An exit from the systemd/eudev/openRC/upower/whatever maze?

[MaurizioB]

Hello.
I am a loyal Gentoo user, since almost 10 years.
I never told anybody that Gentoo is better than Ubuntu, Mint or any other distribution: I know that every user has its needs, capabilities and, most important for a meta-distro like Gentoo is, time to keep his/her system updated with the latest "gentoo-situation".
Once the first year or two of "An emerge world a day keeps the doctor away" was passed, I started to update it with a slower pace. In the last 2 years I usually make a full system update every 2-3 months, since I've no time to follow the continuous rolling state of Gentoo - I know what you could say right now: "You could just move to another distro". That's not the point. Gentoo is for customization and optimization, first of all, and I need that.

Sorry for the long introduction, let me get to the point.
I delayed - for personal and working reasons - the updates on systemd/upower/blahblah on my system. Right now I've a mess whenever I try to launch an emerge -Duva whatever, and looking at the number of forum posts here and there (not counting blog posts around the web) I'm not the only one having this sort of problems. The question is not "what can I do", but "what anybody can do".
I know that, being patient, after carefully reading a couple of dozens of posts, I could find a way to update my computer carefully. The problem is: why would we need to read everybody's single specific update problems, since we don't have even a clue about what we can do? We are not talking about a "static" situation like a distro like any other, I think that almost 80% of people using Gentoo has a specific situation which differs from the others.
And still there's no trace of a "Gentoo-team" guideline on if-this-than-that.
Let me be clear: I don't think that anybody would need a specific step-by-step guide on what to do, since that wouldn't be useful if not for a small part of users; but I am afraid that a lot of users out there spend too much time understanding somebody else's problems and then try to apply it to theirselves, since they are not able to find a "meta-guide" on what to do.
I understand that this is a peculiar moment for init/sustem situation in the linux world, and in the long term this might be reminded as an important moment in the glorious Linux history. But leaving everything in the hands of users, without an albeit minimal "distro-guideline" about it, is not healthy for our beloved distribution.

Maybe I am wrong, maybe I used the wrong queries in the search boxes, but after reading dozens of posts, threads and comments, I am afraid that the situation is not far from what I see right now.
What I was able to find is something like "if you want systemd, do this", "if you need upower, do that", and so on. But why would I need systemd? Or why should I choose to use upower over upower-pm-utils? And why is not there a sort of eselect whatever-init-system-management-you-need?
10 years ago a static page system like the gloriuos Gentoo handbook was wonderful. The choices were "minimal", the big choices were between the desktop environment, genkernel over self made kernel, nothing more. Right now most users have lots of apps which are built around a framework or another, and they don't care too much using Gnome with Qt apps, or XFCE with Gtk based programs. So what does "If you use Gnome, use systemd" mean? I use fluxbox, and, for working reasons, I need to have every framework compatibility to be up and ready: I make music for a living, and don't really care about applications using this or that framework, I just need them. And I don't think that I am the only one in a similar situation.

To the conclusion (sorry, I know I am really prolix). What I think is that the Gentoo team should focus on being a little bit more "present" about this new revolution in the system[d] situation, at least giving users a hint on why use and choose a solution over another.
Do you think that I am wrong about this?
I really love using Gentoo, I still want to use it, build my packages and customize it to the bones, but I'm feeling really alone out here...

Please, sorry for the length of this rant, I hope I am not the only one feeling like this

[shazeal]

Too much choice eh?

I have switched back and forward between SystemD/OpenRC several times on my test machine with no issues...

So what I would say is this, pick one and stick with it. They both have some advantages and since you are like me with fluxbox (although I am looking at e18/19 for the future since I like the virtual desktops better in that), I dont NEED SystemD.

No one needs SystemD, but it has some nice features like JournalCTL (yes some people hate the binary thing, me too personally) which has some very easy to use features for logging review. For a desktop user this is not really important though.

I would say just use whatever you have at the moment. If for some reason a piece of software you want requires SystemD just find some new software, or switch then if you cannot live without it.

I am personally leaning toward SystemD at the moment, although I currently use OpenRC on my desktop. The problem I have is alot of newer tools will not authenticate correctly without SystemD. Xfce4-power-manager is one, with SystemD I get full power management, with OpenRC I need to hold back upower to a really old version, install consolekit/pm-utils and log in without a DM, it works but its pretty annoying especially since NVIDIA + EFIFB is broken meaning my TTY break after I logout (meaning I can never log out).

For me I dont care enough about the whole SystemD debate, I just want stuff to work. I think in the future you will see more issues like this as packages start to adopt the newer tools which are not backward compatible.

I had the same dilemma with Pulseaudio, I hate the stupid thing. Alsa just works why do I need Pulse?
Well Skype now only uses Pulseaudio and one of my Family members only uses Skype (Windows user, and too lazy to switch to something else). So here I am using Pulseaudio (and not much to complain about tbh).

This is just my view... if it aint broke dont fix it... until its broken then fix it

As for the Gentoo team commenting on this... an impartial run down of the features would be nice. But its almost impossible to find impartial people on this topic.
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CFLAGS="-OmgWTFR1CE --fun-lol-loops --march=asmx86go"