It sucks to hear that a project like LFS is forced to drop System V support. I never was a fan of systemd, so this is a bit dissapointing, albeit understandable.
OpenRC seems to work pretty seamlessly on Gentoo. Just throwing that out there.
I love the work gentoo does. I should probably also donate to them…
From the mail it doesn’t exactly look like “upstream dependencies on systemd” but rather like a lack of features in sysvinit:
The second reason for dropping System V is that packages like GNOME and soon KDE’s Plasma are building in requirements that require capabilities in systemd that are not in System V. This could potentially be worked around with another init system like OpenRC, but beyond the transition process it still does not address the ongoing workload problem.
So it seems a bit like sysvinit is simply a dead end and there is definitively not enough manpower for a transition to openrc/elogind/whatever…and it’s a good chance to consolidate the exiting workforce on a single version. Sounds all pretty reasonable to me. But it can’t really serve as example for systemd being an absolute requirement even for LFS now and them being “forced” to use it.
Some people don’t understand that systemd isn’t the only init system, not even just the only init with modern features. We have runit, OpenRC, s6, dinit, each with very levels of features. The reason there is no real competitor to what systemd does is because it is “cheating”, and by that I mean systemd isn’t just an init system. It has major scope creep, trying to do everything. It isn’t even the best at doing what all the other software it replaces (like DNS, time, etc). What it offers that is irresistible to developers is unifications and abstractions which make developing for Linux simpler. This though is the exact opposite of what many people love about Linux: the option to pick and choose.
Distros should stop cathering to Gnome whims. Leave them to their own, doing their Gnome things, if they can’t play nice.
This doesn’t bode well for Slackware’s next release.
One approach currently discussed on the forums is to remove KDE from the repos and let the community support it.
But that would drastically change what Slackware is - It’s supposed to be a fully-featured general purpose distro that you can boot up and immediately get to work, whatever your use case is.Gnome, not KDE. KDE still runs on X.
This post isn’t about the switch to Wayland, it’s about the switch to systemd.
Gnome hasn’t been included in Slackware for a very long time.
And KDE on Slackware already runs a Wayland session by default.
Systemd abstracts so much stuff away that it does not feel like learning Linux “from scratch” :/
(I like having it in my daily driver, but it’s sad LFS had to drop support for a “lower level” init system)
I’m not a huge fan managing an OS with system V. but in a educational context it effectively make way more sense than systemd
(I like having it in my daily driver, but it’s sad LFS had to drop support for a “lower level” init system)
It’s not lower-level, it’s just worse.
What I mean by “lower level” is that it has less abstractions built in
I guess? It’s it a shame that lfs uses C code instead of the “less abstract” x86 assembly?
Ouch, LFS of all things… That’s harsh.
Wow, that surprises me. I did LFS with Sys-V (didn’t continue to use it after I set up X11 as I couldn’t be bothered with package maintenance/mostly did it as an exercise rather than for the sake of the finished system) and found it a fun project.
I wonder how many LFS users use GNOME or something that depends on systemd…
I hope something similar doesn’t happen to Slackware…
The distro whose goal is education and customization drops support for the easier to understand and lighter init system out of lack of maintainability in service of accommodating the new stuff big desktop environments are doing.
Welcome to the Year of the Linux Desktop. See you all on FreeBSD in 2027.
you can always go ahead and maintain sysv and it’s support throughout linux software.
Surely you’re not serious.
My tiny pebble of help won’t hold back the tides of the desktop environments carving the myriad packages that make up linux into what they need at the behest of whoever keeps their maintainers in new shoes.
Even if it could, choosing the de over the init system in lfs shows where the priorities lie. To quote the linked mailing list message, the decision has to be made. Individual people who see that as a worse path can’t change a thing.
i’m not actually serious. you’d have to organize with the people who also want it done, like the systemd people do.
Organizing with people who also want it done, like the systemd people did at the behest of their employer to solve one of its many problems selling linux as a centrally manageable replacement for their competitors’ products.
At some point we have to acknowledge the elephant in the room using an elephant sized lathe and an army of paid workers to shape linux. The days when people could band together and make decisions about the future of this operating system have been over for over fifteen years now.
and you address that by finding the people who also want it done and deciding how you are gonna find the solution to your problem. there is definetly not a shortage of groups forking of old DEs and maintaining them for years.
the people behind systemd found someone to pay them for it, and seem to attract most of the people and companies interested in working on it.
my suspicion is that there just ain’t enough people interested in other systems.
The cancer spreads.
Seeing the comment about Slackware, you’re not wrong.
Fuck Systemd
Yah! Screw them 20 line unit files. We roll with 500 line bash scripts.
/sarcasm
There are systems other than SysV and systemd…
Don’t do false dichotomy.
But I responded to a comment cursing out systemd on a post about system V being dropped?
The comparison is as made because the comment brought up systemd on a post about system V.
They said fuck sysd, which is fair, I don’t use it on my desktop either.
My service files are still 10-20 lines.
U mad bro ?
I just don’t like that Cthulhu like creature of unimaginable horrors called Systemd that thrusts its tentacles into every subsystem.
