Why is Gentoo not switching to systemd?

Message

owemeacent · Post by **owemeacent** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 3:27 am

I'm not a fan of systemd for Linux, or any monolothic kernel for that matter, but I see almost ALL distro's switching to it; Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, Linux Mint, Arch, openSUSE, etc. Gentoo is also a major linux distro. Why isn't it switiching to systemd as default?

HungGarTiger · Post by **HungGarTiger** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 4:25 am

Troll bait..

szatox · Post by **szatox** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:59 am

there were like 4 topics like that 2 months ago, has anything changed enough to start it all over again? If, if you like digging corpses up, why won't you simply look for this slightly older pool?

owemeacent · Post by **owemeacent** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 6:14 am

Oh, sorry

Yamakuzure · Post by **Yamakuzure** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 7:18 am

Wrong question.

The reason is simple: There is no such thing as a one and only init system in gentoo. The distributions you listed must make a decision. But in gentoo, there is a default (openrc) and the decision to use something else can be made by the user. Gentoo is mainly a set of tools with which you yourself make your own distribution. So if you, for yourself and your machine(s), make the decision to switch to systemd, you can do that.

However, openrc is working well and has for ages. And apart from that it is a lot smaller and simpler than a systemd bulk install. So staying with openrc as a sane default makes perfect sense.

gerard27 · Post by **gerard27** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 8:29 am

Yamakuzure ++
Gerard.

depontius · Post by **depontius** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 12:29 pm

I will (with some effort) sympathize with those people who wish to use systemd under Gentoo.
However...

Is it harder to take a default OpenRC installation and switch it to systemd?
Or...
Is it harder to take a default systemd installation and switch it to OpenRC?

I strongly suspect that the former is easier, and based on history if the latter isn't harder it will be in the not-too-distant future. Some of us don't want systemd. We don't force you to use OpenRC, except to get installed. Then you can switch. Please quit trying to force systemd down our throats. If I felt that the systemd -> OpenRC switch were easy and would remain easy I might not feel so strongly, and be more willing to make the switch myself. But the forces behind systemd seem so bent on making it the One True Init System that I believe that at some point it will take reinstallation from scratch to remove systemd.

Post by **NeddySeagoon** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:48 pm

Gentoo is about choice. OpenRC is a good place to start for the install.
Users are free to switch during the course of the install.

Post by **asturm** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 6:21 pm

depontius wrote:But the forces behind systemd seem so bent on making it the One True Init System that I believe that at some point it will take reinstallation from scratch to remove systemd.

Don't be absurd.

depontius · Post by **depontius** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 6:39 pm

genstorm wrote:
depontius wrote:But the forces behind systemd seem so bent on making it the One True Init System that I believe that at some point it will take reinstallation from scratch to remove systemd.
Don't be absurd.

OK, how about as difficult as downgrading glibc...

Logicien · Post by **Logicien** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 6:53 pm

If you use Bluez 5 and want Bluetooth audio, you need Pulseaudio who run eventually better with Systemd. It's the only case I see who make Systemd mandatory.

I test Funtoo again recently. Some users where happy to be able to use Gnome 3 without Systemd. The problem come when Systemd is a dependancy or you want to install it explicitly. There's a loop between Systemd and Udev. A variant of the problem exist with Gentoo.

So, with what I experienced, -pulseaudio -systemd global USE flags seem's to be a less pain.

mackal · Post by **mackal** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 11:15 pm

owemeacent wrote:or any monolothic kernel for that matter

Well, that limits you to OSX and Windows then

(out of the major OSes)

Yamakuzure · Post by **Yamakuzure** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 7:29 am

Isn't it still the case that Gnome 3 only needs logind to be available for gdm to work? I mean if this hasn't changed, than all that is mandatory is systemd to be installed, not necessarily being used to start the system. How much fun it is to start a full systemd session just to be able to have gdb using logind as a consolekit replacement seems clear to me. But at the end of the day Gnome 3 doesn't really depend on systemd at all.

(Disclaimer: This information is scratched off of the back of my head digging through ages old memories that can be seriously wrong.

)

Shamus397 · Post by **Shamus397** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 1:44 pm

I would ask the Funtoo guys who removed the SystemD dependency from Gnome 3. And they did it *without losing any functionality*.

I personally do not care about Gnome and its contortions, but I think it's great news that someone has shown the 'Gnome 3 is tightly coupled to and absolutely requires SystemD' meme to be the lie that it is.

Fitzcarraldo · Post by **Fitzcarraldo** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 5:06 pm

owemeacent wrote:Why isn't it [Gentoo] switiching to systemd as default?

It seems some people are switching to Gentoo because it isn't the default: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/13/174

creaker · Post by **creaker** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 6:16 pm

Fitzcarraldo wrote:It seems some people are switching to Gentoo because it isn't the default: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/13/174

thanks for sharing a link.
Really nice open letter from Christopher Barry.
+1

depontius · Post by **depontius** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 6:45 pm

Shamus397 wrote:I would ask the Funtoo guys who removed the SystemD dependency from Gnome 3. And they did it *without losing any functionality*.

I personally do not care about Gnome and its contortions, but I think it's great news that someone has shown the 'Gnome 3 is tightly coupled to and absolutely requires SystemD' meme to be the lie that it is.

In the LKML thread pointed to by Fitzcarraldo, there is a link to a non-Linux project (I believe it's FreeBSD, but I'm not sure.) to re-implement the necessary parts of systemd as "traditional" Unix programs. In this case I'm talking systemd-logind and it's ilk.

Oops, I quit being lazy - it's OpenBSD, and here's the link: http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/gsoc2014.html#systemd

Post by **John R. Graham** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 7:06 pm

creaker wrote:
Fitzcarraldo wrote:It seems some people are switching to Gentoo because it isn't the default: https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/13/174
thanks for sharing a link.
Really nice open letter from Christopher Barry.
+1

++

mackal · Post by **mackal** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 7:08 pm

depontius wrote:
Shamus397 wrote:I would ask the Funtoo guys who removed the SystemD dependency from Gnome 3. And they did it *without losing any functionality*.

I personally do not care about Gnome and its contortions, but I think it's great news that someone has shown the 'Gnome 3 is tightly coupled to and absolutely requires SystemD' meme to be the lie that it is.
In the LKML thread pointed to by Fitzcarraldo, there is a link to a non-Linux project (I believe it's FreeBSD, but I'm not sure.) to re-implement the necessary parts of systemd as "traditional" Unix programs. In this case I'm talking systemd-logind and it's ilk.

Oops, I quit being lazy - it's OpenBSD, and here's the link: http://www.openbsdfoundation.org/gsoc2014.html#systemd

Yep, that's because systemd-logind is solving a lot of problems for developers in a more elegant way. Which is why KDE Plasma 5 and kwin_wayland are going to depend on it. And the best thing the anti-systemd people can do, would be to help that project, because that's whats driving developers to use systemd

depontius · Post by **depontius** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 7:24 pm

mackal wrote: Yep, that's because systemd-logind is solving a lot of problems for developers in a more elegant way. Which is why KDE Plasma 5 and kwin_wayland are going to depend on it. And the best thing the anti-systemd people can do, would be to help that project, because that's whats driving developers to use systemd

Agreed, which is why I'm really happy to see these projects exist. I've advocated for this type of thing here in the forums, of course "show me the code" which I don't currently have time for. I'd like to see them bilingual, however. Use dbus for systemd-workalike and a more standard interface for those who don't like dbus.

mackal · Post by **mackal** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 7:37 pm

depontius wrote:
mackal wrote: Yep, that's because systemd-logind is solving a lot of problems for developers in a more elegant way. Which is why KDE Plasma 5 and kwin_wayland are going to depend on it. And the best thing the anti-systemd people can do, would be to help that project, because that's whats driving developers to use systemd
Agreed, which is why I'm really happy to see these projects exist. I've advocated for this type of thing here in the forums, of course "show me the code" which I don't currently have time for. I'd like to see them bilingual, however. Use dbus for systemd-workalike and a more standard interface for those who don't like dbus.

Yep, but around here, it seems it's better to ignore the fact that systemd devs are building tools/apis other devs want to use and just believe they're only using it because of some grand conspiracy. Hopefully the issues of dbus are solved with kdbus, but that's going slowly because one of the redhat devs working on it is a bit of tool :/

depontius · Post by **depontius** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 10:39 pm

Can't resist, didn't even try, seems timely: Systemd 216 Piles On More Features, Aims For New User-Space VT - http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTc2Nzk

Interestingly, one of the comments says:

Code: Select all

> Why does an init system need to cache DNS in the first place?
systemd is now an umbrella project for many components that interact which each other. The systemd executable (init system) is just a part of it. Remember udev is also part of systemd.

And another:

Code: Select all

> Why does an init system need to cache DNS in the first place?
Creature feep, of course. Wait til you see the garbage collector and the process scheduler in the next release of systemd.

Comments continue from there, though there is a large flavor of, "Systemd has won, get over it, and you can't survive in your time bubble without it."

Orthogonality please, gents. If systemd is a hard requirement of anything in application space, that's a symptom of a serious problem.

eyoung100 · Post by **eyoung100** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 10:57 pm

I ran OpenRC as my init system for ~9 years and in all that time, I only had one fubar which required a reinstall. Last year, I switched to systemd, as the other major distros are going that direction, and I chose to follow the trend in order to help support others. Tech Support isn't easy when having to switch between init systems when helping users in this forum and over on StackExchange I'll admit the switchover wasn't as painless as I would have liked. As others here have said, it is about choice, and for that matter now that it's done, I can easily switch back if I ever want to by removing one line from my Grub 2 configs. While systemd is geared toward newer users, once accustomed to it, a power user can do just as much.

krinn · Post by **krinn** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 11:29 pm

depontius wrote:Can't resist, didn't even try, seems timely: Systemd 216 Piles On More Features, Aims For New User-Space VT - http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... px=MTc2Nzk

Well didn't read the comments myself, got bore with the feature (lol systemd-terminal/dns cache...) but i wonder how can someone claims that thing is for server too and it need kernel 3.17...
As of today i only see a 3.17-rc1 https://www.kernel.org/
Not only it just doesn't work with an LTS kernel, but it doesn't work with even the current stable one.

I'm sure all debian users will be happy to see they need a 3.17-rc1 on their server to make it works.

And please people, name it correctly : it's "systemd" no uppercase anywhere, a good reminder to help is that you also don't uppercase "shit".

saellaven · Post by **saellaven** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 11:40 pm

Back to the usual "I worship systemd and you all should too" posts... Rinse and repeat.

and some people wonder why we get frustrated and sick of saying "you can use whatever you want, quit trying to force us to use it too."

Waiting for the required link to freedesktop.org explaining how all of us just don't understand how super awesome and needed systemd is... so we can rehash that all over again and jump through the hoops until we get tired of fighting to keep their crap off our system.

I eagerly await yet another thread lock... see everyone in the new new thread in 2 weeks?

Why is Gentoo not switching to systemd?

Do you want systemd as default on Gentoo?

Why is Gentoo not switching to systemd?

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