I’m planning to move over to Guix over NixOS, as soon as my current situation improves and possibly import a new libre respecting laptop (Star Labs is thankfully available in India). I do have a very old laptop with a Celeron processor and 4GB of RAM with Guix installed already, and what has come to my attention is that it uses shepherd.

I’m not actually against or for systemd, in fact, I am not really sure why I should even care - maybe it is because I’m still not on to the level of a power user. Since I’m starting to learn kernel basics to prepare for GNU/Hurd contributions in the nearest possible future and shepherd seems to be what the GNU folks will be using, is there any reason why I should even care about the freedom of init system?

Edit: I’m asking this because I came across this blog - What is systemd and Why Should I Care? and also because Guix uses shepherd, and I’m not sure how I’ll be affected.

  • 0x0@programming.dev
    2·
    1 year ago

    Big spoiler there.

    I don’t think systemd is the epitome of technological evolution, but that’s another rant. The fact that it’s not just another init system is at the center of it, though.

    Because it’s not, any distro that chooses to use it is, in fact, adopting a whole ecosystem. Some apps that predate systemd are even hard-depending on it for… reasons. Can you use GNOME without it? Why most distros adopted it as default instead of an alternative i can only speculate. At least Slackware hasn’t adopted it so far and Gentoo took, to me, the sanest approach: you can choose your init system, including systemd if you so prefer.

    Devuan is the response to Debian choosing systemd. It’s its raison d’être, to be Debian without systemd.

    I was unaware of Kicksecure, who their founder is and when they decided to adopt systemd, so i may be at fault here.

    With this i agree:

    It’s troublesome if distros and/or DEs rely so heavily on systemd to do their bidding. So much so, that some combinations of distro + DE don’t allow any differentiation in init or make it very cumbersome and unwieldy at best.

    With this, i don’t:

    systemd has become so good that even opponents can’t deny its merits and continue to make use of it

    And this is where i think you’ve contradicted yourself. IMO, the only reason opponents use it is not because it’s so great but because it’s so entrenched in whichever distro they’re using.

    • alt@lemmy.ml
      2·
      1 year ago

      Thanks a lot for this excellent write-up! I believe it has successfully fulfilled its purpose.

      To make myself absolutely clear: I believe that we agree on our general sentiment towards systemd; I don’t like how it has almost ostracized other inits, nor do I like how ever-impactful it has become across the board so much so that even the most established DE (read: GNOME) has had hard dependencies to systemd in the past[1].

      And this is where i think you’ve contradicted yourself. IMO, the only reason opponents use it is not because it’s so great but because it’s so entrenched in whichever distro they’re using.

      Got it! I see now why you might have perceived that as a contradiction. And honestly, you might be correct! I assumed that systemd is used for how it might enable the full system AppArmor policy[2] and other features that Kicksecure has become known for. Honestly, I’m not an expert on Kicksecure myself. I just like the project and even try to import some of their systemd-related features and/or configs on my daily driver.

      Based on past readings, the idea that systemd was (ironically) still preferred on Kicksecure for security-related features stuck with me. But, honestly, it could have been my misunderstanding and instead they might have chosen to make the best out of it as not using systemd would have increased the maintenance burden tremendously.

      This conversation has opened the possibility to me that Kicksecure’s maintainers might have stuck to systemd for non-security reasons. Ultimately, your contribution by addressing that point has been immense. Thank you so much for the insight and for being patient with me 😊!

      1. I believe this has since been resolved.
      2. Based on the following statement: “AppArmor can do this by loading a profile for systemd in the initramfs.” found here