"systemd is, to put it mildly, controversial. As a FreeBSD developer I decided I wanted to know why.
I delved into the history of bootstrap systems, and even the history of UNIX and other contemporary operating systems, to try and work out why something like systemd was seem as necessary, if not desirable. I also tried to work out why so many people found it so upsetting, annoying, or otherwise rage-inducing.
Join me on a journey through the bootstrap process, the history of init, the reasons why change can be scary, and the discovery of a part of your OS you may not even know existed."
I've been using SystemD with little complaint since around 2011 or so when Fedora switched. I don't count myself among the systems haters, but that talk is hot garbage. It's just a big ad hominem that boils down to "people just hate change."
But that lacks explanatory power. Lots of things change and don't receive backlash, even in the desktop Linux domain. Plenty of people are skeptical of Wayland for instance, but the conversations tend to stay relatively cool-headed.
I think there are two things going on; the first and most significant is that most Linux desktop users (not sys admins or packagers, just desktop users) never had to know what a sysv init system was and never fucked with it, but then their distro switched, something broke (maybe their packagers' fault, maybe not!), they googled the problem and at the end of that Google dive they found out the answer involved a component they were previously unaware of, making itself known to them in a way that caused them hassle. Any upsides were washed out by this initial first bad experience. For me, I was using Fedora at the time so I knew I was getting bleeding edge shit and might get cut. That was exciting for me. It was my hobby, so I liked systemd. But that didn't blind me to the wants and desires of more typical desktop users who wanted the "just werks" experience.
(The other factor is that Lennart has bad social skills and it seems to rub off on the people he works with. Some might argue that the critics started it, but I don't care who started it. Stop jabbing your little sister or I'm turning this car around!)
The Tragedy of systemd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_AIw9bGogo
"systemd is, to put it mildly, controversial. As a FreeBSD developer I decided I wanted to know why.
I delved into the history of bootstrap systems, and even the history of UNIX and other contemporary operating systems, to try and work out why something like systemd was seem as necessary, if not desirable. I also tried to work out why so many people found it so upsetting, annoying, or otherwise rage-inducing.
Join me on a journey through the bootstrap process, the history of init, the reasons why change can be scary, and the discovery of a part of your OS you may not even know existed."