Stali: A new static Linux distribution

I don't doubt that this won't fly in the traditional sense, but at the very least NIH is also a wheel for diversity. It is clearly interesting to see what can be done there.

That's a loaded question, and I'm only qualified to answer from my perspective and experience. My biggest gripe with it has always been that it is alpha-quality software, even today, that has a central role in an otherwise mature OS ecosystem. It has been widely adopted (some would say forced or tricked into adoption by a few distros) and therefore all the major Linux distributions are now running at an alpha level while its creators try to figure out exactly what they want it to be. That was the state of Linux in the late 90s, a state that it overcame during the 2000s, but now it's regressing again.

First it was "just an init to replace SysV", something I could get behind, and back in 2012 or so I was actually excited about it. Then it started growing, replacing individual components of GNU/Linux with a monolithic mega-app that has more in common with Windows NT based OSes than with anything UNIX-like. Gone is the philosophy of "do one thing and do it well", replaced with "do everything no matter the quality of the results".

I've always been a Slackware user since I started messing with Linux in the late 90s, and these days I find it getting faster and better while mainstream Linux distros slow down and grow more and more bugs. One of my benchmark systems for observing the growing bloat of modern OSes is an Atom based netbook from around 2010. It shipped with Windows 7 Starter, which it ran acceptably but not great.

Recently I tested Windows 10, Slackware 14.2, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 16.04, Debian unstable, OpenBSD, and Elementary OS Loki on it. Slackware was the fastest OS on it by a wide margin, followed by OpenBSD, then Debian, Ubuntu 14.04, Elementary, Windows, and Ubuntu 16.04 dead last. Guess which of those (not counting Windows) do not have systemd? Yep, Slackware and OpenBSD. Maybe it's a coincidence, but given how Ubuntu 16.04 on my modern workstation gets progressively slower with each systemd update, whereas Slackware on the same machine continues to chug along with no issues, that's telling.

All of that said, systemd was and maybe still is a good idea, if only they can stop trying to reinvent the wheel and instead fix the spokes they broke along the way. I can't say I'm happy about eroding the UNIX philosophy from Linux, but if systemd is the future of Linux then it damn well needs to be a stable future.

As someone who has found runit to meet my needs I don't think I have any reason to make peace with systemd.

I feel like part of what people object to about systemd is the 'one true way to linux' thing.

I cannot even begin to describe how silly your comment is. Since when were politicians even comparable to programs? Do we "elect" a init system, as one nation united under Torvalds?

I'm hoping I was just trolled by an HN-flavored Markov Chain.

Fortunately, picking an OS and a distro is not like voting in US presidential elections. In particular, there are more than two viable options.