💾 Archived View for g.stian.digital › 2022 › 01 › 03 › 1.gmi captured on 2022-01-08 at 13:39:10. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I am in many ways a systemd maximalist, and appreciate it greatly. I don’t believe it should be a dependency for most software however, as it is a bit too heavy for some systems, particularly embedded ones. However, systemd’s Linux-dependence poses an interesting question. Do we want Linux to be the only kernel?
The great thing about free software and Unix-like operating systems, has been that usually you can make a program on Linux and use it on BSD or Mac OS without any hassle. But when software depends on systemd, for example with logind, this is suddenly not true anymore. Instead, to use it on another system, you will have to create awkward patches that usually breaks features. Upstream is rarely interested in helping out. This is also true for Linux distributions that use other init systems. GNOME is dependent on systemd, and does no longer work properly without it.
Systemd is necessary for Linux to evolve. I just wish it was modular. The way I see it, several actively developed kernels/operating systems is necessary for a healthy free software ecosystem. It motivates the community to develop and follow standards. If systemd defined a standard that FreeBSD (for example) could implement on it’s own, what a wonderful world we would live in. But that’s not the case. It’s so great to see that efforts like seatd/libseat aim to standardise and modularise features of systemd so that we can take a step back from the extreme pace of innovation and make sure to take the whole community with us. We don’t want to live in a community where Linux is the only proper free kernel.