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Will You Be Able To Run a Modern Desktop Environment In 2016 Without Systemd?
New submitter yeupou writes: Early this year, David Edmundson from KDE, concluded that "In many cases [systemd] allows us to throw away large amounts of code whilst at the same time providing a better user experience. Adding it [systemd] as an optional extra defeats the main benefit". A perfectly sensible explanation. But, then, one might wonder to which point KDE would remain usable without systemd?
Recently, on one Devuan box, I noticed that KDE power management (Powerdevil) no longer supported suspend and hibernate. Since pm-utils was still there, for a while, I resorted to call pm-suspend directly, hoping it would get fixed at some point. But it did not. So I wrote a report myself. I was not expecting much. But neither was I expecting it to be immediately marked as RESOLVED and DOWNSTREAM, with a comment accusing the "Debian fork" I'm using to "ripe out" systemd without "coming with any of the supported solutions Plasma provides". I searched beforehand about the issue so I knew that the problem also occurred on some other Debian-based systems and that the bug seemed entirely tied to upower, an upstream software used by Powerdevil. So if anything, at least this bug should have been marked as UPSTREAM.
While no one dares (yet) to claim to write software only for systemd based operating system, it is obvious that it is now getting quite hard to get support otherwise. At the same time, bricks that worked for years without now just get ruined, since, as pointed out by Edmunson, adding systemd as "optional extra defeats its main benefit". So, is it likely that we'll still have in 2016 a modern desktop environment, without recent regressions, running without systemd?
Recently, on one Devuan box, I noticed that KDE power management (Powerdevil) no longer supported suspend and hibernate. Since pm-utils was still there, for a while, I resorted to call pm-suspend directly, hoping it would get fixed at some point. But it did not. So I wrote a report myself. I was not expecting much. But neither was I expecting it to be immediately marked as RESOLVED and DOWNSTREAM, with a comment accusing the "Debian fork" I'm using to "ripe out" systemd without "coming with any of the supported solutions Plasma provides". I searched beforehand about the issue so I knew that the problem also occurred on some other Debian-based systems and that the bug seemed entirely tied to upower, an upstream software used by Powerdevil. So if anything, at least this bug should have been marked as UPSTREAM.
While no one dares (yet) to claim to write software only for systemd based operating system, it is obvious that it is now getting quite hard to get support otherwise. At the same time, bricks that worked for years without now just get ruined, since, as pointed out by Edmunson, adding systemd as "optional extra defeats its main benefit". So, is it likely that we'll still have in 2016 a modern desktop environment, without recent regressions, running without systemd?
Just use Windows.
Zips up flame-proof suit. Dons shaded goggles.
As we've all learned from Apple: No half-assed shit. Do or don't do. No place for inbetween stuff.
systemd has downsided but it also has upsides. We should stick with the upsides and patch the downsides until they're basically a non-issue.
I don't do much init-fiddling although I do like the text based init/runlevel thing, and I would guess that plug-and-play - one of systemd's strong areas - should be a userspace problem, but that's just me not really know what's going on in the init process.
However, since all major distros have moved to systemd it can't be that bad as some people make it out to be. I trust the debian and ubuntu crew to know what they are doing at init-level.
If as a result the Linux community grows closer together and focuses more on consistency I'm all for the move to systemd - even if that moves Linux away from the rest of the unixes due to loss of posix compliance. Seriously, who cares? It's mostly Linux left, right and center these days anyway. The BSD people will be fine with whatever they choose as init process, as usual, and no one gives a damn about other non-FOSS unixes anymore anyway. Unix basically is Linux these days.
But, as I said at the beginning: There is no use going systemd, but only kinda so-so. If the community get's behind systemd, it works and is/becomes usable and apps start relying on it being there - so what?
My 0.5 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I keep saying it, systemd not an init system. KDE and GNOME should not depend on an init system. Why does the desktop care who's booted it up?
More specifically, systemd is Linux-only. The devs have explicitly stated that they are making good use of Linux-specific features. Fine, but if third party software becomes dependent on it then that implies they won't work on *BSD at all. Right? So now there's no Gnome or KDE on anything but Linux.
So really, choice is being taken away clear across the board. Either that or I'm missing something really big which implies systemd is not a strict dependency.
what exactly is OS X missing?
The troll's righteous indignation?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
If you're allergic to trimming your neckbeard and running a modern init,
There's no reason a Window Manager should depend on a particular init system. Doing so is a clear sign of bad software architecture.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So now there's no Gnome or KDE on anything but Linux.
That is Lennart's plan. Here's what he says::
"I think we need to ask ourselves the question if we do ourselves any good if we continue to support all kinds of kernels that simply cannot keep up with Linux anymore."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
its because systemd provides features that are normally root only, and delegates them through dbus and a permission system through to logged in users. This lets the desktop environments have more advanced features then they would with init systems that don't do this delegation. If they were to support all inits, they would have to reimplement a lot of the parts of systemd. They used to do just that. They have both decided to stop doing that and just let systemd do it. GNOME/KDE are doing the right thing IMHO.
If the other init systems want to gain support, they have to support this same kind of functionality somehow.
Without Systemd Wiki: http://without-systemd.org/wik...
Sigh.
First, only an idiot would want a monoculture, particularly in the Linux world, so to those saying "just to systemd full bore or go to (someplace else)" the rest of us need to respond with a very loud and resounding: Fuck You.
That said, things aren't nearly as dire as this post implies. Reading from the responses to the bug he himself linked to, I find the following:
> Unless KDE is prepared to make a statement that it depends on systemd
of course not. Powerdevil recently also gained support for ConsoleKit2, see: http://commits.kde.org/powerde...
Which turns it into a distro problem. Your distribution configured the system in a way that suspend/hibernate is broken. It doesn't come with any of the supported solutions Plasma provides. Which makes it a distro problem. The distro integrates various parts of the software stack. This includes it's the distro's task to ensure that components work together. It failed here by ripping out systemd and replace it with well nothing.
So while I'm sure the systemd zealots would love to see KDE, Gnome3, etc. only work with systemd and drop support for all other distros, this doesn't appear to be happening. In the case of KDE, ConsoleKit2 is supported (and therefor Funtoo, Gentoo, Arch with OpenRC, etc. will continue to work just fine).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Systemd is not (supposed to be) part of the desktop environment either, it's supposed to manage starting system daemons like sshd, httpd, dhcp, networking services, access to your keyboard, graphics management, and many other things that a system daemon starting utility has no business being involved in. The problem is that a large number of current required services are no longer properly maintaining their "non systemd" startup config and code, and are instead relying on the half-baked garbage that is systemd. Anyone who disagrees with the switch to systemd is then countered with social pressure and "get with the modern world, loser!" type arguments, rather than actual technical reasons, since for the most part, there aren't any. (Cue systemd fans giving reasons like "if it wasn't good, then nobody would be using it! Everyone else is doing it, get with the modern world loser!" now...)
The questioner has it the wrong way around.
The systemd team didn't create those dependencies, the DE maintainers did. All of these DEs ran just fine without systemd and they still could if someone was interested in doing so. In fact given the maturity of the old interfaces, and the code already existing in previous releases it should be much easier to maintain say, KDE or Gnome, without systemd that it is for the team trying to add it in. There is nothing stopping people from forking the existing code and running their own project, we have seen this happen in the open-source world dozens of times. If there is a lot of demand for systemd less distros, the community will make them.
The question isn't "Will You Be Able To Run a Modern Desktop Environment In 2016 Without Systemd?". The question is "Where are all the systemd-free projects?".
Linus said talk is cheap show me the code. So where is it? For all the complaining, flamewars, and cries of fleeing to *BSD you would expect systemd-free projects to be springing up left and right. So where are they? If Red Hat is making such a huge mistake switching to systemd, then surely their competitors at SUSE, Cannonical, and Mandriva will capitalize on that mistake in the name of profits no? It isn't surprising that seemingly everyone is adopting systemd. systemd is solving problems and implementing feature that people want. That is easy to explain.
What is remarkable here is the massive disconnect between the amount of outcry about systemd and the amount of code being written to avoid it.
All of your questions are easily answered by reading the link provided at the top of the article:
http://blog.davidedmundson.co.uk/blog/systemd-and-plasma
Why does the desktop care who's booted it up?
The Init System "We don't care. It doesn't affect us."
logind Allows KDE to provide user-switching features.
Device Management Allows KDE to have access to your mouse and keyboard without root access and without random applications being able to sniff your keystrokes.
Inhibitor Locks Allows KDE to react to notifications like "the system is about to go down" and delay until a condition is met (example: delay a suspend until the lock screen is displayed and all your desktop windows are hidden behind the lock screen).
timedated and Friends Allows KDE to set time and date without root; allows KDE apps to be notified if time and date gets changed. (KDE currently runs a daemon just to watch for time and date changes, and they would like to get rid of this daemon and simplify their code.)
User Units If KDE takes advantage of the "units" in systemd, then when any part of KDE crashes or hangs, systemd will restart the misbehaving part.
that implies they won't work on *BSD at all. Right?
"Projects like [SystemBSD] bring the interfaces we need to BSD and as it gets more stable we should be able to start distributing features."
So really, choice is being taken away clear across the board. Either that or I'm missing something really big which implies systemd is not a strict dependency.
I encourage you to read the whole article and see what big things you are missing.
I don't know about you, but when I read that article I didn't think "Man those KDE guys are idiots, why would they want any of that." It all makes sense to me.
It's easier for me to believe that SystemD has some merit than to believe that all the Debian core developers are idiots, plus all the Ubuntu developers, and now all the KDE developers and for that matter the Gnome developers.
My biggest concerns with systemd are the monoculture of it all, so projects like UselessD and SystemBSD sound great to me. Force the SystemD guys to document and justify everything, and provide alternatives.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
As I understand it, as someone who could care less one way or the other, systemd isn't a solution for end-users, which is why you don't see any substantial changes. Its a solution for *developers*, freeing them from having to deal with the mountain of hacks, kludges, and assorted ugliness necessary to provide modern desktop-environment features through the decades of cruft and "ideologically pure" compartmentalization provided by the lower levels of Linux.
It doesn't offer new functionality - it just removes a maintenance nightmare for Desktop Environment developers, allowing them to focus on actually working on a good DE, rather than all the ugly backend stuff behind the scenes. The big issue, aside from ideological purity, is that in systemd massively redesigning that backend stuff there was inevitably a lot of lost functionality - you can't replicate the functionality of decades of accumulated cruft overnight. And major DEs don't want to wait until there's complete functional parity to adopt it, for a couple big reasons (and probably many more I haven't thought of):
1) Waste: if they plan to adopt the project eventually, then the longer they wait, the more wasted work they do maintaining deprecated systems.
2) Momentum: you want to adopt a project when it's both "good enough" and has a thriving developer community in order to help maintain its momentum. A project no one uses is eventually going to start shedding developers, and may never reach functional parity at all (see GNU Hurd, etc.)
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Speaking of which, if one can figure out a way to install emacs on systemd, one has the perfect system - no need to worry about linux vs bsd if all emacs needs to use are services provided by systemd
Yeah and no. As pointed out in the article, the culprit is upower. But upower is mandatory for KDE power management. So it does not really matter whether it is Powerdevil that requires systemd or upower. ConsoleKit2 recently gained support? Was ConsoleKit2 actually been packaged? Does upower supporting ConsoleKit2 been packaged? If not, user experience wise, that is not palatable. And moreover, what to expect from upower? Did they not purposefully removed pm-utils support, that worked until then, in favor of systemd? Why removing support for a working solution (pm-utils) and, later, much later, adding support for some ConsoleKit2? What is the exact plan of ConsoleKit2? Providing some systemd-like interface without being systemd? Is that what ConsoleKit2 offers that pm-utils could not? If so, wow long will it work, to attempt to write a parallel to systemd, in order to make sure that all the software that in the past worked without systemd can now work with the systemd alternative? Just as a reminder, ConsoleKit2 exists "because there isnâ(TM)t currently a standard for system actions like suspend/hibernate anymore. We use these features in Xfce and it would be nice to keep the session manager and power manager in sync (i.e. you inhibit something and the session manager doesnâ(TM)t see it). Obviously thereâ(TM)s systembsd in the works, so this is a stop gap until that matures (however long that may be). But Iâ(TM)ll happily continue to maintain and support ConsoleKit2 as long as someone finds it useful". https://erickoegel.wordpress.c... The acknowledged benefit of systemd, as pointed out by Edmunson (link in the article) was to drop code. If ConsoleKit2 and al needs to write code to compensate from all the dropped code, following systemd, that unlikely sustainable. The stop gap project won't do. And it is really the funny thing now with systemd: if you dont want it, you need to write everything that it does because all the anterior/historical parts, good or bad, are getting deprecated and removed. So in order not to use systemd, you need to clone it. Bonkers. Hence the question: will KDE be still usable in 2016 without systemd.
I don't understand this. If systemd is so backwards compatible with the traditional way of doing stuff, why don't distros enable that?
Erm, some do. Debian forwards everything to syslog and throws away the journal by default.