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Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

blogs.gnome.org

81–90 of 179 posts

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me an option to donate directly to X11 development and I am gonna support it.

Give directly to X11 development? You'll need to find someone who actually wants to work on the codebase, and then you can donate to them? No one wants to work on it.

There is lots of work no ones wants to do in their free time. That is why you pay people money.

And why wouldn't someone be happy working on X11? It is an open source project, it is high impact work. I would jump at it instantly if someone paid me a competitive wage to do it. Or honestly even a bit under my normal expectation. Not every person wants to work on some ego-driven rewrite of a rewrite. Some people are fine working with legacy code.

Also there is a counter example right above my post. Someone was so motivated to work on it, they even forked it: https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver

Granted the fork seems weirdly ideologically motivated but anyway, case in point.

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the news. That's why the maintainers forked it and are starting improvements on their own project. https://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2025/06/06/msg032... https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver

That reads like someone having a breakdown. Probably going to regret asking, but what is a "redskirt"? > doesn't matter which country you're coming from, your politicial views, your race, your sex, your age, your food menu, whether you wear boots or heels, whether you're furry or fairy, Conan or McKay, comic character, a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri, or just an boring average person. Anybody's welcomed, w…

> > doesn't matter […] your race […] Anybody's welcomed

> I wouldn't touch this racist heap.

You are clearly unhinged. I don't know how to bring you back to sanity, but as the americans say, one cannot reason someone out of a position they have not reasoned themselves into.

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give directly to X11 development? You'll need to find someone who actually wants to work on the codebase, and then you can donate to them? No one wants to work on it.

There is lots of work no ones wants to do in their free time. That is why you pay people money. And why wouldn't someone be happy working on X11? It is an open source project, it is high impact work. I would jump at it instantly if someone paid me a competitive wage to do it. Or honestly even a bit under my normal expectation. Not every person wants to work on some ego-driven rewrite of a rewrite. Some people are fin…

So with the plethora of people who care about progress and its success, and the army of people willing to work on it for a competitive wage, we should be seeing lots of activity on the project, right?

> Give me an option to donate directly to X11 development and I am gonna support it.

> I would jump at it instantly if someone paid me a competitive wage to do it

You guys should meet up.

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#84
post #57

Replying to some sibling comments asking why anyone wouldn't want to use systemd. People want to understand their software as well as it's practically possible. It's not an uncommon preference; worse-is-better was quite successful for a reason. As systemd stands, it's an unauditable mess of tightly-coupled components built to handle any conceivable need. These features create new attack vectors: for instance, systemd…

> Replying to some sibling comments asking why anyone wouldn't want to use systemd.

I get why some people don't want to use systemd. That's fine.

I really don't understand why this group of people are so passionate about broadcasting this opinion to anyone within earshot. They don't like a piece of software, great! They've got different values! Use something else!

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#85
post #57

Replying to some sibling comments asking why anyone wouldn't want to use systemd. People want to understand their software as well as it's practically possible. It's not an uncommon preference; worse-is-better was quite successful for a reason. As systemd stands, it's an unauditable mess of tightly-coupled components built to handle any conceivable need. These features create new attack vectors: for instance, systemd…

There's so much I disagree with in the beginning but the ending is what actually grinds my gears. You make it sound like systemd manufactured this monoculture somehow. This is also the point I've seen people throw in a comparison to some closed-source org with money to burn and questionable morals.

Systemd was chosen by distros and users across different communities because it solves hard problems better than the others. We can debate about why that is, but the maintainers of Systemd aren't running smear campaigns against other open source projects. Often systemd is the subject of such ire.

They chose to solve hard problems and people adopted it. It's not anything more sinister. It's definitely not an "un-auditable mess". It's written in well formatted C with structure, good tooling, and an open community. You can disagree with the ideology but that's open source for you.

Additionally and away from my point, I believe that Systemd won our because they chose to embrace some complexity to solve really hard problems. Let's not pretend that a modern "init" does only system initialisation by calling shell scripts and then disappearing.

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#86
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it just works For some definition of works, like a folder with 300 videos loading for 15 seconds and image viewer unable to open 150MB images. I prefer how Gnome works compared to KDE, but I can't get past the ridiculous performance issues.

Your use-cases are hardly average. I don't think I ever encountered 150MB image or folder with 300 videos. I don't even use nautilus outside of the very niche cases. I'm using Chromium or Terminal or VScode or Idea 99% of time. My GNOME is just a shell switching windows. Whatever file managers, image viewers or other stuff bundled with GNOME matters little for me, I can easily replace them. I don't even understand th…

A computer should have no problems at all dealing with a 150MB image or 300 videos. I'm invoking cmuratori here. What do you think you are getting out of running defense for objectively broken/unusable software?

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#87
post #39

This is a sensible move. systemd is a good piece of software, and foundational Linux infrastructure which by now is very widely deployed. I’ve been doing Linux a long time and my experience is that systemd is much more pleasant to work with than the brittle duct tape and shell script stuff which came before.

Systemd is crap. Works in the main use case, mess up otherwise. It is the windows kernel of linux distributions.

Here for example, suddenly systemd will be mandatory despite systemd not caring for multiple session of a single user. Not only not yet implemented but totally that don't need it personally so no one can want to have it. And so again the capability of our linux based distribution will be restricted for something that was just working for decades.

Again, we can also notice how systemd people try to force systemd usage down or throats by making it mandatory for core parts like the login. Where it is not the responsibility of the initsystem to deal with that (except in windows) and if the thing was not a damned crap, it would be easy to switch to alternatives with clear interfaces.

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#88
post #77
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't decent Pro systemd arguments other than "the Linux API confused me" and sysv init (which no one argues is good) was bad. Personally the last system I had systemd on corrupted my package database after killing apt that I was running in tmux. "Oh you can fix that with xyz systemd configuration." Here's my response: Kindly shove it up your ass and quit moving things around all the time just because you're b…

The pro argument is that writing shell scripts for starting/restarting/enabling/disabling/stopping is total garbage. Not to mention having to manage lock files. systemd units are not perfect, but they are a billion times better than the crap we used to deal with.

Wow, neither of you actually read my comment.

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#89
post #85
post #57

Replying to some sibling comments asking why anyone wouldn't want to use systemd. People want to understand their software as well as it's practically possible. It's not an uncommon preference; worse-is-better was quite successful for a reason. As systemd stands, it's an unauditable mess of tightly-coupled components built to handle any conceivable need. These features create new attack vectors: for instance, systemd…

There's so much I disagree with in the beginning but the ending is what actually grinds my gears. You make it sound like systemd manufactured this monoculture somehow. This is also the point I've seen people throw in a comparison to some closed-source org with money to burn and questionable morals. Systemd was chosen by distros and users across different communities because it solves hard problems better than the oth…

All of us paying attention saw how the systemd authors shopped their stuff around issue trackers and mailing lists telling everyone "it's just the way it is now." They absolutely did manufacture the situation. They pushed hard enough doing this that it's resulted in multiple large distros being forked by groups of former maintainers.

Re: Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd

#90
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Keeping the codebase small and focused makes sense LMFAO. You have not even glanced at insane dumpster fire that is the gnome codebase.

Regardless of what it's currently like, supporting fewer things is going to make it easier to maintain.

If Gnome cared about an easy to maintain codebase it would be radically different. Gnome's complexity is comparable to a large web browser (which is kind of insane considering how little it really does.)
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