hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 16, 2025 2:38 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: hope not tied to SystemD by gdt
Parent article: Finding a successor to the FHS

The systemd project has the official spelling: "systemd". So yep, "SystemD" is a pretty useful indicator.

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 16, 2025 7:02 UTC (Sat) by wtarreau (subscriber, #51152) [Link] (6 responses)

> The systemd project has the official spelling: "systemd". So yep, "SystemD" is a pretty useful indicator.

Care to explain to the ignorant I am, a "useful indicator" of what ? Does the latter convey a particular meaning for some groups ? I've seen it spelled both ways and genuinely thought that the former is the process name while the latter is the project's name, and have seen the latter being used by those trying to carefully represent it. So if this form is associated by some to a certain meaning, it would be nice to know. But I doubt it would be associated with anything negative by the project maintainers themselves, considering that it appears a few times in the repo's history and even still in the code itself: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/main/src/resolve/.... So isn't this just some noise, or maybe those triggering on a particular spelling are themselves an indicator of anything like searching for trouble where there isn't ?

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 16, 2025 9:50 UTC (Sat) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (5 responses)

Yep it's dogwhistling, you can consistently see it from a particular crowd that is best avoided like the plague.

There's even a brand page defining it if you are in doubt: https://brand.systemd.io

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 16, 2025 10:45 UTC (Sat) by nadir (guest, #154506) [Link] (4 responses)

Always a chance somebody is genuinely clueless, but I agree. Its use is nearly always an indicator that the user has also anti-"woke" views, loves xlibre, hates wayland for non-technical reasons, wants his software projects free of "politics", etc. etc.

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 16, 2025 12:00 UTC (Sat) by wtarreau (subscriber, #51152) [Link] (3 responses)

OK, strange, never noticed this. I find it strange that people would just use capitalization of a name which could look like the expected one as a sign to manifest anything, but be it. At least I'm sure it's not the case for the ones I've seen write it like this.

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 16, 2025 13:24 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

As the systemd people point out, it follows standard unix convention in that the first bit points out what it does (and is in lower case because all system routines are in lower case), and it has a d tacked on the end to indicate it's a daemon.

So in standard unix nomenclature, systemd is the daemon that manages the system. And like all such daemons, it's lower case.

Cheers,
Wol

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 16, 2025 21:10 UTC (Sat) by SLi (subscriber, #53131) [Link]

Wait. Daemons? Or their filenames? This feels like something where there is a distinction.

While calling it SystemD is obviously just clueless and wrong because that's not its name in any meaning, I don't think this fundamentally collapses the way you propose. For example, we have the thing that is named the Apache HTTP Server, often Apache in brief, which has a binary named httpd. Even if it had decided to call its binary "apached", that wouldn't mean that the software's or project's name is "apached". I think it's useful to think there's a layer of indirection between project names and filenames. Apache is not even the only httpd...

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 17, 2025 9:14 UTC (Sun) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link]

The recommended spelling of systemd was documented by Lennart Poettering very early on. I suspect people on average are well aware of the recommendarion, but use SystemD in spite. I have noticed a strong correlation between expressing an extreme dislike for systemd and using the form SystemD.

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 16, 2025 16:40 UTC (Sat) by ATLief (subscriber, #166135) [Link] (2 responses)

If there was a project called "KewlFS" that insisted it be capitalized as "kEWlfS", would you capitalize it as such?

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 16, 2025 17:56 UTC (Sat) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

I was going to respond to your obvious "gotcha" hypothetical with the snarky response it deserves but the value I want to uphold is people speaking their honest thoughts and feelings in earnest, and I was reminded of the posting guidelines "Is your comment polite, respectful, and informative? " (thanks, they worked at least once!) and deleted my original thought as being unworthy.

To answer your (presumably bad-faith) question earnestly, if there was a project that chose capitalization like 'kEWlfS' to refer to their work, rather than the more conventional 'KewlFS' that would be fine, maybe this project is a FUSE driver for Exchange Web Services (EWS) so they want to emphasize this in their branding, it would be disrespectful to insist that your personal interpretation and preferences are more correct and should override the members of the project who are doing the work, in a matter of style such as this.

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 18, 2025 9:16 UTC (Mon) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]

There *is* a great example: LaTeX. It's definitely styled in a "weird" way. It is, however, the styling preferred by the original author, and it's not difficult to remember, so type it in another way unless you're trying to make some sort of point?