UPDATE: after many comments, let me be clear that i have nothing against systemd at a technical level. It indeed solves issues that people had and found it’s way in most mainstream distros for good reasons, beside being pushed by Redhat and Debian, which makes for basically every other mainstream distro out there without much choice. I never used it long enough to judge it, and i dont intend to judge it from a technical point of view. I am worried that such a centra piece of technology deeply interwined with linux is under direct control of IBM and Microsoft (who is the employer of the systemd lead). This might mean nothing, or this could be important for the long time future of linux freedom.
I have recently been exposed to a lot of stuff against systemd.
I know its an old debate that has inflamed people for a long time, I am not looking into restarting it as I never took a stance into it in the past anyway.
I am myself a almost 30+ years power user of Linux and I have never used systemd much myself since it never fixed any issues I had with the previous approaches, and since I am a good user of Gentoo, always loved the freedom to just keep using OpenRC and din’t ever bother with systemd.
I like the Unix approach and at the same time, if it is not broken don’t fix it, is my basic idea. So my approach to systemd has been not of dislike, rather of I don’t care, I don’t need it. And I never needed it anyway.
After reading trough most of the links below I start to think that maybe my stance could be more than simple technical.
What are other lemmy-ers idea on all this?
I didn’t knew about Microsoft taking over the Linux Foundation either, and I am getting concerned about the real freedom behind my beloved Linux.
TLDR: I don’t dislike systemd, I never cared about systemd. Do I need to start caring now due to all this non technical issues?
Note: i a copying verbatim the following article to stress that these are not my personal opinions and that i didnt do a proper research on the topic, except reading (most) of the links below.
(The following is a post on the #libreware telegram channel on the 7th/8th of February 2025)
Lennart Poettering intends to replace “sudo” with #systemd’s run0. Here’s a quick PoC to demonstrate root permission hijacking by exploiting the fact “systemd-run” (the basis of uid0/run0, the sudo replacer) creates a user owned pty for communication with the new “root” process.
This isn’t the only bug of course, it’s not possible on Linux to read the environment of a root owned process but as systemd creates a service in the system slice, you can query D-BUS and learn sensitive information passed to the process env, such as API keys or other secrets.
https://fixupx.com/hackerfantastic/status/1785495587514638559
Nitter mirror: https://xcancel.com/hackerfantastic/status/1785495587514638559
Here are some links about #systemd #alternatives for #Linux in no particular order. Which are your favorite alternatives and distros?
https://suckless.org/sucks/systemd/
https://unixsheikh.com/articles/the-real-motivation-behind-systemd.html
https://sysdfree.wordpress.com/
https://skarnet.org/software/systemd.html
https://the-world-after-systemd.ungleich.ch/
https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=120652
https://www.devuan.org/os/announce/
https://www.devuan.org/os/init-freedom
https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/linux-systemd-exploit.html
https://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fallacies.html
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/systemd-it-keeps-getting-worse/
https://systemd-free.artixlinux.org/why.php
Some more added here too: https://start.me/p/Kg8keE/priv-sec
#systemd #Linux
Where did you get this idea?
I didn’t knew about Microsoft taking over the fsf either, and I am getting concerned about the real freedom behind my beloved Linux.
I think you are confusing FSF with the Linux Foundation, and you can see MS as part of the platinum LF members. Was that it, or you really meant FSF?
You are right… I will fix the top post
deleted by creator
I don’t dislike systemd, I never cared about systemd.
Do I need to start caring now due to all those non technical issues?
(Tldr added to top post)
I really love all the 5+ years old articles about why systemd sucks.
It’s not perfect but it’s so much better than the plethora of different init methods Linux used to have. Also managing sysv init scripts sucked really bad.
It’s lightweight, most of it is optional, it’s declarative, it makes managing your systems much easier and it just works.deleted by creator
Yeah, OpenRC is pretty good IMHO, never had an issue with it. sysv is just like comparing to Windows 3.1 i guess.
deleted by creator
Thank you, at least somebody took care to actually respond to my question somehow!
Systemd has more features than old SysV init scripts. Particularly around detecting events and taking actions such as starting firewalls when joining networks, turning on battery tools when unplugged from a charger, starting new services when connected to a dock etc.
The other things it does, it does more reliably than sysV init scripts. It starts services concurrently, provides a profiler to improve start up time, contains much less code, provides better security to tapping into the container features of Linux.
Anyway what you describe is done at DBUS level which has nothing to do with an init system. I do have DBUS and works just fine as it would with OpenRC or SystemD either.
SystemD doesn’t really help with all that, with OpenRC never had issues with that.
Security is actually where Systemd has troubles generally. It has more CVE tgan all other init together. And reliability (esp. starting order of services) is another weak point.
This is concern indeed, but not using systemd myself, i don’t care too much.
Is the fact that such a critical core compoent spanning everywhere in the system is under the control of IBM and Microsoft that concerns me.
How do you know a post was written by a systemd hater? Easy, they’ll spell it with a big D for some reason. It reminds me of how Norwegian rabid anti-cyclists are unable to spell “cyclist” for some reason.
Claiming you don’t want to restart an old debate and then trying to restart it anyway is pretty funny.
You might also want to keep in mind that you can’t really force an init system on Linux distros. Systemd became the norm through being preferred, as in, the people using and maintaining it think it’s good. At this point you might as well be ranting about how “LinuX is evil somehow” and we should all be using GNU HURD or Minix or something.
Also: Haven’t thought about suckless in well over a decade, maybe closer to two? I guess way back in the day I was kinda intrigued by their ideas and used some of their products; these days I’d rather see them as something between an art shop and people who are playing a somewhat unusual game with themselves, but not particularly relevant to mainstream software engineering.
I am not debating it’s good or bad from a technical perspective, i don’t care, i am sure it’s good otherwise why use it at all.
Why are you focusing on that? I never said it’s been forced, i never said its bad or evil, i never discredited it.
I think it’s worth understanding if the non technical points are just FUD or not, i worry about the future of Linux, not the future of it’s init system whatever it is, all it need to do is satisfy it’s function and OpenRC do it as well as systemd (there, with the small d is it different?).
I was under the impression SystemD was the name, with the capitals and all. Will fix the top post if this is somehow offending you. Whatever.
Systemd provides a modern user space which fixes a huge number of problems. At first I found it difficult to learn but it had things I needed and I made the effort. I will always be nostalgic about things before systemd because I started using linux in the mid 90s.
I’m not going to throw away my GPU and multi-core CPU and go back to a 386 running dos because multithreaded applications and speculative execution scare me. There is no way to match what modern systems can do by taking old architectures and just adding more gates or faster clock speeds. And there are parallels in software architecture.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with running a BSD or a non-systemd linux distro if you like. They are still perfectly usable in a lot of situations doing the same stuff people did for years in these systems. If you have a server with a static set of devices that runs a fixed set of services at startup you don’t really need systemd. I still have some systems like that but systemd also handles those cases more efficiently and robustly.
You see these sort of link dumps from people who think vaccines cause autism or that some diet will cure cancer. Whatever the intention behind it I always associate it with a bad faith attempt to fuck with people’s heads by bamboozling them with more information than they can rationally analyze.
Believe what you want but you might want to consider that all the experts working on systemd and using it productively might know their shit.
i like systemd
Lennart Poettering intends to replace “sudo” with #systemd’s run0. Here’s a quick PoC to demonstrate root permission hijacking by exploiting the fact “systemd-run” (the basis of uid0/run0, the sudo replacer) creates a user owned pty for communication with the new “root” process.
To my understanding that actually solves issues. A lot of ppl already prefer other tools like doas since sudo is basically “too big” for what it does.
More code means more potential bugs. run0 has to my knowledge significantly less code. And the benefit of not relying on SUID.
In the end, you do you. The big distros will adopt what is good for them and good to maintain. You do not have to use it.
Gentoo user here too. I once switched to systemd, but didn’t stay using it for too long. Back then some things didn’t work with systemd. Nowdays my systems use seatd instead of logind or elogind. Some have musl toolchain. It’s just simpler, currently, for me to use OpenRC on all of my setups. But the thing I most disliked with systemd was that it cannot work without journald.
Fellow gentooer! I love how much you can actually decide by yourself how to craft your system with Gentoo.
OpenRC just rocks, a few lines of bash and all is set. But indeed is not for everybody… (Joking).
How is musl? Does it make a difference on glibc?
It’s supposed to be more strict about standards… and maybe lighter in resources. I’ve been only testing it. Curiosity driven choice. 😉
Cool! Maybe for a tight, small system is good? Let me know if you come to conclusions.
I’ve never used another init system, but i see no problem with systemd. The declaritive approach makes things very robust. Surely some things can be improved, but it’s a good tool.
Edit: Also managing user services the same way is nice.
Yeah, as i stated i am not questioning systemd good or bad, useful or not, but the non-techinical aspects highlighted in the links…
TL;DR



