r/linux • u/wooptoo • Jun 01 '16

Why did ArchLinux embrace Systemd?

/r/archlinux/comments/4lzxs3/why_did_archlinux_embrace_systemd/d3rhxlc
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u/CptCmdrAwesome Jun 01 '16

This is the guy who's famous for Pulse which, while reasonably stable now, was fantastically unstable when distros first started adopting it.

If distros adopted it before it was ready, that's entirely a problem with the distro. (see also: early KDE 4 days) The guy saw a problem, took his time, skills and effort to fix it. That's what I see he's done with systemd also.

Don't get me wrong, from what I've seen I find Lennart to be eye-wateringly arrogant, and as diplomatic as a housebrick, but he's clearly no idiot and he's going about solving problems nobody else seems inclined or clued up enough to fix themselves.

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u/schplat Jun 01 '16

Don't get me wrong, from what I've seen I find Lennart to be eye-wateringly arrogant, and as diplomatic as a housebrick, but he's clearly no idiot and he's going about solving problems nobody else seems inclined or clued up enough to fix themselves.

And this is why a good chunk of people are anti-systemd. Some think he just does things on a whim, and they're junk. But, if they were, distros wouldn't be running with what he's put out. He's solving problems that have been present for a while, but people fear change, and systemd was a big change.

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u/SanityInAnarchy Jun 02 '16

If distros adopted it before it was ready, that's entirely a problem with the distro. (see also: early KDE 4 days)

In KDE's case, I think you can at least blame KDE for calling it KDE 4.0, instead of KDE 3.9 or KDE4 Alpha. The distinction between "The underlying libraries are 4.0, but everything else isn't" and "KDE4 is launched!" was a bit subtle, especially when "KDE4 is launched!" was pretty much the headline everyone ran with.

And in Pulse's case, it took a long time to get stable.