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Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd

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Re: Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd

#31

Post by boje »

Linux Desktop is starting to smell a lot like Android now judging by how vertically integrated it is becoming. With the push for a permissively-licensed (MIT, BSD etc.) userland and concentration of developers within a small group of companies and orgs sponsored by them, they might eventually do what Google is doing and start delaying releases for sourcecode, or stop altogether. (MIT, BSD and other licenses do not mandate the distribution of source code alongside binaries like the GPL family does.)

It's may get harder in the future to have a Linux desktop that keeps up with the times and also does not include third-party cruft or spyware in the future.

Re: Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd

#32

Post by Avshalom »

pezgrande wrote: post #6

As a Linux normie, I've never understood why systemd is/was so much opinioned about.

Okay so back in ~2000 the audio system in Linux was ALSA and it kinda sucked so along come a guy named Lennart Poettering who wrote pulseaudio which improved things in a lot of ways but also kinda constantly didn't work. Poettering in those years constantly blamed everything on other software in the stack and became kinda wildly disliked. We all had to use pulseaudio though because everything important decided to integrate it.

Jump forward to systemd and absolutely none of trust Poettering farther than we can throw him. At the same time systemd basically did the job of half a dozen programs which offends a lot of people on philosophical grounds. Simultaneously a bunch of things start hard requiring this program that people neither trust nor like.

Re: Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd

#33

Post by zamadatix »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #20
pezgrande wrote: post #6

As a Linux normie, I've never understood why systemd is/was so much opinioned about.

It violates the Unix philosophy of 'do only one thing and do it well', but personally, it has never been a problem for me. I had a nightmare last week wherein I read a headline that systemd was writing its own kernel. When I woke up I realized it was a possibility, after all it has replaced GRUB. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-boot

There is a lot systemd violates in regards to the traditional Unix philosphy rules. The one about do one thing well is probably the most arguable though since systemd is more a set of functionality across a ton of binaries, each with a more focused purpose. Where it differs is in how those interact vs a "normal" collection of Linux binaries where it's expected to be easy to swap out an individual component and still talk to the rest without implementing things like binary formats.

Re: Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd

#35

Post by Andrex »

bitwize wrote: post #15
embedding-shape wrote: post #2

So for us who want to continue distribute across multiple distributions, even those that doesn't run systemd, is there only AppImage remaining now as a truly cross-distribution packaging format?

Errbody seems to use AppImage anyway

God I wish.

Looking at you, DaVinci Resolve.

I'm not sure how AppImage beats Flathub, it's gotten so damn good.

Re: Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd

#37

Post by codethief »

> they want to move the permission management from Flatpak into the service layer, through a new service called systemd-appd. Systemd-appd gives applications an identifier and stores their permissions, and then this data can be queried by the rest of the system. In turn, this enables a slew of other features, not least of which is subsandboxing.

This is fantastic news! As I've argued here on HN many times over the years, proper permission management is probably the single most important piece that's been keeping us from sandboxing everything by default, like on Android and iOS.

Re: Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd

#38

Post by sinpif »

nechuchelo wrote: post #12

While I think systemd is a great init system (as well as some other components under the systemd umbrella), I really dislike when components up in the stack hard-depend on it. We can't use GNOME, plasma-login-manager, and soon Flatpak without systemd. Maybe systemd should have been an API + a spec instead of an unportable implementation.

I'm all for integration of system services if it helps bring a more cohesive OS. Interchangeability is a nice thing when building a system but I don't need it as a user.

Re: Flatpak Will Depend on Systemd

#39

Post by fc417fc802 »

maxloh wrote: post #24
nechuchelo wrote: post #12

While I think systemd is a great init system (as well as some other components under the systemd umbrella), I really dislike when components up in the stack hard-depend on it. We can't use GNOME, plasma-login-manager, and soon Flatpak without systemd. Maybe systemd should have been an API + a spec instead of an unportable implementation.

Maybe this statement actually holds in reverse? Quoting vbernat's comment on Lobsters: systemd was a "gift" for people running alternative desktop systems. Previously, many services were bundled with GNOME and you had to go through many hops to use them on a non-GNOME desktop (for example, GNOME Power Manager). systemd replaced many of these GNOME-only piece of software that were constantly breaking when you tried to…

That is a good point but it isn't mutually exclusive with the idea that systemd ought to be a standardized API as opposed to a reference implementation without a standard.

Also despite all its convenience it's not without its drawbacks. Among other things you can no longer just launch a daemon from a chroot now you need a full blown container sporting its own init.

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