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> It’s used by systemd, so any Linux distribution that uses systemd also uses polkit.

I can't help imagining a distro developer looking out at systemd across a lava field and saying:

"You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the badly designed legacy components, not join them!"

Take a look at the bug. It’s polkit defaulting to 0 if dbus is down for the UID. A terrible but understandable default. It has absolutely nothing to do with the systemd structure other than being a component with a bug.

Defaulting to root UID is not an understandable default.

Systemd requiring polkit is a valid issue.

Defaulting an int to 0 is understandable. Defaulting a uid to 0 is terrible (if you reread my response that’s what I said)

The quoted statement is not entirely accurate, polkit is compile-time optional in systemd. Though most distributions will use it because it's an enhancement over the even older sudo-type authentication mechanisms.

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