Re: Re: [gentoo-dev] Making systemd more accessible to "normal" users

[Daniel Campbell]

On 05/15/2013 08:41 AM, Fabio Erculiani wrote:
> Are we realizing that in order to keep systemd out of our way, we're
> currently writing and maintaining drop-in replacements for the
> features that systemd is already providing in an actively maintained
> state? openrc-settingsd was the first thing that we as Gentoo
> developers (Pacho?) had to write in order to merge GNOME 3.6 into our
> tree.
>
> And now that GNOME 3.8 is out, the game starts over again: logind is a
> hard requirement, logind is part of systemd, starting logind (which
> replaces consolekit) is not that trivial as you may think (and is the
> thing I started to work on anyway).
>
> And if this wasn't enough, it means that if you want GNOME 3.8, you
> need to get logind, which may or not may get included in our udev
> ebuild and if it won't, it means that you will be forced to use
> systemd as device manager if you want GNOME 3.8, which is believe it
> or not, the thing that Ubuntu did.
>
> The problem will only increase in size as the clock moves.
>
> And (and!) how does all this fit together with eudev? If the idea is
> to either put logind in udev (thus, not creating a separate logind
> ebuild), it means that eudev is already a dead end for GNOME users,
> unless the eudev team is going to provide logind as well.
>
> I don't want to start a flamewar here, I was the one who called
> Lennart software lennartware, but science is science, and a reality
> check had to be done: at some near point in the future, our users will
> be forced to replace udev/eudev with systemd. Like it. Or not.
>
> While I successfully use both openrc and systemd, I _do_ think that
> (and expect to see) more and more users (and developers) will be
> switching to systemd.
> Is there anything we can do? Besides "being prepared", I don't think so.
> Do we control upstreams? No, sorry.
>
> So what do we want to do then? Isolate from the rest of the world?
> (It's not a sarcastic question). I hope that everybody does their own
> reality check.
>

The solution is to pressure upstreams not to depend on a specific init
system in order to function. How many pieces of software depend on SysV,
runit, openrc, or upstart? The only ones I can think of are the pieces
that are designed specifically for making those init systems easier to
administer, not user-facing software like desktop environments.

I sincerely believe that each user and distro reserves the right to
choose which software to boot the system with, and desktop environments
and other user-facing software should not care about which init system
it's running on. In the case of GNOME, I think they're going too far by
depending on these things. GNOME devs haven't cared much for user
responses (especially wrt GTK+ 3.x), so they are likely to continue
integration with systemd. They're free to, but we're free to not use it,
too.

Personally, I will not have systemd on my box(es). I don't agree with
its motives, its methods, or its design. I will not use software that
depends on it. If the situation gets bad enough, then I may be forced to
switch to another OS... that bothers me, to a degree, but as long as
it's on my hardware, I have a say.

It would not bother me if distros ostracized Lennart and his projects
from the free software world, as he approaches free software with a
toxic attitude. We wouldn't miss much IMO.

As for Gentoo itself, I'm happy as long as choice remains the governing
principle.