Devuan – Debian Without Systemd

Post by t43562 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

Cu3PO42 wrote: post #82

logicprog wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which software has hard dependencies on systemd? Also, it's not just RedHat that's depending on systemd, as if its a conspiracy on their part. https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/26/plasma_6_6_systemd_lo...

Gnome, for example. GDM now needs systemd's userdb. It is indeed becoming harder and harder to avoid and I understand that this isn't great , but systemd tackles some genuinely hard problems that others don't. Which is to say I don't begrudge Gnome devs for this and personally prefer systemd over current alternatives.

Post by t43562 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

Khaine wrote: post #70

embedding-shape wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * "bUt yOu DoNt hAVe tO uSE it" - tell that to the remote attestation crowd, of which Poettering is a founding member of. see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572 - soon you'll have to use systemD because nothing else can be used. You're saying that because the person who made systemd now work on hardware attestation, all Linux distributions will eventually require remote hardware attestation, where users…

People have been saying this since day dot. It was very controversial for Debian to change to use systemd. The vote was close due to many arguments which are still being played out

Post by t43562 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #121

bandrami wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "Stop Job Running For User 1001: (22s / 90s)" with no indication of which @$%^ing stop job it is is incredibly annoying. And the fact that "systemctl start blahd.service" exits successfully even if blahd didn't actually start because a misconfigured blahd not starting is "correct" makes me want to burn the server room down from time to time. And nondeterministic service initialization is absolutely Broken and…

In the old time with init scripts you had to figure out where to put all those sleep(10) based on the servers specific hardware and software stack. Far from everything in the initi script blocked execution until they completely finished, and things that previously worked could suddenly stop working if you changed hardware or software. The big difference that created deterministic servers in the past is that you could…

  type               = process
  command            = /usr/lib/dinit/dbus-wait-for -s -f 4 -n org.bluez /usr/lib/bluetooth/bluetoothd
  smooth-recovery    = true
  logfile            = /var/log/dinit/bluetoothd.log
  depends-on         = dbus
  depends-on         = local.target
  before             = login.target
  ready-notification = pipefd:4

Post by t43562 » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:33 PM UTC

Wilya wrote: post #95

dashzebra wrote: post #25

Honest question here: why do people hate systemd so much?

In 2015, systemd was a giant, immature and complex galaxy of tools, that came to replace a hacky-but-mostly-stable bunch of shell scripts. It was pushed fast. It came with good ideas and innovations. It also came with security issues, bugs, and lost productivity. The fact that the main guy behind the project has a very... abrasive personality, and that the project got to widespread adoption through political moves mo…

Post by Yizahi » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:37 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #93

Yizahi wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Systems were simpler then and demands were lower. So what if the system boots sequentially and takes two days to boot up. But try to make it parallel and faster, and the whole house of scripts falls down or becomes illegible, undiscoverable and completely unmaintainable mess.

My system is still simple and I still don't have whatever requirements SystemD is needed for. OpenRC does support parallel startup but for a desktop it's already fast enough without it - my whole Linux bootup sequence is faster than BIOS POST.