-id was simply strategy.
Systemd might be replaced in future. But currently it's used in all major distros. It's design and ideas will probably inspire whatever replaces it. If they had spent their time clinging to philosophy and ideals rather than making compromises, then they might have never left the ground.
I'm not sure what was supposed to be leaving ground in your mind to be honest, or whose strategy you're talking about. Linux used to be a community driven effort rather than some company trying to gain growth. Why is gaining adoption so important all of a sudden when Linux has been around for ages without mass adoption, and it's been doing just fine. Seems like part of the issue is actually commercialization because a lot of the decisions are driven by distros that are backed by companies who do want to make profit off the platform.
Well one reason why adoption matters is network effects. Increased Linux popularity, means that more developers will develop for Linux. At a broader level it means that the ideology and principles of the Linux community, like software freedom and privacy, can produce quality results and products for the masses. That brings more power for the Linux community, and more adoption of their principles.
On the flipside, if the base Linux experience is mediocre, then nobody will bother developing apps and extensions for it.
If you are completely happy with Linux the way it is now, then that adoption probably doesn't mean a lot. But I personally think there's a ton more that can be done in the Linux and privacy world
The whole context here is that Linux philosophy and principles are being gutted by companies trying to make a buck off it. In my view, benefits of wide adoption need to be balanced with actually retaining the principles which make Linux a good platform.
Again, Linux has been around a long time before commercial interests started fucking with it. And I don't think chasing adoption for the sake of it is healthy. I'd rather it grows at its own pace. It's already a big enough community to make it sustainable indefinitely, there's absolutely no rush to gain market share here.
I'm not sure if the principles have been gutted like you say. Fedora, for example, uses systemd, and is supported by the commercial RedHat. And yet it is well regarded in the Linux community, and has firmly stuck to open source and pro-privacy principles. They foster diversity too, like the Fedora Atomic and Universal Blue projects, which make it easy to fork distros and create new ones. Not to mention, Linus Torvalds uses Fedora.
One could say that Linux is already growing at its own pace. There are some that wish it would move slower, some that wish it would move faster. systemd wasn't forced on distros. in fact Ubuntu fought it for years, since it was created by their competitor after all. Yet Ubuntu still adopted it in the end, so it must have been worth it.
The way I see it, back in the day, Linux was too fragmented in some areas, and at the same time lacking isolation in others. Systemd standardized and addressed the fragmentation, while containers introduced isolation where needed. The lines are being re-drawn. But I don't think the principles of Linux were compromised that much.
I'm not sure who regards RedHat well actually, they've always been doing shitty things like trying to charge for Fedora hence why people ended up forking it as CentOS. They're a poster child for the problems with Linux getting commercialized. Saying Linus uses something is just appeal to authority by the way.
The problem, once again, is that a lot of the development is now driven by commercial companies like RedHat and Ubuntu that are in it to make money. So, in a way these things are actually pushed on the community because you either adopt them or it becomes increasingly difficult to run software on your distro.
Fragmentation in init was a real problem, but it could've been solved much better by just creating a common standard for configurations while keeping the original modular design. Systemd approach is very heavy handed, and introduces a whole bunch of new problems which didn't exist. The fundamental Unix principle is having small programs that do a single thing well and that can be composed together. Systemd goes directly against this principle.