
Operating Systems Without Systemd - yangliwei
https://annihilatormodule.com/2020-01-18/systemd-archives
======
edoceo
Sad Gentoo didn't get more mention. Been using that w/OpenRC since before
systemd existed and it's still my solid daily driver.

~~~
oehtXRwMkIs
I found that extremely strange. Along with Void it's pretty much the go-to
distro for people that don't want systemd.

~~~
Brian_K_White
I took the point of the article to highlight the interesting items.

Who hasn't heard of, and even know the elevator pitch for Gentoo? For decades
already no less.

It's great, and it obviously qualifies to be in the full list, but it's not
interesting or novel to anyone who already uses unix-like os's other than osx.

~~~
hedora
Thanks for the list. There are a bunch of gems on there that I’ve never heard
of.

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coleifer
OpenBSD dabs on this list from the towering arches of the heavens.

~~~
fuball63
I was surprised none of the bsd flavors, freebsd, netbsd, openbsd weren't on
the list. Your comment phrasing made me chuckle too.

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jmclnx
Well they forgot to list Slackware. It does not use systemd either.

edit: just read it again, it is a list of OS he likes, so it was not an
omission :)

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teleforce
Shepherd is probably a good alternative, and it can be used standalone or with
Guix:

[https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/](https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/)

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jbnorth
Maybe I'm just out of the loop but what is the controversy regarding systemd?

~~~
sliken
Mostly that it _WAY_ more complicated than it needs to be, and it often
replaces well written and tested tools with VERY poor implementations.

Things like NTP, syslog, DHCPd, cron, iptables, mount, automount, handling
/tmp, /dev, DNS, su/sudo, etc.

Letting the init system talk to the network before userspace has the ability
to setup firewalls gives me the heebie jeebies.

Often the implementations of systemd don't handle failures well, leave off
critical features like encryption, DNSSEC, etc. They are often hard to debug,
and generally worse than the features they replace.

Not that Linux didn't need a nice init system, but that systemd is trying to
take over everything. The lastest volley on that front is taking over
management of /home with homed, but in a way that's incompatible with ssh.

Do you really want to depend on systemd's homed for managing /home? I'd rather
not.

~~~
microcolonel
Most of these things are simply untrue. The idea that homed is "incompatible
with SSH" is preposterous.

> _Letting the init system talk to the network before userspace has the
> ability to setup firewalls gives me the heebie jeebies._

Are these just random claims? The init system _is userspace_ , and you can
have any service wait for anything to access the network, including disabling
the whole network target and triggering it manually.

~~~
hedora
Here’s a remote exploit for the systemd DNS client:
[https://groups.google.com/d/topic/linux.debian.user/2KyNDWMj...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/linux.debian.user/2KyNDWMjA5s)

Here’s one for systemd DHCP: [https://blog.erratasec.com/2018/10/systemd-is-
bad-parsing-an...](https://blog.erratasec.com/2018/10/systemd-is-bad-parsing-
and-should-feel.html)

Firewalls wouldn’t help with either of these, in fairness.

------
ppf
No mention of Devuan, a fork of Debian for the sole purpose of removing
systemd (and they're also not a fan of dbus, for reasons that escape me).

~~~
bmn__
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17178161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17178161)

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combatentropy
To the commenters: this article explicitly wasn't meant to be exhaustive or
even introductory. The two links he embeds near the beginning were:

\- Linux distributions without systemd
([https://web.archive.org/web/20190208034948/http://without-
sy...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190208034948/http://without-
systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Linux_distributions_without_systemd))

\- Operating systems without systemd
([https://web.archive.org/web/20190208034948/http://without-
sy...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190208034948/http://without-
systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Linux_distributions_without_systemd))

Then he adds, "Here I’m just going to mention a few operating systems that I
personally have found interesting." So these few are just ones where he
thought he had something fresh to say. He did not aim to compete with the more
objective lists he just mentioned.

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efiecho
Just finished reading Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, and if we
could travel back and show the original hackers at MIT things we use in 2020
like systemd, electron etc. I think they would be in complete disbelief over
the amount of bloat, and ask us why we stopped caring and started to accept
software design like that.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
That's because those hackers are in the frontline of the last war (which we
don't have to fight anymore). :v

Crossplatformness or security or convenience in exchange for bloat are all
_EZ_ trades. 2.8/62.8 GB of RAM used right now, btw.

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branon
Plug for Void, the community recently added support[0] for the Pinebook Pro,
so it's been my daily driver for a few months now.

[0] [https://github.com/void-linux/void-
mklive/issues/105](https://github.com/void-linux/void-mklive/issues/105)

~~~
bsg75
Out of curiosity, what makes Void a preferred OS for you on a laptop compared
to something “common” like Ubuntu or Fedora?

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itsajoke
They forgot to mention Windows and MacOS.

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kitotik
At what point is it just systemdOS?

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pengaru
GNOME OS is already a thing

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tramtrist
Slackware. Now and forever.

~~~
mythrwy
14.2 now and forever tho?

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bhawks
Android - anyone? Android is linux, it's init is simple and the user
experience obviously successful. There is a ton here for other distros to
learn and improve on.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> and the user experience obviously successful

That's... one point of view. Another is that Android is very successful at
content consumption while falling short at more complex workflows, possessing
a remarkably fragmented ecosystem, failing to deliver security updates to most
of its users in a reasonable timeframe if at all, and possessing little to no
flexibility at the lower layers (ex. supporting BTRFS or ZFS).

~~~
Tijdreiziger
> Another is that Android is very successful at content consumption while
> falling short at more complex workflows

No shit, it's a telephone OS. I'm pretty sure 'complex workflows' weren't one
of the design goals for Android - nearly everyone has devices much more suited
to that task.

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k__
I think, that sums up what's wrong with the Linux world right now.

NixOS and GuixSD being the next generation of distributions and people are
calling it _" neat project with some unique features, but it is more fun as an
intellectual curiosity than as something practical"_ while arguing if a
distribution should use Systemd or not...

~~~
justinsaccount
The linux world is busy getting shit done. Ignore the children arguing over
init systems.

~~~
wrycoder
The argument is not about the init system. systemd’s is probably fine.

It’s about an ever expanding take-over of userspace by a single module, which
is not the Unix way.

And about a high-handed project leader who is paid by Redhat to do it full
time.

~~~
nrclark
Agreed 100%. Systemd is a pretty good init system IMO. Service files are good,
timers are good, dependency-based init is good. Easy sandboxing is nice.

I absolutely _don't_ think that my init system should also be my bootloader.

It also shouldn't manage my network configuration, or be responsible for
controlling the system clock.

And it shouldn't assert control of my home folders.

And it shouldn't be spidering its way into the Gnome login manager, which grew
a systemd dependency a couple of years ago.

My problem with systemd isn't pid 1. It's all the rest of the shovelware that
comes along for the ride. And it's the "you'll use what we tell you to use"
attitude of the project.

~~~
robocat
> And it shouldn't be spidering its way into the Gnome login manager, which
> grew a systemd dependency a couple of years ago.

gnome-shell used by the Gnome/Ubuntu login process also depends upon
_evolution-data-server_!! See `apt-cache depends gnome-shell` for other
dependencies...

Debian chose systemd instead of upstart because of licensing, not features,
according to
[https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/upstart](https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/upstart)

~~~
JdeBP
If you have only read the wiki pages, written to summarize arguments by their
various proponents, then you _do not know_ why Debian people made this choice.
The wiki pages do not relate that. Start by reading Debian bug #727708 in its
entirety.

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stevebmark
It's weird linux folk hold such strong opinions about something so old and
well established that doesn't matter at all.

~~~
pengaru
You must not appreciate that the systemd name is overloaded; there's systemd
PID1 the init daemon, and systemd the Katamari Damacy of Linux project.

Most contention is over the latter, not so much the former by itself.

