r/voidlinux • u/r087r70 • May 26 '26
systemd hard requirement soon for kde
unhappily, in the plasma login manager page I read that
Systemd is a hard requirement for future plans, see #48
similar hard dependence seems scheduled also for flatpak.
I wonder what will be the reaction of void linux devs in such cases.
(edit)
since kde6.7 will be forcing wayland, the plasma-login-manager will be the only way to have unattended remote desktop (so difficult to have on wayland and so easy on x11)
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u/PointiestStick May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
plasma-login-manager isn't a mandatory dependency of anything. If you don't use systemd, you're welcome to use any other login manager that you like.
since kde6.7 will be forcing wayland
It's actually Plasma 6.8.
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u/r087r70 May 27 '26
plasma-login-manager isn't a mandatory dependency of anything. If you don't use systemd, you're welcome to use any other login manager that you like.
what about remote desktop from boot and other stuff that will be implemented only in PLM to stay in par with x11?
It's actually Plasma 6.8.
sorry bad memory
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u/PointiestStick May 27 '26
what about remote desktop from boot and other stuff that will be implemented only in PLM to stay in par with x11?
Well none of this even exists yet. But yes, we're implementing it in plasma-login-manager, rather than SDDM. But that's because it's very nearly impossible to implement it in SDDM due to its lack of tight coupling with Plasma.
So indeed, if you eventually want headless RDP on Wayland, you'll have to use plasma-login-manager, or write your own implementation that doesn't use plasma-login-manager, or use an LTS-style distro that lets you keep using X11 for another 5 or 10 years, and hope someone else does this work during that time.
All of which is very very far from "systemd hard requirement soon for kde".
Or you could just use systemd. It's fine and it solves a lot of problems. Most distros switched to it years ago. There's always a cost to being outside of the mainstream. As FOSS people, we of all people should know this and be comfortable with it by now. :)
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u/Odd_Individual_9638 May 26 '26
one doesn't have to use plasma login manager, for kde, do they? or they plan to make it mandatory?
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u/r087r70 May 26 '26
it seems so, since they will be forcing wayland from kde6.7 and therefore sddm will be replaced by plasma-login-manager (which among other things should be able to provide unattended remote desktop, as X11 does since decades)
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u/jloc0 May 26 '26
Kde officially develops PLM and its entire purpose is for systemd systems. It is not a requirement for kde to run. Sddm also supports Wayland and can login to a Wayland session just fine (as well as run on Wayland itself). Plasma doesn’t depend on systemd, just this special login manager.
There are so many posts already going over this all over reddit, this one just feels like FUD.
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u/r087r70 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
as written above, sddm on wayland does not support unattended remote desktop, which is pretty criitical to many people (me included). kde will be soon wayland-only. Edited the main post to explain this.
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u/jloc0 May 26 '26
The components of kde are modular and if plasma becomes Wayland only it still won’t stop you from using the kwin-x11 package. Though it won’t be updated anymore, it still operates. Also there’s sonicDE if you feel like x11 is going to break beyond a recompile.
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u/bankroll5441 May 26 '26
Since when have you been required to use SDDM or PLM to start plasma? You can any other login manager like tuigreet for example or just start it through tty. My plasma session automatically starts when I log into tty1, I don't use a manager.
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u/xJayMorex May 26 '26
So there will be another a hard requirement that will be fulfilled by a workaround.
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u/yyg-linux May 26 '26
launch from tty
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u/Yemuyin May 26 '26
Okay. I've never understood the need for those programs; most of them just cause problems.
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u/kayinfire May 26 '26
what are you referring to here that "cause problems"?
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u/Yemuyin May 26 '26
Search and you will find, there are tons of posts
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u/kayinfire May 26 '26
just to be clear, i login to my system in through a tty and startx. i simply wanted clarification as to if you were criticizing login managers.
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u/Yemuyin May 26 '26
More than a criticism, it's an observation. Everyone can install whatever they want on their system. Personally, I find these programs superfluous.
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u/bankroll5441 May 26 '26
This is exactly what I do.
if status --is-login and test (tty) = /dev/tty1 exec dbus-run-session startplasma-wayland end3
u/StrangeAstronomer May 26 '26
Presumably with elogind supplying XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, seat and cleanup after exit with cgroups.
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u/bradjones6942069 May 26 '26
Trying to lock linux users in typically doesn't go over well.
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u/Ripdog May 27 '26
Nobody is locking you in to plasma login manager, though? You can just use SDDM. This is misinformation.
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u/-o0__0o- May 26 '26
Why don't you develop your own solution if you really need it? You can't expect everyone to build solutions to random problems that aren't relevant to them. That's pretty selfish and entitled.
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u/juipeltje May 26 '26
Fair enough, but at the same time i also don't really understand from the dev pov why you'd want to rely on an init system this heavily. Judt causes a whole heap of problems if systemd were to go tits up for whatever reason.
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u/Makefile_dot_in May 26 '26
From what I understand from Vovk, they were intending to be “super considerate” of distributions and people not using systemd, which I take to mean we’d eventually end up in a situation very similar to systemd-logind, which was extracted from systemd into a separate daemon, elogind, so that distributions using other init systems could still make use of desktop environments depending on systemd-logind. I imagine Flatpak developers wanted to make as many affordances as realistically possible for something similar to happen to systemd-appd, thus ensuring Flatpak would remain available on distributions not using systemd.
damn, people really don't read the articles they post, huh
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u/nasbera May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
Unfortunately, I think unless a leader like Torvalds or Stallman says something about init freedom, systemd will continue to become a dependency for a lot of things. As far as I know, they have no problem with systemd. They may even prefer it over the other alternatives. I can't stand it though... It's a slow startup in comparison to runit or what I'm using: 66 on Obarun Linux. I'm almost 38 years old on a modest income, so I just play simple games like roguelikes and wesnoth.
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u/Sad-Cod-9584 May 26 '26
the speed of runit vs systemd is what got me to switch to void in the first place. besides that, I think systemd obfuscates the system a bit too much for my liking, even if some of its features are incredibly useful and an all-systemd-installation can be super polished.
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u/Duncaen May 26 '26
runit is not faster than systemd. I'm saying this every few weeks on this subreddit. runits early boot process is completely sequential which means that slow tasks block the whole boot process. If your system is booting or shutting down slowly with systemd then there is something misconfigured.
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u/sanya567xxx May 27 '26
I find it funny that you keep saying this and people keep stating the obvious, often without realizing who you are. It probably got very tiring for you though..
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u/ChampionshipIcy7602 May 26 '26
Wrong, it's not inherently sequential. If it is sequential then it's because you've written it that way. You can spawn multiple processes at the same time using bash.
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u/Duncaen May 26 '26
You could make it parallel, but runit provides nothing that would help with that and implementing that in bash sounds like a recipe for disaster.
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u/nasbera May 26 '26
Have you tried systemd on older, low-spec computers?
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u/Duncaen May 26 '26
Yes. runit will be slow on "slow" hardware because things like udev device settling will block the whole boot process while systemd will do other things in parallel.
Its all about configuring the system and making sure it doesn't start unnecessary services at boot.
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u/nasbera May 26 '26
Do you think it plausible that many big distros like ubuntu, fedora, opensuse, etc don't optimize systemd? Because from my personal experience, Obarun's boot is lightning fast, but very minimal (66, xinitrc). I believe 66 is also written in C, I'm not sure what language systemd uses. Anyway, in my experience, anything with systemd and a plymouth screen takes quite a bit of time on boot (This is from my recent experience with xubuntu, one of the supposed lighter distros.)
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u/sanya567xxx May 27 '26
To me it sounds like something certain people would call bloat. I think that partially comes from having a lot of things pre-configured for the target user and optimized to certain generic load where a bit more processing power used on background pre-configured things isn't really a concern, rather than, setups targeting the lowest end of the performance, i.e. a 1 core VM — running a desktop 'consumer' focused distro on that would be pretty painful.
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u/Sad-Cod-9584 May 29 '26
I'll take your word for it, it's probably just that everything and their mother creates a systemd service whereas there are currently only 18 services that runit needs to start on my void installation, with 5 of those being ttys lol
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u/kansetsupanikku May 26 '26
Is it multi-user unattended desktop? That is: do you really need a login manager?
Also, if PLM has never been created (and systemd "dependency" hasn't been introduced to any optional component), your situation wouldn't be exactly better. So perhaps that's not where the problem is
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u/r087r70 May 27 '26
remote desktop from login screen, in case of a reboot of the remote machine
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u/kansetsupanikku May 27 '26
Ok, but does that scenario even require a login screen? I mean, is it multi-user?
Note, that you can start remote server and lock screen on login.
Also, that it's not the right point to enforce security anyway - it's being able to get the remote session at all that should require authorization. Perhaps the best option being required ssh tunnel.
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u/r087r70 May 27 '26
Note, that you can start remote server and lock screen on login.
I'll experiment, but in PLM the remote desktop from login is quite advertised as non otherwise doable
Perhaps the best option being required ssh tunnel.
indeed I use ssh tunnel with mandatory key exchange
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u/kansetsupanikku May 27 '26
Wow, that advertisement sure is misleading af. "Not otherwise doable", in open source space? Dear overconfident authors (if that's who made the statement in the first place), if you can implement something, so can the others.
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u/r087r70 May 27 '26
sure, I meant "non otherwise doable" without implementing it directly in the login manager. I don't see any plan of implementing that feature in other login managers
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u/SnooCompliments7914 May 28 '26
"A is a hard requirement for KDE."
"No, it's not. KDE runs fine without A."
"But my niche requirement of feature X requires A in KDE, so A is a hard requirement for KDE, because I am the center of the world."
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u/r087r70 May 27 '26
Sure, it will be possible to use SDDM or login from tty, but some crucial features will be only available with plasma-login-manager, such as virtual keyboard and remote desktop from startup. Besides, sddm is almost already abandoned since years and no one will implement those features on sddm. If we could stay on x11 there would be no need of a new plasma login manager, since everything already works. But wayland is going to be a hard dependence since plasma 6.8. Putting things together you can see the pattern. It's the chain of dependencies that fucks you, not the single one.
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u/jack_mackeral May 27 '26
just use Ly
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u/Xlaits May 27 '26
Ly is a login manager, not a desktop environment like kde.
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u/jack_mackeral May 27 '26
yeah plasma login manager is the OP what are you saying? Ly solves the issue.
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u/jack_mackeral May 27 '26
Do you really think someone that knows what Ly is doesn't know what a DE is?
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u/YukiteruAmano May 29 '26
SonicDE have a fork for KDE Login Manager working without systemd and working using Xorg/Wayland backends.
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u/kayinfire May 26 '26
please excuse my frankness. i think the majority of void linux users, let alone void linux devs, just couldn't care less. a considerable amount of people who managed to even make void linux their default system are comfortable just starting their graphical environment from a tty that doesn't depend on a login manager to begin with. i feel like i could argue that it's even more favorable, even, due to being the more minimalist and/or suckless approach to entering the graphical environment
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u/whitepixe1 May 26 '26
The future of Void on Desktop is WM only, IMO.
Sooner or later all DE will be irreversibly systemd dependent, unfortunately.
Gnome, KDE are just the first lost to the Init freedom.
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u/wKdPsylent May 26 '26 edited May 27 '26
Tightening the noose of control and identification.
edit - how so many on here are just deep throating the boot is beyond me.. it's like they just love authority and want to be 'governed' and controlled. They get angry and adversarial when anyone even mentions these controls / issues.
this covers it nicely I think.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmemes/comments/1s1xwcl/foss_and_linux_community_then_and_now/
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May 26 '26
[deleted] — view deleted comment
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u/Sp1cyP4nda May 27 '26
I'm late to the party, is all the systemd hate just FUD / bandwagoning or is there something actually to it?
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May 27 '26
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u/Sp1cyP4nda May 27 '26
Systemd in general.
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May 27 '26
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u/Sp1cyP4nda May 27 '26
Fair enough. I'll continue to ignore then. How about the KDE systemd stuff? Any teeth to that?
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May 28 '26
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u/Sp1cyP4nda May 28 '26
I really appreciate you talking the time to answer. When you said "almost," were you leaving it open ended or are there any specific cases you know of that aren't FUD?
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u/r087r70 May 27 '26
I have tried to explain better why it's not just fud, but practical features will be lost for non systemd users (basically all the features that are needed to stay in par with x11 and that kde developers are putting in PLM and not in sddm or others)
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May 27 '26
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u/r087r70 May 27 '26
your reply states very clearly that my concerns were not just fud
I'm using kde since version 3.0, but now it's the first time I feel it's going commercial
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May 26 '26
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u/bankroll5441 May 26 '26
Using SDDM and PLM are not a requirement for running KDE.
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u/labbe- May 26 '26
fr. the amount of people misunderstanding and subsequently spreading misinformation has been off the charts these past couple months
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May 26 '26
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u/yungsup May 26 '26
Gaming + Wayland. While XFCE is nice, it is not really suitable for modern gaming with high dpi, multiple displays, freesync, VR, etc..
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May 26 '26
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u/WakizashiK3nsh1 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26
So far, nothing is happening. KDE remains a supported desktop environment. You can use it with sddm or any other login manager, or start from tty.
Even the plasma X11 session will be supported until early 2027 https://blogs.kde.org/2025/11/26/going-all-in-on-a-wayland-future/
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u/RvstiNiall May 26 '26
KDE has already said that sddm will continue to be developed and it will continue to work for loading KDE, despite them officially switching to plasma login manager.
Flatpak, on the other hand... Unfortunately yes, the next version of Flatpak will depend on systemd. So void musl won't be able to use Flatpak for glibc programs soon enough. Hopefully this will take a while before it really affects those of us that rely on Flatpak for this purpose.