I've seen a lot posts against systemd, most of them citing the unix principle as the main argument. But as a user on a desktop computer I don't understand why would it be bad. Could someone explain it to me?
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2026
7 points (60.0% liked)
Linux
68298 readers
331 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
As a user you probably don't know, and maybe don't care.
This is more for developers, technology is not magic, vendor/technology-locking can be problematic. It's not like systemd was made by bad people with bad intention. You may have heard of X11 too. The list could go on, there is a big amount of legacy in our technology, some would just keep it that way. But some argue for changes thus discussing (and criticizing) those legacy, why it fails on some points and what to do/build from that.
So right now if you're a desktop user, I don't see why you would bother indeed. This discussion are still interesting to some devs, for instance here I learned about dinit, and it's code is damn small and clean, hence it was informative and I will definitely try it.
Linux is the second-most popular descendent of Unix, the first being OSX.
This ruffles my feathers. Disregarding servers where Linux has near monopoly, surely Linux is installed on more devices and has more users than OSX? OP is clearly counting only desktop users
I agree. Linux on desktop is so good for at least five years, if not longer, maybe ten. That I imagine many people using it, can recommend it to others, and so forth. And so in absolute numbers, it would be much more than macOS gets.
alternative reality where macos is the backbone of servers worldwide eurhghghrugr
At least we would all be able to slow down for awhile
cept for the poor IT departments of the world that have to maintain this shit. "ye hold on the server is being bottleneck'd by liquid glass"
Same here, also all embedded system on linux + smartphone. I guess the author meant desktop usage. Still I am very unsure about the world at large. This is north-American take.
I haven't read the whole article yet, but it bothers me how the author mistakenly calls the init (with the process id 1) pid 0, which is special and belongs to a part of the kernel.
Every time someone posts about systemd I just paste in the link to the Tragedy of systemd video https://youtu.be/o_AIw9bGogo and move on
That's a fantastic talk. I listen to it about once a year and it still holds up (as in the systemd haters are still mostly salty and uninterested in building a better alternative)
The only somewhat serious build-an-alternative-project I know of is Chimera Linux, see their FAQ: https://chimera-linux.org/docs/faq#what-is-the-projects-take-on-systemd
That talk is so good. Great idea.
I never liked it much because didn't fit my use case, and didn't see the need for it, but I use it when I need to and honestly it has a few quicrks I don't like but like many other tools.
But what are you actually referring to? Which direction?
I am not the author (I am asking him right now if I should tag him). I didn't know about dinit but this looks like a nice alternative.
I would have been fine with just systemctl/journalctl , I really dislike the locking of homed, network, etc. This is very much unnecessary and remove any future possibility of improvement/innovation.
I didn't care about coredumps as it is part of my setup to disable the dumps to avoid unnecessary garbage on my SSD while activating for debugging with gdb (it is kind of awesome to load the program state from core dumps, also coredumpctl felt like magic).
I made the mistake some years ago and moved all my Gentoo installations from openRC to systemd and now I'm too lazy to switch back and I don't want to handle the fallout. when I think about doing rsyslog config and logrotate I start to puke a little. also I heavily use timers and I'm afraid if something I use might not have init scripts. service units are much simpler
That article contradicts itself a bit, especially about journalctl. I also don't see how an article from 4 years ago is related to the current direction?
I was also confused for a moment due to the way my Lemmy client shows it, but op has actually linked two articles, one from 2022 and one more recent.
I am pretty sure this is from 30th of July 2026 (and not 2025 as the article says, the blog menu seems correct). Did I miss something about it being 4 years old?
It was the 2nd link, Lemmy showed me that rather than the first.
I read the article and find the title to be clickbait.