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Comment by convivialdingo | Hacker News Reader

Well, here's the basic deal. If we're talking about common servers, common desktop, etc then systemd is an excellent replacement. It covers the base of users quite well.

But lets say you are building a highly specialized application. You are going to be making quite a few customizations which are far more manageable through a shell scripting environment than by customizing a bunch of binaries.

I assume that Redhat is going to cover a lot of the bases for most users out there. But for those of us in highly customized environments it's going to suck.

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The status quo for such projects is to use Busybox, and I reckon it will continue for projects where systemd etc is too much.

Systemd is too much, but often busybox is not enough. Plus if everything starts conforming to systemd, busybox will have to become like systemd to stay compatible.

I doubt you want to run Gnome on a system where you have to use busybox.

Also if busybox is not enough, a minimal systemd system will still be leaner and faster than the equivalent sysV system.

http://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/...

It's not just GNOME; an embedded device that acts as a USB host needs something like udev, and as I recall reading systemd has swallowed the hardware plugging notification systems, or was working on it. The success of systemd in getting single-user kernel patches that only make sense for desktops and systemd is most concerning, though. Linux is great because of its modularity; previously, if init didn't make sense you could switch to openrc, upstart, or others, without having to change the way you do logging, DHCP, hardware plug events, etc.

There are other options, in particular the Musl libc-based distros like Alpine Linux and Sabotage (where you can use busybox but dont have to). They also feel much more like the traditional BSDs - Musl libc and pkgsrc is very close to a BSD...

that's just speculation until you clarify. Can you be more specific?

Think of anything that isn't a web server, file server, database server, or desktop.

jolla uses systemd on their phones and tablets right now.

IIRC it's also part of some soon to be shipping vehicle integrations, for in-car entertainment systems and mapping.

That doesn't make systemd right for the other hundreds/thousands of embedded Linux systems. If you recall my response elsewhere in the thread, "Company X uses it" is unconvincing.

Also, it's inevitable that if systemd and software expecting to use it take over more and more aspects of userland and the kernel, vendors will be left with no choice but to use it as well. So "more vendors are switching to systemd" is not a convincing argument either. I like to make my own decisions on the basis of modularity and replaceability (vendor lockin has been a huge burden in other major projects not mentioned in my online persona), not popularity.

the pereson was asking for an example, that is all. i can't even speak for whether the jolla devices are any good. only that is it shown that is done and in shipping hardware right now, not some time in the future.

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