hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 17, 2025 21:16 UTC (Sun) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: hope not tied to SystemD by NYKevin
Parent article: Finding a successor to the FHS

> My position is not that systemd should be removed from the standard, merely that systemd should not be part of the minimum requirements for a standard that wishes to be universal.

"Universality" only extends out to the scope of what you're trying to achieve.

A truly "universal standard" would necessarily need to include the likes of Windows, MacOS/iOS, zOS, and so forth... good luck finding common ground there. Just like it is reasonable to reduce the scope of said "universality" to exclude non-UNIXes, it's reasonable to exclude non-Linuxes. But even sticking to "Linux", it's reasonable to exclude Android and purpose-built embedded systems... and oh look, we're already quibbling over where the outer bounds are drawn.

In this specific instance, excluding systemd-udev by name makes little sense given that it is the canonical implementation of /dev management under Linux, and independent re-implentations [1] have to behave in the same manner or fail the basic fitness-for-purpose test.

[1] all one of them (ie busybox) -- There's also eudev, but it was forked from pre-residing-in-systemd's-git-repo udev for entirely political [2] reasons.
[2] "We don't want to have any source code from systemd present even if the udev binary produced has zero runtime dependencies on systemd"

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 17, 2025 22:26 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

> it's reasonable to exclude non-Linuxes. But even sticking to "Linux", it's reasonable to exclude Android and purpose-built embedded systems... and oh look, we're already quibbling over where the outer bounds are drawn.

Well, I run a mainstream (at least, last I knew it was used by kernel devs like Greg KH) distro, and I had to change the init system away from the default, and to systemd. (And yes, I do describe gentoo as somewhat systemd-hostile, but the distro devs prefer OpenRC which I believe predates systemd, so it's not a case of "we refuse to have systemd", just "we don't see the benefit in changing". I don't agree, but I'm not a distro dev, and I've taken advantage of the ability to change the default.)

Any spec that is intended to be a reference for ALL "typical" linux distros should not defer to what just SOME of those distros do. A proper superset should not be defined in terms of a subset - it's just the wrong thing to do.

To put it in your terms, if the spec writers intend it to apply to "all linux distros", or even "all linux distros with typical user spaces like Gnome or KDE/Plasma, then they have extended the boundaries of the spec beyond systemd-distros, so they cannot assume the presence of systemd on the system.

Cheers,
Wol

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 17, 2025 22:33 UTC (Sun) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link] (2 responses)

> they cannot assume the presence of systemd on the system

quote the parts where that is the case

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 18, 2025 7:07 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

So you clearly didn't read the comment you were replying to.

My distro, by default, does NOT install systemd, therefore you cannot assume its presence on my system (yes it does happen to be there, I over-rode the default, but the choice is either/or, not both/and).

Cheers,
Wol

hope not tied to SystemD

Posted Aug 18, 2025 8:51 UTC (Mon) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link]

...and? What has that to do with anythng written there?