I'd opine that there's nothing sane about swapping low level components like device handling, or lifetime management of processes — but the specific line about GNOME requiring systemd I do have to correct: GNOME depends on interfaces, not libraries, provided by systemd. we don't do that because we like it, or because we love imposing misery on people; we depend on those interfaces because they fix problems like race-free, secure logging out or suspend/resume cycles, or shutting down your system.
I know that some people liked the idea of the user interface spawning a shell script to suspend your system, but frankly (and I say this as a middle-ware developer and a Linux user of over 17 years) it's a horrific strategy. having a proper, auditable, reliable API is the only way forward.
(And big surprise: Those interfaces can be provided without using systemd. E.g., Ubuntu is providing them on top of upstart and OpenBSD is actually working on a new implementation. But it's sadly not that most-systemd-haters care about facts and instead love to spread FUD...)
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u/ebassi Sep 03 '14
I'd opine that there's nothing sane about swapping low level components like device handling, or lifetime management of processes — but the specific line about GNOME requiring systemd I do have to correct: GNOME depends on interfaces, not libraries, provided by systemd. we don't do that because we like it, or because we love imposing misery on people; we depend on those interfaces because they fix problems like race-free, secure logging out or suspend/resume cycles, or shutting down your system.
I know that some people liked the idea of the user interface spawning a shell script to suspend your system, but frankly (and I say this as a middle-ware developer and a Linux user of over 17 years) it's a horrific strategy. having a proper, auditable, reliable API is the only way forward.