I like systemd
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2025
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Systemdeez nuts
Most people do
There are places I wouldn't use it but for most systems it makes things simpler
OOL: whatβs the beef with systemd?
I'll just copy my comment from the other day.
Some people think it handles too many low-level systems. It's a valid concern because if systemd itself were to become compromised (like Xz Utils was) or a serious bug was introduced, all of the userland processes would be affected. People who are stuck in the 90s and think that the Unix philosophy is still relevant will also point out that it's a needlessly complex software suite and we should all go back to writing initscripts in bash. The truth is, it's complex because it needs to solve a complex problem.
Red Hat, the owner of systemd, has also had its fair share of controversies. It's a company that many distrust.
Ultimately, those whose opinion mattered the most decided that systemd's benefits outweigh the risks and drawbacks. Debian held a vote to determine the project's future regarding init systems. Arch Linux replaced initscripts because systemd was simply better, and replicating and maintaining its features (like starting services once their dependencies are running) with initscripts would've been unjustifiably complicated.
it does too many things, thus going against the unix philosopy of "do one thing and do it well"
Systemd does one thing, it manages services, and does so reliably, without messing around with spagettified shell scripts, with a fuckload of options, and all of that easily is configurable by dropping in files without editing stuff that arrived from the package manager. Seems pretti "do one (complex) thing and do it well"
If you add other things built around it, it can do more. For example, if you install systemd-nspawn it can start and stop containers like it starts and stops services.
Other things that you think of as systemd are entirely separate things (like systemd-networkd) that are just built around systemd. You don't have to use them if you don't like.
On the other hand, you know what does not follow the Unix philosophy? The Xserver, which manages screens, graphic acceleration, input devices, printers, remoting, etc. And it doesn't even do it well
I need systemd-run to start a process in my startup scripts (that are a systemd oneshot service) so that the process won't get killed when the startup scripts have run (subshells, nohup, ... still keep the same systemd cgroup so get killed with the tree).
I need journalctl to get output from services, so basically every system and user process I didn't explicitly start in a console. I don't even know how to get info from systemd stuff in any other way, as they don't have alternate logging facilities to my knowledge.
Systemd also ate my fstab at some point and translates mounts into services, but I haven't really looked into that.
I think there were a few more components packed into this systemd core. Without the init system/servixe manager, logging, ... you can't really use systemd stuff including parts of that core.
Past that, things like networkd, resolved, ... are very modular in my experience.
I can imagine running resolved under a different init system, and I have migrated both to and from resolved on systemd systems. They do still change old paradigms, resolved replaces a file not a service for example, but they do provide adequate translation layers and backwards compatibility in most cases (Though the mounts for example has lead to me getting 5 "run daemon-reload" info messages on every execution of mount before). An issue here might be when something only supports the new systemd interface not the old stuff, say a program directly calling resolved instead of looking at resolv.conf. But I haven't seen that, and most of those interfaces seem decent enough to implement into systemd-alternatives.
Maybe someome who actually tried cherrypicking some systemd stuff into their system can provide some more experience?
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Shouldn't init systems control services and processes?
See also: the Linux Kernel
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Who said Wayland was going to be the death? (Excluding canonical) Everyone knew X needed to be replaced and that the transition will be slow until its not.
And systemd is not that bad these days. I do think it's more complex than it needs to be and startup is a bit slow, but that's about it.
GNOME making the huge changes inspired the refugees to build Cinnamon and injected some sense into KDE development. Now even GNOME is getting more sensible.
I saw someone giving a talk either about Wayland and they said someone told them they "don't like Wayland because it violates the Unix philosophy." (Do one thing and do it well.) The speaker said they responded by asking "What one thing does X do well?"
systemd is not that bad these days
It never was bad, in fact it was better than the alternatives even in it's beta releases.
I sure as f don't miss x, but for the fing love of God can I get some access at the shell level to my input devices? The death of Autohotkey is killing me slowly.
It's probably countered by the "year of the Linux desktop" claims. Keeps it in a limbo.
It's the first time I hear systemd or wayland were spelling the death of the linux desktop (not even gonna mention gnome, it's a choice).
There are controversies around these two, some extremely valid, some a bit over the top, but both do work adequately for the vast majority of common use cases. I'd even argue that systemd (the init process) is better as far as being user friendly. And I say "user", not "poweruser" nor "sysadmin". And wayland is an opportunity to clear some long-lasting backward stuff, and even though it is possible to find issue today, for regular (and new) users, it has no bearing on the usability of their system.
As a sysadmin I'll say systemd is far better. No contest.
It's the first time I hear systemd [...] were spelling the death of [...] linux
Where've you been? We've been expressing concern about its badly-built badly-architected metastatic creep for a decade of dwindling choice and competition as it slowly forced out dissent and clued concern.
Now it's eaten autofs, DNS, cron, NTPd, and replaced them with shitty clones, and has carefully eroded our ability to recover from this mess.
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It's impressive how much hatred linux gets, by people who generally try to say it's insignificant and unnoticeable.
But eh, better them say that it's going to die, than with Windows where everyone agreed to say that it was dead after 7 and stopped having any expectations.
It's even more impressive how much hate Linux gets from people that love it
We call that "Star Wars Syndrome."
I don't quite get why massive Gnome changes would imply a death of Desktop Linux. There are so many great alternatives to it. It's been many years that Gnome has been considered bad by many, and that many have used alternatives. I just think it's positive that Gnome continue to get worse, because like that more distros may default to better alternatives to begin with.
I hated Gnome 3 when it came out, but it got better over the years. If you want to use it as a traditional KDE-style DE, you're going to fight it and have a bad time. If you use it as intended, and that works for you, it's good.
Interesting. I think they might have been my problem, I was just trying to use it tradicionally. I wonder how it's different nowadays.
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Gnome is awesome
It was somewhat of a special situation back when Gnome 3 dropped. Ubuntu & flavours of it was still regarded as the go-to distro by many and KDE still had a somewhat damaged reputation due to KDE 3 (even though 4 was already available, however that also had some issues). Many environments we know today didn't exist yet, so lots of people were rather distraught when Gnome broke with a lot of concepts and dropped what arguably was a horrendous DE.
Many of our current DEs are Gnome 2 or 3 forks (MATE, Cinnamon, Budgie, and back then also Unity), made exactly because of this whole debacle.
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I never understood it either. I was a user of Gnome until Gnome 3 showed up and I decided to nope out of there. It was a simple process of trying few different DE's and I have settled on KDE and Cinnamon for when I want that old timey Gnome feeling.
It wasn't hard to switch at all.
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Hot take: the more Gnome shoots itself in the foot, the better for Linux.
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All is better than the shit MS is pulling, from mass surveilance on their "business" apps to making an OS with ads included that you have to spent hours to make it useful.
While Linux has many flavors that just works for 80% of the people that dont have super specific use cases.
Does anyone even use desktops anymore?
I do... and always will.
Fuck it, we CLI
What? yes?
Do you mean as opposed to using phones/tablets, or do you mean like having a tower computer and peripherals? People still use laptops and stationary computers for work, like office work and computer related hobbies and anything like it. For doomscrolling and simple games, phones are more popular though.
Weβll, I mean as in desktop PCs. Iβm assuming the βYear of the Linux desktopβ thing is a joke that itβs been that long coming that people were still using desktops when people first started saying it.
Some people include laptops in "desktop" since it's the same paradigm of the interface, especially if you hook up an external mouse and have a regular screen and keyboard. Laptops are still widely used. Some people use the term workstation. If 90% of people used linux on laptops for browsing, writing, programming, editing media, spread sheets, etc, I'd say that was the year of Linux on the Desktop, even if they don't have a Compaq with a CRT screen sitting on their desk.
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According to this data, desktop devices still make well over 50% with over 75% in Europe.
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Not only that but also while those changes were mostly received well in the end you can still use a no systemd, x11, MATE distro if you're genuinely unhappy with them
woah michael jackson is looking kinda goofy these days
and who was saying those things were going to kill the linux desktop? i only ever saw anyone talking about how that stuff would mean the year of the linux desktop
Linux is made of death. It is The Death.
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