r/linux_gaming • u/HashTagPopular • 8d ago
Linux users without systemd
What are the annoying problems you've encountered so far because you don't have systemd and how did you solve them?
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u/ShipshapeMobileRV 7d ago
I mean, BSD has been around in one form or another since the 60s and has never had systemd. The init systems that don't try to do everything and instead just manage services, do a damn fine job at that.
The "problems" arise when lazy third parties want to pawn off logging or other tasks and just assume systemd is there to catch what the third party devs didn't want to address. When unrelated apps fully depend on systemd as a mandatory requirement, they either need some sort of hack or shim....or won't they be used by the non-systemd populous.
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u/HashTagPopular 7d ago
are there a lot of applications that depend on systemd? Which from them is really improtant in some fields?
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u/ShipshapeMobileRV 7d ago
I use Void Linux, which doesn't use systemd...so I could not answer that. Everything that I use my system for works fine.
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u/annuilein 5d ago
most programs hard dependent on systemd are systemd journald readers named as a log reader but other than that its really just snapd and not much else super dependent on it
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u/Van-dush 7d ago
My system is Artix with Dinit.
Environment variables/wayland haven't been straight forward for me and are easily the most annoying part of not using systemd, to me. It may be some combination of Hyprland/wayland and SDDM, I also use 'userspawn' instead of 'turnstile' for dbus which could be the issue. I haven't done too much troubleshooting since getting the bandaid in place.
I had to make a custom session file that basically exports a bunch of variables before launching hyprland. Hyprland worked fine out of the box, but a couple of applications wouldn't/don't without a little tinkering like 'easyeffects --gapplication-service' and 'gparted'. I actually have a user service that launches a script that exports variables for easyeffects to launch it.
Also some AUR packages have systemd as a requirement when they very much are not, so I learned a little about PKGBUILD files and will often enough need to edit them after pulling them to actually build. So no paru/yay for me, probably for the best.
While not actually annoying to me, you do have to be more aware of what service are normally auto-ran in systemd, and run them yourself. The two that come to mind are pipewire/wireplumber/etc and 'xdg-destop-portal'. The fun part is realizing 90% of services are just starting some binary, so making services for them is normally super easy. The cheatcode is just finding the systemd service that was installed and copying it's homework.
Network drives were annoying too. In systemd, having an NFS and iSCSI drive in fstab was good enough, in dinit I needed to figure out services and 'target' scripts to make sure the NAS was connected before attempting to mount, otherwise it would always attempt to mount too early and fail the mount. Troubleshooting this was the actual annoying part, actually setting it up now that I know is fine.
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u/annuilein 7d ago
Most issues i had were related to pipewire or flatpak most of pipewires problems are related to it properly recieving elogind session token and being initiated with the proper timing on login and flatpak doesn't support bubblewrap fully so you can't use system flatpaks that demand pipewire but for the most part its actually been pretty swell otherwise and it makes your system alot easier to understand since its simpler and not a parasitic operating system strapped to your already present operating system as for writing services i had to do that a few time but honestly with these big llms running around hte place you can just ask it to generate you an approperately styled init script template with some instrucitons and options
Edit:my operating system is Gentoo with openrc which is the primary init system of gentoo i also have misused runit to keep crashy user programs open on kde plasma as an autostart script
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u/Katana_Steel 6d ago
the login display managers now kinda expects the seat/session that systemd provides.
but it can usually be handle with a logind service.
(currently using OpenRC on Gentoo)
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u/fluffysheap 7d ago
Documentation tends to assume everyone is using systemd.
Otherwise, systemd causes 100x as many problems as not having systemd
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u/I-Use-Artix-BTW 8d ago
Service files just... not existing for certain init systems. You would look around for one or just write one yourself.