systemd cat and GNU cat hugging a Linux cat.

  • Rose@slrpnk.net
    371·
    6 days ago

    “systemd is the worst implementation of init, except all those other inits that have been tried from time to time” -Churchill, if he had been a nerd

  • wolf@lemmy.zipEnglish
    28·
    6 days ago

    Since you asked for OS and not Linux: OpenBSD and FreeBSD are beautiful systems w/o systemd. I would switch in a heartbeat if I wouldn’t need Linux for work reasons.

    • Opisek@lemmy.world
      501·
      6 days ago

      This feels like an “I would switch to Linux if I didn’t need Windows for work” comment from another universe.

      • wolf@lemmy.zipEnglish
        10·
        6 days ago

        Fair point. :-)

        At the end of the day, the OS has to run the software/applications one needs to get shit done… if it is macOS or Windows, that’s okay.

        In my defense, I ran NetBSD for several years a long time back, and it was one of the best OS experiences I ever had. I am just old/pragmatic/flexible enough, to choose setups with less friction, if possible. ;-)

        Still, I think it is a shame that Linux mostly took over the UNIX world and the BDS are left for hardcore nerds/embedding/game consoles and Solaris and co are not viable options anymore. Portable software and its stability benefited a lot from bugs detected on other platforms (OpenBSD was always a forerunner here).

        • wolf@lemmy.zipEnglish
          8·
          6 days ago

          Not sure what you want to express. I actually used BSD a long time back, and the quality/documentation/coherence/beauty of the system are/were just on another level… Running Debian for nearly a decade now, because of compatibility (with hardware and software I need)… Linux improved a lot in the last nearly 3 decades and I am happy it exists, still I would be more happy if the BSDs would have stayed at least on an equal footing.

          • Shin@lemmy.worldEnglish
            8·
            6 days ago

            I think the comment speaks for itself. There wasn’t anything deep behind it. It literally just mean “Linux users look at BSD users how Windows users look at Linux.” Bewildered, mystified maybe? It’s just lower on the “food chain”, and they are surprised to see people using it because it’s missing “X” feature they can’t live without, for many people that being gaming. I’m in the same camp.

            It was not a comment on the quality of the software, as I have never used it. I would love to tinker with it one day to see the differences, but I can’t see myself ever switching to it, even if I admire/envy some of the better parts compared to Linux.

            • wolf@lemmy.zipEnglish
              6·
              6 days ago

              Thanks for clarification!

              … and I think you are point on, by now, the ship has sailed. I could use FreeBSD/OpenBSD on servers, but I’d rather run Debian everywhere. On desktops and for day to day usage, the BSDs are no viable options anymore, they simply lack support for common hardware (Wifi etc.) alone and the BSDs will realistically never be able to catch up the chasm anymore.

            • tryagain@lemmy.ml
              3·
              6 days ago

              I feel there’s a similar relation between Mac :: Ubuntu (me) :: Arch.

              I try to explain to folks that I have very little interest in anything outside of /home. I truly use Ubuntu because I like the desktop and Steam works and I have all the dev tools I need. But a certain type of otherwise competent Mac-using developer thinks I must be a 1337 h4x0r to even dare to use Linux for actual work.

              • Shin@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                6 days ago

                Any “hate” in regards to you using Ubuntu is more likely to do with controversy involving Canonical than it is you using a beginner-friendly distro. People are more likely to be kinder to the Mint user.

  • boaratio@lemmy.world
    5915·
    6 days ago

    So the old init.d system was better? Come on people, let’s stop infighting. I have zero preference on init systems. You know why? Because they’re just plumbing. Stop this nonsense. Do I click on an init system? Do I use the init system to check my email? Or play games? No. I know poettering can be controversial, but let’s just move on. Run freebsd if you’re so butt hurt.

    • dblsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de
      302·
      7 days ago

      Yeah, on a desktop I don’t really mind whatever*. On a server however, I think systemd is great and I wouldn’t want to miss it anymore.

      * except Debian’s frankenstein systemd + sysvinit combination. Burn it

    • 10001110101@lemm.eeEnglish
      11·
      7 days ago

      So much more than an init system though, which I think is why people don’t like it. Personally, the only annoyance I have is I preferred log files over journald.

    • msage@programming.dev
      5·
      6 days ago

      So the old init.d system was better?

      because those are our only two options…

      I hate this argument so much, because it’s just a fallacy.

      There are (and have been) more solid init systems.

  • RadioFreeArabia@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    19·
    6 days ago

    ReactOS.

    I have no moral or philosophical objections to the design of Windows NT, just the company that makes it and the enshittification. If ReactOS ever becomes stable enough to be daily used I would use it. For now I use LinuxMint and Steam OS at home.

  • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4020·
    7 days ago

    systemd is fine. The only people I’ve ever heard complain about it are lonely neckbeards pretending like their opinion somehow matters.

    I’ve used Debian as a server system since it was using init.d. And do you know what I found? systemd is easier. And the fact that Debian of all distros decided to use it says a lot.

  • snd (he/him)@discuss.tchncs.de
    16·
    6 days ago

    I have to say as someone who uses NixOS I love systemd, because it makes a lot of things very easy. For example hardening services ( systemd-analyze security) or replacing cron (system timer).

  • Raccoonn@lemmy.ml
    17·
    7 days ago

    System service managers like systemd, OpenRC, runit, or SysVinit often come down to user preference. While these systems are crucial for initializing and managing services on servers, where uptime, resource allocation, and specific daemon behaviors are important, their impact on a typical desktop or laptop is generally minimal.

    For most personal devices, the primary functions of a service manager occur largely out of sight. As long as the system boots reliably and applications run smoothly, the underlying service manager rarely registers as a significant factor in the daily user experience.

    For many, including myself, systemd simply works without much fuss. My choice to stick with it isn’t due to strong conviction or deep technical analysis, but rather the simple fact that I’ve rarely, if ever, had to interact with it directly. For my personal desktop and laptop, it reliably handles booting, service management, and shutdown in the background. If it’s not broken and isn’t hindering my daily computing, there’s no compelling reason to explore alternatives.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      71·
      7 days ago

      System service managers like systemd, OpenRC, runit, or SysVinit often come down to user preference.

      And coding best-practice. And a philosophy borne of bad luck and bad software that aims to resist monoculture.

      But that lennart kid is cool for a Microsoft employee.

    • mittorn@masturbated.one
      19·
      7 days ago

      @furycd001 @nutbutter Technically, it’s broken. If you run screen/tmux built without systemd support, it will be killed on logout. Systemd requires every program that needs daemonize link libsystemd0 only to notify systemd to keep it running. So it’s broken, but worked-around in every software which need daemonize

      • twice_hatch@midwest.socialEnglish
        11·
        6 days ago

        Systemd requires every program that needs daemonize link libsystemd0

        No, that’s only if you want the health check feature, so that systemd can distinguish between e.g. “The process is started” and “The HTTP server is bound and listening”

        You can run hello world and a sleep() loop as a systemd daemon. You can run a Bash script as a systemd daemon.

        I’m pretty sure that notification is also like 5 lines of code. You read an env var and that tells you a pipe to send a single character on.

        You are not obligated to use libsystemd. And if you were you could certainly layer another init system inside of it

      • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        102·
        7 days ago

        So, running a program incompatible with a particular system leads to incompatibilities?

        Wow, who’d have thought…

        • mittorn@masturbated.one
          01·
          6 days ago

          @lka1988 why systemd needs some extra compatibility? If it designed to work, it must just work, not requiring changing evertyhing around

          • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            6 days ago

            Ok, let me spell this out for you:

            IF YOU RUN A PROGRAM THAT IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH A CERTAIN PART OF THE CORE SYSTEM, DON’T BE SURPRISED WHEN IT LEADS TO INCOMPATIBILITIES.

      • InnerScientist@lemmy.world
        2·
        6 days ago

        If you run screen/tmux built without systemd support, it will be killed on logout.

        Actually, if you run anything and logout, it will be killed after a timeout. The way to prevent this in systemd land is to enable-linger for that user.

        IMO this is a pretty sane default and it’s easy enough to disable for users

        EDIT: For non-root users

        • mittorn@masturbated.one
          1·
          6 days ago

          @InnerScientist This might be good behaviour (especially on shared multiuser system)
          But how often you using shared multiuser systems in 2025? In 2015? In 2010 this might be useful, but now we are using containers instead.
          When you have single root user, single unpriveleged user and few service users, such behaviour is just useless. If interactive user left some services running, it’s usually intentional. And systemd requires notify about this intention every time. Why? It’s just useless complexity.

          • InnerScientist@lemmy.world
            1·
            6 days ago

            And systemd requires notify about this intention every time.

            Systemd requires a one time fee of loginctl enable-linger myserviceuser to never kill processes with a timeout for that user again. This behavior also doesn’t affect system users, only normal users.

            I think the main purpose nowadays is to stop pipewire and other user services that don’t need to consume resources when that user isn’t logged in

  • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    9·
    6 days ago

    Neither Haiku or 9front use systemd, and they’re both very interesting from a technical and design perspective (though not for their init systems).

    If it has to be a Linux distribution I would say Damn Small Linux (DSL), because its really impressive just how few resources it requires. You can run x windows and even browse the web (using Dillo) on a system that’s small enough to fit in the L3 cache of some modern CPUs.

    I don’t daily drive any of these though, so they might not count as my “favorite”.

    • jim3692@discuss.online
      1·
      6 days ago

      I had a look at Haiku some months ago. Its single user architecture is an interesting choice. I mean, you don’t need to worry about privilege escalation exploits, if you are always fully privileged /s

      • drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        4·
        6 days ago

        Yeah, it doesn’t actually make much of a difference:

        Fundamentally the idea of having a separate admin account, which is completely protected, and a user account where everything can mingle together and see everything else, is a 1960s security model. It was originally created for a world where the owner of the computer and the user of the computer were two different people. In that world the user provides all the software that they want to run in their account (they probably wrote it) and the OS’s job is to protect the admin account from users and the users from each other.

        Fast forward to the present day and this security model is completely mismatched with the reality of a personal computer. The internet exists, the user and owner are the same person, and they’re probably not writing all their software themselves. A piece of malicious or compromised software can encrypt every file in your user folder, steal your browser history, your saved passwords, and (on xwindows) record your keystrokes and make your screen display anything it wants, all without privilege escalation. But you can rest assured knowing that the user account can’t violate any timeshare limits that the root account placed on it.

        The one thing you could argue is that a separate admin account makes it easier to detect and fix a compromised user account, but:

        1. Most people are not in the habit of regularly logging into their root account and examining all the processes that are running in their user account. In fact many distributions do not even have a separate root account.

        2. If you do think your computer has been compromised the sensible thing is to wipe the disk and restore from backup. It just doesn’t make any sense to fiddle around trying to figure out just how compromised you are and trying to reverse the process in a running system.

        3. If you’re running xwindows I hope you never install updates or type your password for any other reason while some malicious software is running, since, as previously stated, anything running under your account can record your keystrokes. In that case your admin account is compromised anyway without having to use any privilege escalation exploits. Can you see how all this stuff was built with the assumption that the user and owner are two separate people with two separate passwords?

        With Wayland and containerized applications we are slowly moving away from that 1960s security posture, which is something that’s long overdo. But currently something like Linux Mint is not really much better off than Haiku, from a pure security model standpoint.

        In any case its security model is not the interesting thing about Haiku.

        • jim3692@discuss.online
          1·
          6 days ago

          I feel the importance of user privileges distinction, as I see it from a server perspective and organization managed devices. Some would argue the insignificance of this in the personal desktops.

          However, I believe that the community structure of Linux is benefiting everyone. It is a general purpose kernel, that gets improvements from various different sectors. In the current space, where most servers run Linux and most desktops run Windows, desktops are not benefiting from filesystem or scheduling optimizations implemented for servers.