
Ask HN: Why don't Linux distros provide systemd opt-out? - victorhugo31337
It would have been great if the Major Linux distros, Red Hat in particular, would have provided users with an option to either user Sys-V init or systemd.  The argument being that Sys-V init is more suitable for Server&#x2F;Enterprise environments and systemd for Desktop environments (IMHO).
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sauere
Maintaining 2 or 3 different init systems is non-trivial and companies do not
want to support 3 different init systems for the next 10 years. It costs time
and money, so they would rather have people work on things that actually
matter instead.

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victorhugo31337
I completely agree, however I think it would have been worth the effort, even
if it where only to appear in Fedora. Definitely non-trivial, but could have
been done when first integrating systemd.

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logn
Gentoo and Calculate Linux (which is based on Gentoo). But I think the package
manager in Gentoo is awful.

There's also Alpine Linux. And in Debian you can switch to sysvinit or
upstart.

If you're really anti-systemd maybe consider FreeBSD, PC-BSD, or OpenBSD.

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victorhugo31337
Awesome that Debian gives you an option. This may be my excuse to finally
switch from RHEL/CentOS.

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logn
For how-to:
[http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=37871](http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=37871)

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digi_owl
Well RH seems very keen on pushing systemd as a basis for containers etc, so
you will not get much luck there.

The major thing though is that systemd is not just a init.

At present is it init, login, logging, xinetd, cron, firewall, networking, and
the list keeps growing virtually daily.

Meaning that providing an option means providing effectively two distros.

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seiji
There's a theory that systemd is a way to make certain flavors of Linux more
proprietary/locked-in by exercising absolute control over vital system
services though non-standards bodies.

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bitshepherd
Each of these projects accept patches from the community (read: me and you).
If there is no money attached to it and the community doesn't have time to do
it, it ain't getting done.

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damm
You spend more time caring and hating on systemd than it takes to learn it and
overcome your issues.

Most everyone who hates on systemd has this problem; you could blame systemd.
Or you could realize you have a problem

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victorhugo31337
I think it's a legitimate question. Systemd seems more targeted towards
desktop environments where things like D-BUS are needed. I'm thinking of
bastion server configurations using a distributions like CentOS where less is
more. It may be worthwhile to use Sys-V which has less moving parts, fewer
configuration options and thus fewer vulnerability points. Not to say that
systemd cannot be hardened as well, but having a choice would have been
better.

~~~
digi_owl
Or you could adopt any number of other inits that have much the same benefits
as systemd-as-init, but without all the baggage.

Frankly the reason systemd even gets attention is because the likes of Gnome
needs a part of it, logind, to handle logins/sessions, and that it basically
absorbed udev (after udev had existed as a independent project for a decade).

