[arch-general] Alternative init system proposal

[Bardur Arantsson]

On 02/10/2016 12:53 PM, Jack L. Frost wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 09, 2016 at 10:33:55PM +0100, Christian Rebischke wrote:

>> What does this mean? It means that I prefer a linux distribution that
>> supports the newest changes in the linux development. Systemd is one of
>> thesee changes. Systemd improves a lot of stuff. There is a reason why all
>> other big distribtions are also moving to systemd. It's the future. All the
>> shellscript-based init systems are the past.
> 
> As another person on here said, change is not progress. It's new, but it's
> debatabe if it's a net positive.
> 

"change is not progress" has no bearing on whether systemd is a net
positive or not. The person you responded to explicitly said -- in the
very part you quoted, no less! --  "systemd improves a lot of stuff", so
clearly they're _not_ relying on the fallacious reasoning of "change =
progress"... so why bring it up unless you're just being argumentative
for no good reason?

>> I really think that Arch Linux shouldn't be a rock in this flow of
>> development. We should do it like fedora and support it. We shouldn't help
>> to tube-fed all other init systems. 
>>
>> Furthermore there will be (maybe) kdbus in the kernel. Kdbus is at the
>> moment still systemd only. I am sure there will come more systemd-specific
>> interfaces for the kernel. Kdbus is just one example.
> 
> A detour from the point of this discussion, but I don't think that's a good
> thing that the kernel might actually depend on systemd in some ways.

Other way around: systemd may at some future point depend on a
Linux-only IPC protocol. (One assumes that this would be indirectly via
a DBUS-like client library, but whatever...)

(Kind of ironic considering your point about ignorance.)

> 
>> 3. The ISO and Arch Linux installation process
>> If Arch Linux would support openRC we would have to offer two ISOs. One with
>> systemd and one with openRC.
> 
> What? Why? Having a handful of new packages in the repos doesn't mean anything
> has to change. If you want to be extra nice about it, then maybe a separate
> base group (base-openrc or something), but not a separate iso.
> 
>> Also the way of the installation process would be different.
> 
> Not by much. You're overestimating the whole thing greately.

There's a huge difference between "I maintain systemd-free systems for
my own use" and "I maintain packages for a very popular distribution".
The latter has to work in a huge number of cases you haven't thought of.

Anyway, can we please end this thread now? It's not constructive.

Regards,