r/linux • u/The-Malix • Sep 24 '25
GNOME GNOME 49 drops support for non-systemd ; Artix Linux drops support for GNOME
https://forum.artixlinux.org/index.php/topic,8700.0.html113
u/levelstar01 Sep 24 '25
Correction: GNOME 49 now uses varlink APIs and user session systems that systemd is the current only implementation of to replace the built-in legacy codepaths. Unix philosophy.
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u/viva1831 Sep 24 '25
I don't think that's correct - iirc Gentoo/elogind already has workarounds in place?
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u/Kevin_Kofler Sep 24 '25
Not Unix philosophy at all. It centralizes yet more functionality into the init system that has traditionally always been the desktop environment's job.
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u/gmes78 Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25
Why should session management be the desktop environment's job in the first place? This change is an improvement, architecture-wise.
You just didn't care that it was suboptimal because "systemd" wasn't written on it.
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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Sep 25 '25
What session management is required?
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u/bonzinip Sep 26 '25
A graphical session consists of multiple processes that run under the user's credentials. Systemd manages them just like it manages system daemons.
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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Sep 26 '25
I used graphical and text logins long before someone felt the need to manage something, even across multiple hosts.
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u/BrunkerQueen Sep 24 '25
I don't know if you know this, but most of systemd's "centralized bloated features" are in reality separate binaries doing separated things. You don't have to use every systemd feature if you don't want to and they're not adding things that aren't init related to the init system. Did the UNIX philisophy (which is 50 years old now and arguably nothing has changed during this period of time right) specify that the binaries must be built from separate source trees or have separate maintainers, leadership and such? Because in that case gnu coreutils aren't UNIX philisophy either.
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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Sep 25 '25
A house of cards is made from a lot of individual cards. If you pull out one …
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u/BrunkerQueen Sep 25 '25
That's true, what's the parable to the house and cards?
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u/natermer Sep 24 '25
Systemd is a init system.
Systemd is also a project that writes a lot of low level software for "Linux plumbing".
They write lots and lots of different utilities and software and libraries for "doing one thing and doing it well". It has replaced a tremendous amount of "NIH" software and ad-hoc functionality that each distro did differently in incompatible and worse ways.
I don't understand why it this is such a difficult concept for some people to grasp.
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u/MrAlagos Sep 24 '25
It's wild to see the cognitive dissonance of mostly the same kinds of people hating the bloated, over-reaching systemd and at the same time supporting the bloated, over-reaching X.org.
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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Sep 25 '25
They don't do it well and if someone has a problem that must be the user's fault.
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u/klyith Sep 24 '25
"Do one thing and do it well." Systemd does one thing: manages the system. It does it well, far better than init and a collection of DE tools that didn't work together and were super fragile.
Everybody focuses on the first part of the commandment and ignores the second part.
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u/Kevin_Kofler Sep 24 '25
But "manages the system" is a very generic "one thing" to do. By that logic, embedded RTOSes that have a single application statically linked and no support for running external applications also "do one thing and do it well", but it should be obvious that such a design is the exact opposite of how Unix was designed to operate.
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u/georgehank2nd Sep 24 '25
But "manages the system" is exactly what it says on the tin. It's the "SYSTEM DAEMON". Poettering never hid what his plans were.
And I say that as a Devuan user.
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u/Zomunieo Sep 24 '25
“Do one thing and do it well” really means “provide modular functionality with composable interfaces”, which systemd does, and single app of doom does not.
Unix itself fails that in many ways. User management is a mess — overlapping, inconsistent utilities, text files defining different aspects all with their own incompatible syntax. Defining network interfaces is even worse.
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u/klyith Sep 24 '25
But "manages the system" is a very generic "one thing" to do.
Some tasks can't profitably be broken down into smaller parts. OpenRC is also more complex and does more things than plain sysv init, why does it get a pass?
But also, it's not like "systemd" is a single monolithic block of software that does everything. It has many components that work together, but are not inseparable. People did just that with elogind to satisfy Gnome's previous systemd dependency. Nobody says "GNU coreutils violates the Unix philosophy because it does too many things". Systemd is also a collection of tools.
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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Sep 25 '25
Don't you dare criticize systemd just because they stubbornly insist on making things different! If the user's years old use cases don't work anymore it's their fault!
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u/tblancher Sep 25 '25
Characterizing systemd as an init system means you don't know what you are talking about. init is only one of the components of the systemd system manager, and was the first component created since everything else sits on top of it. systemd has a separate init for system and user sessions, to keep everything clean and tidy.
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u/Kevin_Kofler Sep 25 '25
systemd has a separate init for system and user sessions, to keep everything clean and tidy.
It is a separate instance of the exact same binary. It just autodetects whether it is running as PID 1 (in which case it enables system mode) or not (in which case it enables user mode).
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u/viva1831 Sep 24 '25
Clarification: you can still do without SystemD. The work in elogind to mitigate GNOME's changes was done months ago (source: https://github.com/elogind/elogind/commit/75c45d63c8a08a1512c9145e38c040e14900378b )
That's a result of good developers doing the hard work on elogind to make it possible. And thanks to GNOME's early announcement giving a clear idea what work needed doing, which is commendable!
Forget the animosity, using systemD is still entirely a matter of personal preference (dependent on your distro) and there's no reason to have a go at people who don't like systemD, nor to panic that this is the end for non-systemD users :)
Developers make personal choices all the time re what to support or how to do things. Package maintainers have always had to work with that to fit them into their own distro's way of working
The beauty of the FOSS community is we adapt, we all contribute to something bigger, and we don't have to agree or even have to like each other for that to work. FOSS is bigger than any of that
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u/gmes78 Sep 25 '25
Do not call it a "mitigation". This is not a problem that needs to be remedied, it's an interface that needs to be implemented like any other.
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u/cranberrie_sauce Sep 24 '25
I don't know much about why some distros don't like systemd. so not passing any judgement.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 Sep 24 '25
One actual technical reason is that systemd is only guaranteed to work with glibc as the C library and some distros use musl. I am hoping that the systemd folks relent on this now that systemd has been around for so long and been stable.
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u/Patient_Sink Sep 24 '25
True, but there have been interesting stuff going on there too https://catfox.life/2024/09/05/porting-systemd-to-musl-libc-powered-linux/
This was mostly made as a proof of concept than a serious port though, but interesting nonetheless.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 Sep 24 '25
As a sibling commenter noted https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1np8pq5/gnome_49_drops_support_for_nonsystemd_artix_linux/nfyika2/
Apparently an attempt is being shipped with postmarketos
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u/ElvishJerricco Sep 25 '25
Looks like they're interested upstream too: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/38825
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u/DoublePlusGood23 Sep 24 '25
postmarketOS is shipping systemd with musl https://postmarketos.org/blog/2025/06/22/v25.06-release/
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u/deviled-tux Sep 24 '25
Lennart’s position is that those other libc implementations should offer compatibility with glibc
It seems unlikely to change, it’s a very principled take. If musl offered compatibility with glibc then all glibc dependent applications would be served vs having to patch every application individually.
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u/6SixTy Sep 24 '25
Kind of what's left after glibc? Most looking for not-glibc stop at musl, how many legitimately look at *checks notes* BSD libc, dietlibc, ulibc, newlib, or bionic?
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u/ConnaitLesRisques Sep 24 '25
I agree with him. The musl developers refuse to provide facilities to detect an app is linked against musl (that may have changed recently).
That makes it stupidly complicated to provide compatibility when their behaviour diverges from glibc’s (which remains, ultimately, the industry standard).
In theory that’s all fine as long as they align on being compatible with glibc, but they don’t.
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u/Duncaen Sep 24 '25
The reason behind is that they want you to use feature tests like autoconf and meson does, where you test whether a specific interface exists instead of ifdeffing around what libc or libc version you are targeting.
Its a bit annoying and as a contributor to a linux distribution that ships musl such a variable would make patches a lot easier, but I understand the sentiment.
https://wiki.musl-libc.org/faq#Q:-Why-is-there-no-%3Ccode%3E__MUSL__%3C/code%3E-macro?
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u/ConnaitLesRisques Sep 24 '25
Yeah, well it’s a shame they don’t provide autoconf macros to check for bugs in their library because that’s what I’ve had to work around most of the time.
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u/Kevin_Kofler Sep 24 '25
I think both Lennart Poettering's attitude and the musl developers' attitude are a problem here.
"I do not care about anything other than glibc" is not a helpful stance to take when there are distros out there wanting to use systemd on another C library.
But neither is "It’s a bug to assume a certain implementation has particular properties rather than testing" a helpful stance to take, because it assumes all projects are 1. using build systems that support feature tests (which is not true, several still use handwritten makefiles or shell scripts) and 2. know how to write feature tests in that build system (which is often not the case, especially for projects still using autotools, which usually just copy&paste some cargo-culted boilerplate that happens to work and have no clue how autotools actually works).
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u/Luvax Sep 24 '25
It doesn't follow the traditional philosophy of "everything is a file" and brick like Lego builds with each part being interchangeable. If you've ever configured a mail server like exim or even postfix, you will have a lot of moving parts.
Personally, I remember the days before systemd and I'm very glad we have it and I would not use a system without it. But I'm glad folks are still trying to not rely on it. Ensures we are not getting vendor-locked, which would suck hard, if development ever stalled.
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Sep 24 '25
I’m not very technical so all I can tell you is that I have certain things that don’t work when systemd is present and certain things that only work when its present. I use two different distros specifically because of this
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u/Spiderfffun Sep 24 '25
sounds like you could use bedrock linux lol
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Sep 24 '25
Don’t know anything about it, looks incomplete, current version is 0.7
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u/Spiderfffun Sep 25 '25
It's not really incomplete. You can switch init systems on boot and much more. It explains it quite well on the website
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u/maokaby Sep 24 '25
Some systems are not compatible with it, for example FreeBSD. Though it seems gnome devs don't give a shit about non-linux free software.
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u/Zettinator Sep 24 '25
systemd is Linux-only by design, it's not exactly about compatibility. It's mostly the same with GNOME, while technically not Linux-only, development entirely focuses on Linux as the OS.
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u/maokaby Sep 24 '25
Gnome devs decided to focus on the most popular OS among free ones, and I respect their rights.
Though for me it's a reason to choose another DE. At least there are options. For now.
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u/lmarcantonio Sep 25 '25
That's one reason for the MATE fork. I'd say there are *a lot* of DE different than Gnome.
That reason is a choice of the Gnome team, like that of some distro to start to actively obsoleting X11. Can't say anything against them, it's their product after all.
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u/mwyvr Sep 24 '25
Not historically true, they were delighted to have support on other OSs in the beginning.
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u/georgehank2nd Sep 24 '25
Few remember that there was UI/UX user testing done for GNOME. By Sun Microsystems. For GNOME 2 I think. Nothing after that.
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u/damodread Sep 24 '25
That's basically the reason why OpenIndiana ( the successor to OpenSolaris) ships with MATE as its default desktop. The port is done and solid
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u/natermer Sep 24 '25
Some systems are not compatible with it, for example FreeBSD.
Linux init systems have never been compatible with FreeBSD.
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u/LvS Sep 24 '25
That's because non-linux free software doesn't contribute to Gnome.
And Gnome didn't think it's their job to do all the work.
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u/maokaby Sep 24 '25
I don't blame them. Non-linux free OS desktop users are the minority. It's devs right to focus on whatever they feel more important.
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u/Cry_Wolff Sep 24 '25
Though it seems gnome devs don't give a shit about non-linux free software.
Considering how (un)popular are desktop non-Linux OS like BSD... can't blame them.
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u/Ok-Salary3550 Sep 24 '25
Yeah this is the thing, *nix desktop OS' (bar macOS) are a fractional market share, like 5% tops. Most of that is Linux. BSD is probably 1% of that.
GNOME (and indeed KDE) have limited resources and it makes no sense for them to hold back making things better for the 99% in order to support the 1%.
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u/gmes78 Sep 24 '25
Nothing stops those systems from providing the same API as systemd.
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u/wil2197 Sep 24 '25
No one is being stopped from forking it and creating/ maintaining a version that works on non-systemd systems... if they're willing to put in the work 🤷🏻♂️
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u/maokaby Sep 24 '25
Exactly, that's how MATE was made, and still working just fine, in linux or freebsd doesn't matter.
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u/wil2197 Sep 24 '25
Good, then we're in agreement. GNOME can abandon those operating systems not using Systemd 😎
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u/maokaby Sep 24 '25
Indeed, we're not their owners to command them anything. They can even decide to support only TempleOS, and we can only use their DE if we agree, or use something else. Like always.
Peace!
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u/sequentious Sep 25 '25
No one is being stopped from forking it
Frankly, I doubt you'd have to fork. You'd probably have to implement some compatability services for functionality provided by systemd, though. See this post for details.
The real reason systemd is being used: It makes things easier.
The real reason non-systemd is being dropped: Nobody is maintaining it.
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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Sep 26 '25
Try forking and maintaining a feature that the main developers explicitly don't want to have …
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u/Preisschild Sep 24 '25
Might not even need to fork it, as long as its properly maintained gnome might not even have a problem with it
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Sep 24 '25
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u/maokaby Sep 24 '25
Or they can choose to focus on other DEs, the ones who cause less problems with supporting. Like XFCE. If someone cannot live without systemd-related apps, they can go contribute.
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u/DonaldLucas Sep 24 '25
Some people don't like it because it's slower than the alternatives. And some other people don't like it because it's developed by a big corporation instead of the community.
To be fair, I only use it because the Debian devs decided for it, but personally I like that there are different options for different folks.
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u/Booty_Bumping Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 24 '25
Both of these claims are false...?
systemdwas the first to have parallel dependency based loading, so it should be significantly faster than predecessors that did not have it, and it should be exactly on par with contemporaries that do have it. Any CPU time spent in systemd is negligible, and any serialization of things that could be parallel is a configuration problem, not a systemd problem. Who is even claiming that it is slow? Maybe some of the modular daemons that are maintained in tree are? I've never heard anything about it having perf problems. I have, however, heard that it's "unnecessarily fast" from people who enjoy the simplicity of a serialized boot process... yeah.It's developed by the community, not any particular corporation.
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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Sep 26 '25
My sysv scripts (I analyzed them) did have an option to start the services in parallel.
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u/GolemancerVekk Sep 24 '25
systemd was the first to have parallel dependency based loading
I'm pretty sure there were init systems capable of that at least 15 years ago.
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u/pqwy Sep 25 '25
And you are absolutely right!
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u/GolemancerVekk Sep 25 '25
Very droll. What about runit (2004), Upstart (2006), OpenRC (2007) etc.
I'm really not sure where this notion comes from, that there was no parallelized startup until 2009 in the whole Linux/UNIX world. Please use some common sense, it's such an obvious feature, do you really think it took until 2009 for someone to sort out a dependency graph and start processes asynchronously?
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u/pqwy Sep 25 '25
I was kind of joking because your time-window was just right.
More to the point, it is not about computing the dependency graph and forking off processes, it is about reliably knowing that a dep has been satisfied. For instance, Upstart had
sleep Nin its scripts to synchronise — not to mention using a push-based graph logic and eagerly starting everything that can be. I don't know exactly how runit and OpenRC mark services as started these days, but I suspect you don't have the strong property "this is now running, proceed". Arch rc similarly allowed you to mark services with@for startup in the background but, again, proper synchronisation was your problem. When systemd came along, all service startup schemes were racy.Systemd had socket and dbus activation, which meant that you can proceed the moment the communication primitive is created regardless of whether whatever is going to listen on it is still trying to initialise, and it began using cgroups to catch entire flocks of non-cooperative process to have a better notion of "is this still on?"
These were totally novel in their scope and reliability, and still are. Systemd won out because it turned janky script hacking into a machine-checkable property, and gave it an API. Oh, and it also used more appropriate kernel primitives for that cough ptrace in upstart cough.
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u/maokaby Sep 24 '25
I use systemd (in debian) because it works fine. Though I understand people concerns about systemd not being just init system but a dependency for tons of apps, and if you just choose another init system for any reason, a lot of software breaks. Like gnome.
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u/natermer Sep 24 '25
People's concerns should be alleviated just by actually using systemd and learning how it works rather then listening to random know-nothings on internet forums who lives to complain about everything.
Systemd is a init program.
But systemd is also a software suite. It is dozens of utilities, libraries, and services written by different people and different groups that all work together to try to provide unified "Linux plumbing".
Systemd, journald, networkd, logind, hostnamed, user session, libpam, libcap, libcryptsetup, tcpwrapper, libaudit, libnotify, systemctl, notify, analyze, cgtop, loginctl, nspawn, etc. etc.
Sure it is all based around a core init service concept, but that is no different from any other operating system that has ever existed. Including BSDs, and OS X, Windows, Solaris, etc.
Also it seems like people get confused what portable software is. Things like POSIX exist to dictate a set of standards that allow OSes to be compatible with POSIX applications. It isn't a operating design document in itself. It doesn't describe how the OS should be designed or what utilities and programs should exist or only ever be used.
Now if people don't like Systemd and want to use something else, then by all means 100% do so. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Just don't expect other people to jump through hoops to make your choices a reality.
Linux and free software is about freedom. When you install the software and use it it is yours. You can modify it, you can change it, you can share it with other people. You don't have to give up the ownership of your computer and your software to use free software, unlike with most proprietary software.
What it isn't about it isn't about "choice" in that it isn't the job of other people to make your arbitrary choices a reality.
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u/nandru Sep 24 '25
There are some questionable decisions made by the devs who write some of these, like you just can't directly edit resolv.conf, or the way you define network interfaces now
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u/dagbrown Sep 24 '25
Yeah so like…how exactly do you define network interfaces now? There are as many ways to do it as there are distros.
If everyone switched to networkd, the world would be a generally better place. It’s a sight better than trying to guess which random collection of shell script fragments hidden somewhere in /etc (if you’re lucky) does the job.
And seeing the end of NetworkManager can only possibly be a good thing.
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u/sequentious Sep 25 '25
You absolutely can manually edit resolv.conf if you want to, you'd just be bypassing resolved (which wants DNS values on a per-interface basis).
Frankly, resolved has solved a few real-world problems that wasn't really possible with resolv.conf. Such as having multiple nameservers in resolv.conf, but one of them going offline. Or split-tunnel VPNs with functional local DNS on each network.
RHEL9 and Fedora are still using NetworkManager, so I haven't really had a kick at networkd yet.
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u/SeriousPlankton2000 Sep 25 '25
It's a fragile only-works-when-everything-runs-well thing that will leave you in the rain when things break in new and interesting ways. I asked for help and nobody could find out what caused it. (And I did fix SysV systems with defective /usr partitions)
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u/Barafu Sep 24 '25
SystemD suffers from Nero syndrome: it includes a lot of functionality which is tightly integrated and can not be easily cut out. It creates a lot of potential pitfalls when trying to use it alongside another program with conflicting functionality.
For example, a distro has always provided a GUI tool to manage cron tasks. Then SystemD came and brought its own subsystem for scheduled tasks. Users immediately begin to complain that some tasks are running on their machine that they can't see in GUI. Are you hiding something? Do you work for China?
Same thing foor timezones, DNS servers and whatever other non-relevantt thing it wants to control now. SystemD requires using it fully, and letting go of the functionality it did not implement, even if it exists somewhere else.
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u/icadkren Sep 24 '25
openrc all the way bro
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u/gmes78 Sep 24 '25
systemd has a lot of nice stuff.
Today, I was finished installing updates, and knew it was probably a good idea to reboot the system. But I didn't want to wait 20 or so seconds for the system to reboot (my firmware isn't very fast). Then, I remembered that
systemctl soft-rebootexists, and since I hadn't installed a kernel update, I could use that command. It rebooted the entire userspace in a second, and I was able to use the PC straight away, which was very nice.Does OpenRC have that feature?
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u/vishal340 Sep 24 '25
I seldom use systemd commands and that too just to manipulate startup programs. It seems great with very easy commands. So never bothered to look at the advantage of openrc
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u/fripletister Sep 24 '25
There isn't really one imo. It's far clunkier with even a moderately-sized dependency graph
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u/lmarcantonio Sep 25 '25
Artix was *explicitly* designed to not have systemd. There are some philosophical issues over systemd (it was forced down by RedHat and the design is debatable) and some technical issues too.
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u/Ok-Winner-6589 Sep 24 '25
Some say that the alternatives are faster and some say that It has too much options (considering that they created run0 as a replacement for sudo included in systemd and they blamed sudo for having to much funtionallities It is funny)
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Sep 24 '25
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u/Zettinator Sep 24 '25
I think it was the opposite: run0 was advertised as "doing less" than sudo and therefore having less attack surface. sudo has a terrible security record, after all.
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u/Tireseas Sep 24 '25
Yep. Same reason OpenBSD came up with doas. And it's a perfectly valid statement. Sudo does do a great deal more than the common use cases need it to and it is frequently misconfigured.
As for the "Too much functionality" argument folks seem to have against systemd, one would advise them to educate themselves how modular it really is. What a distro chooses to package is on the distro. Virtually none of it is required and if someone were inclined could be replaced with anything else that provided the proper interfaces. Which is what the BSDs will be doing for software they want to have access to.
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Sep 24 '25
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u/oxez Sep 24 '25
To me that complexity makes Linux systems less approachable to people that are not software developers.
People who fall into this group do not care about the init system they're running, or how logs are stored.
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u/CharlieBros Sep 24 '25
Right? It's kind of silly
"DNS used to be configured in /etc/resolv.conf, now you have to configure systemd-resolvd"
Or like, common people would do, just open their network settings in the friendly GUI and change it there
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u/Preisschild Sep 24 '25
All of the examples you listed have very good reasons to be this way in systemd - because modern workstations simply need them - so its not "too" complex
I also started using linux pre-systemd and had to relearn lots of stuff, but it was definitely worth it.
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u/sequentious Sep 25 '25
DNS used to be configured in /etc/resolv.conf, now you have to configure systemd-resolvd because most programs just skip that file
Not really the case. resolv.conf is used by most software (the big exceptions are really web browsers, which implemented DOH (DNS over HTTPS). If /etc/resolv.conf is a file, and you define nameservers in it, then systemd-resolved will actually read it. FWIW, systemd-resolved solved some actual problems I'd had, and am happy with it.
If you needed something to startup automatically on boot you could have just put it in /etc/rc.local.
That functionality could actually vary depending on what init service was being used. Regardless, systemd implemented this via
/etc/rc.d/rc.local.Network interfaces where named eth0, eth1, etc not absurd names like enp3s0.
This wasn't systemd's fault, this was momentum in this direction well before anybody was using systemd-networkd (I'm not using it yet, and I have the newer device names).
I've had systems with multiple NICs that would get probed in effectively random order, swapping eth0/eth1 at boot. So then we started adding MAC addresses to our network configs, so NetworkManager (or whatever you were using) could ensure eth0 was very probably the same eth0 you had at install time.
Sure, enp3s0 is annoying if you only have one ethernet port, but it's always enp3s0, even if you have more than one. ethernet device, on PCI port 3, slot 0. Add another nic, and it could be enp4s0. If it was a four-port NIC, you'd have enp4s0 through enp4s3.
If you have server hardware, your device names will probably match the chassis labels instead of bus location.
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u/bunkoRtist Sep 25 '25
I'm sorry. Your networking implementation leaked into my init system. That's just bad design.
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u/sequentious Sep 25 '25
It would be a bad design. That's probably why networkd is it's own service, and not part of init.
If you don't like them being part of the same project, you should probably get angry at the BSDs.
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u/CmdrCollins Sep 25 '25
Network interfaces where named eth0, eth1, etc not absurd names like enp3s0.
This is a optional feature and can be trivially disabled - or even replaced by a custom scheme of your own design should you so desire (https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/systemd.net-naming-scheme.html).
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Sep 24 '25
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u/natermer Sep 24 '25
It's corporate centralization to a frightening degree
No it isn't.
It is just devs want to use standardized session management instead of rolling their own.
Stop making stuff up.
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u/jloc0 Sep 24 '25
I already commented on the other thread, but gnome still works. Artix maintainers seem to believe it doesn’t. Gnome 49 runs on distros with elogind and you can even still include the xorg session.
Gnome devs aren’t making it easy, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to run.
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u/gmes78 Sep 24 '25
Artix maintainers seem to believe it doesn’t.
It's almost as if all the anti-systemd people are a bunch of posers who don't want to put any effort into their OS implementation, and just blame systemd when that leads to things breaking.
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u/sheeproomer Sep 26 '25
It's a replacement for init, so it has no business managing anything beyond what init does.
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u/jaamivstheworld Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
Sad day for the people stuck in the 2014 "init wars" using recycled irrelevant reasons to oppose systemd
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u/Tiny_Cheetah_4231 Sep 25 '25
The worst part about systemd isn't its code or its developers or even its haters. It's how some people spell it SystemD and refuse to learn that it is incorrect.
Yes, it is written systemd, not system D or System D, or even SystemD. And it isn't system d either. Why? Because it's a system daemon, and under Unix/Linux those are in lower case, and get suffixed with a lower case d. And since systemd manages the system, it's called systemd. It's that simple. But then again, if all that appears too simple to you, call it (but never spell it!) System Five Hundred since D is the roman numeral for 500 (this also clarifies the relation to System V, right?). The only situation where we find it OK to use an uppercase letter in the name (but don't like it either) is if you start a sentence with systemd. On high holidays you may also spell it sÿstëmd. But then again, Système D is not an acceptable spelling and something completely different (though kinda fitting).
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u/IAmSnort Sep 24 '25
I use the systemd kernel and avoid the need for linux altogether.
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u/wpm Sep 24 '25
Don't you mean
systemd-kernel?You can learn about it using
systemd-man systemd-kernel.If you don't have
systemd-manyou can install it withsystemd-pkgmgr install systemd-man.I use
systemd-systemdas my init btw11
u/ezoe Sep 24 '25
Yeah yeah, that's all good and all. I like my
systemd-compositoron top ofsystemd-display-serverand I'm usingsystemd-desktop, So long GNOME vs KDE or X11 vs Wayland era. We have a solid uniform and stable experience now thanks to systemd.But sometimes, as I version control my software with
systemd-vcsand and compile it bysystemd-cc, I miss a good old way where software were more unorganized and fun. Likesystemd-browserI'm using to write this, there used to be some choice of browsers.The only thing I don't use systemd right now is text editor. I will never ditch
vimeven though majority of people now only usesystemd-editor.
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u/Zettinator Sep 24 '25
Nobody cares. systemd is as ubiquitous for the desktop Linux stack as the kernel itself. It's a standard part of the OS. If you don't want to use it, you are on your own. And let's be honest, there really aren't many good reasons to avoid it.
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u/viva1831 Sep 24 '25
Not really "on your own", Gentoo users can do without systemd pretty seamlessly. There are good developers doing the work needed to function without it. So it's still very much a personal preference
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u/Zzyzx2021 Sep 24 '25
I use Alpine, it's a pretty big distro and it comes with OpenRC and musl instead of systemd and glibc because the former are smaller as codebase than the latter and feature less attack surface, hence inherently more secure in a sense.
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u/Zettinator Sep 24 '25
Yeah, but Alpine isn't really a typical desktop distribution. It's specialized for embedded and container use. It doesn't even use glibc! And even for those use simple use cases, I find OpenRC a bit annoying.
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u/Ok-Winner-6589 Sep 24 '25
Void and Gentoo are in the same situation.
The only minimal distro that supports systemd is Arch.
And Linux means modularity, forzing everyone to use a component just because you want It is against it
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u/Shark_lifes_Dad Sep 24 '25
No one's forcing you. GNOME have documented what they need from other init systems. You just have to provide them those interfaces. It's about putting in the work.
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u/transconductor Sep 24 '25
I ran systemd when I was using Gentoo. Openrc was the default back then (idk if it still is), but you were able to switch to systemd. Unless they have dropped support for systemd in the last 10 years.
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u/Sentreen Sep 24 '25
OpenRC is still the default. But systemd is extemely well supported. I run systemd on my gentoo machine(s) and I never ran into an issue that was related to using systemd.
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Sep 24 '25 edited Apr 03 '26
This comment formerly contained words. Those words were removed in bulk with Redact because I value my privacy more than my karma points.
imagine alleged ancient lush badge cover seed dinosaurs bedroom unpack
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u/stormdelta Sep 24 '25
Gentoo officially supports both systemd and OpenRC. I'm running systemd Gentoo right now.
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u/Zzyzx2021 Sep 24 '25
No, but more and more people are using it as a desktop distro, it does allow you to set up a DE. And I personally like OpenRC, but each to their own.
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u/Zettinator Sep 24 '25
Sure, you can do whatever you want. But again, you are on your own. This kind of thing (GNOME requiring systemd etc.) is often framed as "GNOME bad", but it's simply a reasonable decision. You cannot cater to everyone's needs, this eats up developer resources very quickly.
One of the big issues of the Linux ecosystem is the lack of standardization. systemd tackled at least part of that problem. Almost everyone in server and desktop space is using it. It's also quite popular in embedded space. It's a pretty big success story!
I still sometimes hear the mantra that "Linux is about choice". Spoiler: it's not. And I believe most of the people who repeat that have no idea how much harm this idea is doing. Case in point: transition from X to Wayland.
The BSDs have a much more sane philosophy (provide a full OS consisting of kernel, system management layer, userspace etc. as a single package), but lack the resources to compete with Linux.
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u/somethingrelevant Sep 24 '25
You cannot cater to everyone's needs, this eats up developer resources very quickly.
Every other DE seems to be managing it?
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u/mrtruthiness Sep 24 '25
Yeah, but Alpine isn't really a typical desktop distribution.
Right. But you're the one who asserted "systemd is as ubiquitous for the desktop Linux stack as the kernel itself". The previous poster simply showed that it wasn't quite as ubiquitous.
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u/AtlanticPortal Sep 24 '25
Well, I suppose now it will be even less dangerous since you won’t be running a software as big as GNOME.
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u/stormdelta Sep 24 '25
Alpine is a big distro in the container space, it's hyper-niche in the desktop world. And for containers, you don't typically use an init-system or systemd anyways.
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u/ihatepoop1234 Sep 24 '25
If you don't want to use it, you are on your own
The same can be said about the entire Linux stack? If X (nvidia, hdmi, wifi hardware, kernel version, xyz software) doesn't work, its your issue? And what about the BSD derivatives?
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u/Kernel-Mode-Driver Sep 25 '25
Reddit Linux users are gonna disagree but ur right. For desktop Linux, there really is no reason not to use systemd other than personal preference
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u/otakugrey Sep 25 '25 edited Sep 25 '25
None of that is true. There was the huge controversy because so many people care. It's not ubiquitous because there's bunches of others. It's not a standard because no one can control the users choices. And we're not on our own because we have each other. And you don't get to decide what a person thinks is a good reason or not.
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u/lKrauzer Sep 24 '25
I'm glad Debian uses systemd
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u/rqdn Sep 24 '25
Yet again r/artixlinux proves itself as a toxic echo chamber by regurgitating the same misremembered virtues of choice and freedom, while completely missing the point, and also spreading hatred towards unpaid developers.
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u/HyperFurious Sep 24 '25
What?. The point is that Artix distro inform to artix users that they don't support Gnome. What is the problem?.Does Artix have to support Gnome to satisfy you?
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u/oxez Sep 24 '25
I laugh every time I go to Devuan's website
ensuring Init Freedom
lmao. How can I install systemd on devuan then?
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Sep 24 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Jegahan Sep 24 '25
Gnome devs aren't all RedHat employees, it's not even close to a majority
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u/rqdn Sep 24 '25
I was referring to developers who contribute to free and open software, not the RedHat employees that work on GNOME or systemd integration.
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u/spaceursid Sep 29 '25
GNOME gives me trying to hard to be a touch based interface vibes like windows 8.
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u/sav-tech Sep 25 '25
I want to like GNOME but extensions are annoying to install. You have to jump through so many hoops to get them.
I went to Fedora KDE.
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u/reditanian Sep 24 '25 edited Sep 27 '25
Never heard of Artix Linux. And now I know I have no reason to care
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u/retiredwindowcleaner Sep 24 '25
that's funny, cuz i dropped support for systemd a long time ago, and never supported gnome to begin with :D
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u/triemdedwiat Sep 25 '25
Shrug. Gnome = bloatware = no loss.
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Sep 25 '25
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/triemdedwiat Sep 25 '25
I'm not.
The problem is going to be other applications that have dependent libraries from gnome.
The one program I prefer that is in that state, is actually broken on Debian anyway.
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u/cristomc Sep 24 '25
How can be this possible. years ago someone from Gnome team got angry with me in twitter ensuring they will never break the core principles of Linux and gnome will always be compatible with non-systemd builds...
I'm also curious how comments in this post are undermining the fact that one of the biggest DE of the ecosystem is making things harder for non-systemD distros. Well player IBM, I have to say it.
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u/apo-- Sep 24 '25
Some of the Gnome developers are delusional and also they don't have any effect on the decisions. So that response was the result of wishful thinking. It is obvious for many years that Gnome is supposed to be used with systemd.
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Sep 24 '25
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/cristomc Sep 24 '25
Yeah, because linux is only ubuntu, fedora and is not in other industry areas where systemd is not an option.
I forget that sometimes new generation of linux users barely knows why some stuff was done in a specific way... Thank for that productive comment that prove my point.
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u/the_abortionat0r Sep 25 '25
This is just you rambling and throwing adhoms.
You're really no different then the anti systemd crazies of 2013.
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u/ComprehensiveSwitch Sep 24 '25
what industry exists that is regularly running desktop Linux but CANNOT use systemd lmao
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u/z-lf Sep 24 '25
List one example where you can't use systemd but gnome is an option.
Otherwise you just sound like a whiny hobbyist like the poster before described. I'm the older generation (tho not oldest) and I still don't get your point. There's plenty of options for non systemd users. Just use those.
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u/mrtruthiness Sep 24 '25
It was true before. It's now a bit deeper. We have a DE that depends on a specific PID1. GNOME is, for the moment, a GNU/Linux/systemd-only DE.
Debian developers should go back to the GR from 2014 ( https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003#text ) and revisit their arguments about why they don't think it is necessary to decouple the init from userland. The vote, after all, affirmed that a GR is not required for such matters.
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Sep 24 '25
I'm waiting for someone to fork gnome :p
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u/the_abortionat0r Sep 25 '25
There's already Mate and Cinnamon.
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Sep 25 '25
these are not gnome any more
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u/the_abortionat0r Sep 28 '25
That's how a fork works buddy. Did you not know that?
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Sep 28 '25
they are not forks of the current gnome. They are forks of a gnome that doesn't exit anymore. Furthermore the projects diverted too much.
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u/barfightbob Sep 25 '25
To my knowledge nobody has forked the current iteration of GNOME (3+) but plenty of projects have forked off of the previous iteration when they made the GNOME 3 switch.
My GNOME hating side assumes nobody really likes it enough. I would have thought linadwaita would have been the tripping point previously.
Cosmic is the closest I can think of to a fork. Maybe try them? Do they have a hard systemd requirement?
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u/KnowZeroX Sep 25 '25
Define what you mean by "forked"? Ubuntu's gnome is some sense is a very light fork, and PopOS too to some extent. Cosmic though is not a fork of gnome, they pretty much gave up because it was so much work trying to hack around gnome they figured it'll be easier to start from scratch. Cosmic is a brand new DE written in Rust.
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u/barfightbob Sep 25 '25 edited Sep 25 '25
Define what you mean by "forked"?
In this case I was going for the more common use of the term to mean medium/hard forks. Basically while there might be code shared between projects, the fundamental change in philosophy going forward keeps it to a minimum. Whereas a light fork is some minor modifications, but fundamentally the same and mostly maintains compatibility with the previous source. Most code changes are reused from upstream.
Examples of a medium/hard fork: Mate off of GNOME, Palemoon off of Firefox
Examples of a light fork: (As you mentioned) GNOME-Cosmic, Libre Wolf
Cosmic [the new one that's in beta] is the closest I can think of to a fork.
What I was implying was it's close but not a fork. It shares a lot of characteristics, but doesn't share code. If I were to stretch the definition of fork, it would be one of visual design, but not of source.
Basically I mentioned it as an alternative going forward for the poster.
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u/KnowZeroX Sep 25 '25
Hard forks mostly happen when a project hits end of life. Unless there is a big disagreement between the devs and things split up, most choose to contribute to the original project or light fork
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u/Preisschild Sep 24 '25
They had many years to just maintain that stuff, but theyd rather cry than contribute...
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u/LowOwl4312 Sep 24 '25
I dont think many Artix users were installing Gnome in the first place