this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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Iirc, the XZ backdoor was specifically targeting RH and Debian, which for some reason link libsystemd into OpenSSH. Afaik even upstream Arch was unaffected, not just Artix. The exploit code, though non-functional, still made its way onto your system (assuming you updated when it was in a release version).
I'm not defending systemd though, it's clear that Poettering's goals do not align with the rest of the Linux community. I'm saying that Artix not being affected by the XZ backdoor is not a good argument for why to use Artix or avoid systemd.
It's like saying "Linux doesn't get malware" because most desktop malware targets the OS with the largest desktop userbase, Windows. This alone doesn't suddenly make Linux "better". That doesn't mean there aren't other reasons to avoid Windows.