Re: Boycott Systemd

On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 12:25 PM, Frank Peters <[email protected]> wrote:
> For any who need opposing information on systemd, check out the
> following web page:
>
> http://boycottsystemd.org
>
> This page was referenced on Slashdot recently and contains
> a good overview of the undesirability of systemd.  Of course,
> Gentoo is mentioned as one of the few remaining distributions
> that still offer a choice.
>
> For me, point #7 is particularly odious:
>
> "7. systemd is viral by its very nature. Its scope in functionality
> and creeping in as a dependency to lots of packages means that distro
> maintainers will have to necessitate a conversion, or suffer a drift.
> As an example, the GNOME environment has adopted systemd as a hard
> dependency..."
>
> I do not oppose systemd.  In fact, I'd rather not care about it in the least.
> But I want to be able to implement the boot process and system configuration
> in my own way and it seems that systemd will threaten that in the future.
>
> Take particular note of the end section "What You Can Do."  There
> are plenty of alternatives and such an array of choices is what
> has always made Linux highly interesting, attractive, and useful.
> We all need to insist on keeping it this way.

This last part is important; if you don't like systemd, bitching about
it will do nothing: you have to use and contribute to the
alternatives. Linux (and Gentoo) are about choice, as long as there is
someone willing and able to provide that choice; no one will
(necessarily) provide that choice for you out of nothing.

Also, I would use better arguments than those stated in the posted
link: several of them are inaccurate, or even straight lies: in
particular to the mentioned point 7, it is false that GNOME has
adopted systemd as a hard dependency. That's just not true: GNOME 3
runs in {Open,Free}BSD just fine.

GNOME supports both systemd (logind, actually) *AND* ConsoleKit as
backends[2], so if you hear or read someone saying that GNOME depends
on systemd, that person is either spreading FUD, or showing her
ignorance.

Regards.

[1] http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140219085851
[2] https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-session/tree/configure.ac#n139
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Profesor de asignatura, Facultad de Ciencias
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México