no systemd thread

this is a thread for non-systemd OSs i've been distrohopping a bit recently and in the meantime i learned a bit about why systemd is kind of a bad idea sooo now's your chance to wage slave your bsd/linux distro of choice! emphasis on the bsd, i don't want this to be a linux only thread

Why do you even care about system d?

>this is a thread for non-systemd OSs non-systemd orb managers: my list NetBSD OpenBSD Puppy Linux (Not the latest one, it's Debian-based now)

>>88118 tell me your opinions on shoes >>88110 crux is nice but theres a lot of systemdfree distros really

i feel like systemd sucked like maybe 10 years ago but I'd much rather deal with the .service files than Docker soykaf

>>88117 it's not very secure and p buggy plus i don't like the monopolly that it has on linux distros

One of the few reasons I haven't switched away from systemd is I feel as if another init system would break a lot of the emulators I use and programs running using wine. If this isn't true and I'm just being a brainrotted retard please let me know. I'll start looking into distrohopping to Gentoo or Slackware.

>>88122 >would break a lot of the emulators I use and programs running using wine not sure what you mean. i don't know what other emulators you use, but wine specifically doesn't (at least yet) depend on systemd. and hopefully never will, though i'm not sure about it. looks like systemd will take over everything in a decade.

>>88122 There aren't many programs that require SystemD (all emulators that I have tried and Wine works fine without SystemD). >I'll start looking into distrohopping to Gentoo or Slackware. Gentoo supports both OpenRC and SystemD. Slackware was good in 90s/early 2000s but nowadays it's not worth it because it makes managing your packages more difficult than it should be. I suggest Void Linux or Gentoo. Artix and Alpine are also good. >>88117 SystemD is much larger than any other init system. It will become unmaintainable in the future because the devs will keep on adding more and more features. Larger codebase also means that the code is harder to understand or audit. It also means that there is larger attack surface. Because of its size, SystemD is also harder to replace because it has... - sudo-replacement (run0...) - bootloader (why?) - a harmful logger that uses binary logs by default (and it can't filter what gets logged) - Good luck debugging if your logs are corrupted because of a catastrophic crash. - Just use sysklogd or metalog. - why SystemD can serve logs over HTTP? - homed (wtf?) - hostnamectl (wtf?) - DNS (systemd-resolved, wtf? - just use unbound or dnsmasq!) - networkd (why?) - SNTP client (why??? Chronyd, OpenNTPD and ntpd-rs are better.) - SystemD has container support (importd and systemd-nspawn) - why it has to be part of SystemD itself? - udev and gummiboot got swallowed by SystemD for no rational reason. - if you use SystemD, D-BUS can be used to activate daemons. Did you know that the xz-utils backdoor required SystemD and a custom downstream patch that enabled OpenSSH to use SystemD-notify? For more details, see >https://gist.github.com/thesamesam/223949d5a074ebc3dce9ee78baad9e27#payload >https://without-systemd.org/wiki/index_php/Arguments_against_systemd/ >https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Systemd

I've been using Devuan for years and I'm fully satisfied with it. It's literally just Debian without systemd. There are a few Debian packages that have to be blacklisted, but otherwise it's pretty much a drop-in replacement. I tried MX Linux for a while, but it's too bloated for me, and doesn't have an IRC channel for support. YMMV. If Linux ever became completely unusable, I'd go to OpenBSD.

>>88129 i'm the op and you've convinced me to go BSDward o handsome mirror gent, but is there a reason why you didn't mention freeBSD? it seems to be the best for regular usage and yet it's not really talked about in user spaces, like i've never seen it in desktop threads or anything like that

>>88131 Would like to second that Devuan is fantastic. It's been my distro of choice since returning to Linux from OpenBSD (not much of a choice if you want to run hardware made after 2010). That said, I do still have my librebooted 2008 Dell for the day where Linux finally becomes garbage as well.

>>88141 >>88129 >i'm the op and you've convinced me to go BSDward o handsome mirror gent, but is there a reason why you didn't mention freeBSD? Well, FreeBSD is kind of over-modernised compared to NetBSD and OpenBSD. Why are my old replies disappeared?

There are only 3 linux distributions i would recommend that don't use systemD, the best IMO is Alpine Linux, followed by Gentoo (if the source based model can work on your end) and Void Linux. OS security is very important, and alpine is used as a base for many containers, so there are many eyes on it and it's very well maintained. Prioritize packages from the official repos, only using those need for your desktop from the community repo. For all three, i advise getting your GUI apps via flatpak, and use something like distrobox to reduce how much you expose your system and you should be good to go.

>>88110 I kissed GNOME goodbye since it is tied up with wayland. and now distros that use x11(librex something?) aren't doing a good job of mainting their DE's.

>>88159 Forgot to add: Devuan. I was mainly talking about it. sure it's systemd-free, but goddamn is the installation process annoying.

I don't even see the impact on my life when I try running an OS without systemd. Except when something goes wrong and I'm unable to recover my session because some services haven't been initialized. I'm more annoyed by gayland being pushed everywhere because new software like that, including rust, isn't being this aggressively promoted because it's a better replacement in every way, besides maybe some points that are a marginal improvement, but a way for the crazy troontivists to take over the foss and open source space, who're unwitting tools of the silicon valley corpos who seeks to EEE all competition. Especially if it's free in all meanings of the word. Likewise I'm not really convinced of other init systems and can't be bothered unless an actually good reason emerges for me to do so. >>88125 > Larger codebase also means that the code is harder to understand or audit basically the Linux kernel >>88159 Gnome is cancer as it is now maintained my a bunch of mentally ill freaks. While you can still make it look nice, it increasingly pulls the "Oopsie, something went wrongsie" on me with no reasons given a la microsoft and I lose everything I haven't saved. Even though in the bird's view I can see my programs still running fine and even updating their UI correctly when I try to close them and it shows the save or discard prompt. But I can't click on save because something totes went wrong and I must restart my session now so I can bask in the glory that is a blank slate Gnome session. I'm just waiting for Cosmic to become a better alternative.

currently, i’ve been using artix with dinit and xfce (xlibre) for about 3 months, has familiar layout, boots up faster, never had issues with the documentation, and it’s easy to create scripts and services. feels comfy

>>88110 I use Arch but I have tested Gentoo in a VM*. I think Gentoo is better than Arch because Portage/emerge is better than Pacman. It supports more features (slots, keywords, etc) and it supports both binary packags and building from source. There's even an official binary package repo. Portage is also better at cleaning obsolete packages (pacman can mistakenly remove pacages that are installed from the AUR, since it doesn't know what AUR is.). *The reason why I chose OpenRC, Glibc and LLVM is that... - OpenRC is smaller than Sytemd and the boot or reboot time is not bad. It can be as fast as Systemd, if you enable parallel startup. - But Gentoo also supports SystemD if you want it. - Glibc is generally faster than musl and some programs (mainly proprietary software) don't work without Glibc. - But you can use Flatpak, qemu, containers, chroots or gcompat on musl. - You can speed up musl a lot, if you use alternative malloc replacement (mimalloc?)§ - LLVM has faster linker than GNU ld. Mold is even better but I don't know if it's stable? (Gold is deprecated and dead.). LLVM/Clang and GCC are otherwise just as good. §Also, see: - See, LD_PRELOAD env var and/or /etc/ld.so.preload config file. - https://github.com/GrapheneOS/hardened_malloc?tab=readme-ov-file#traditional-linux-based-operating-systems

>>88125 >- sudo-replacement (run0...) fun fact about that one, it depends on fuarrrking polkit

I'm wanting to move from opensuse to void. Anything I should know, I have never used a non systemd before

>>88776 >Anything I should know yes, void is half baked. maybe quarter baked. it's really so barebones it doesn't make sense to use it as a daily driver.

>>88778 Okay this gave me a good laugh, what do you use as a daily driver then?

i use slackware. i like the lack of systemd because of how simple it makes it to go in and change core parts of the system, everything is just a bash script, i can set up my own bash scripts if i want, i don't have to learn any arcane systemd config schemas or commands, it's all just stuff i'm already familiar with and i don't really care about the 1 second faster boot time. >>88122 i don't know what you're talking about, i've never encountered a program not running because of no systemd.

>>88778 What's missing? I've tried it and only the community's small size makes me not want to instantly start daily driving it.

>>88110 14.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE up 5 days it's really comfy, you have to put everything on top: wm, pulse, if you only use an mostly open stack cause proprietary soykaf (drm like on browsers) is not one click install, but workeable. nvidia driver was easy to setup.

why is it going to be like this

>>88778 I ran it for over a year and there were only a few programs that I couldn't get to work on void. It also has never broke. The only off putting thing about this distro is extremely soykafty attitude of its devs.

>>88796 To be honest, I've been using pipewire on different systems for at least three years. None had systemd and both pulse-locked stuff and jack shenanigans worked without much tinkering. On the contrary, I had quite the amount of problems with pure ALSA for some seemingly basic features like adjusting volume levels. It was more than half a decade ago though, so it might be easier now.

>>88788 xpbs is the worst package manager. it doesn't have an adequate build from source system, it is not documented and despite being binary, it cannot even search package contents without cloning some repo into your ~/. besides, their init scripts are some of the simplest i've ever seen and they only cover what they documented in their handbook, which is usually just one use case for everything. you get all of this and NO benefits. void is only good if you don't actually need your base system and run some containers/vms instead. otherwise artix has the best no-systemd support out there. they have functional and good init scripts for pretty much every init system, so you can even use artix as your stepping stone in learning say s6-init.

I switched from systemd to openrc to dinit Then switched from Xorg to Xlibre now I'm planning to replace elogind with seatd sadly removing dbus is impossible

>>88798 Was it really "half a decade" ago though, or was it only 5 years? And was it really a whole entire "quarter century" ago, or was it just 25 years?

check out https://hyperbola.info plan to use as desktop and switch servers to Devuan

I've thrown myself into using Artix on OpenIC with i3 windows manager. I sometimes have no idea what I'm doing and need to rely on guides / documentation or even AI if I'm desperate. I struggled to get mullvad VPN to work so I ended up just using wireguard with the configs and need to work out how to make a kill switch perhaps using a script if my WG Down turns off wireless interface

>>88973 I managed to get mullvad with gui running on artix but I had to manually edit some config file before I was able to connect to mullvad server. Then in order to use internet without VPN I had to revert changes in that file. It was a privileges issue iirc. There is a package for mullvad app and for mullvad daemon in aur.

>>88801 Your comment is misleading. >>it doesn't have an adequate build from source system xbps-src is in my opinion more than adequate. It isn't portage but I would say it's one of the better ones. >>it is not documented The distro may at times be lacking documentation (less so now than a couple of years ago) but xbps is well documented. >> despite being binary, it cannot even search package contents without cloning some repo into your ~/ I don't know what you mean. xbps-query -f lists all files from a package and -o lists which package a file comes from, and it works both for locally installed packages and packages in the repo. If you are talking about having to clone xbps-src, it's because most people don't want to compile their own packages. >>their init scripts are some of the simplest i've ever seen That's a selling point in my opinion. If I need more I'll add it. >> you get all of this and NO benefits I like musl, the minimal base system and xbps. It might just not be for you. >>void is only good if you don't actually need your base system and run some containers/vms instead The only thing i neded to run in containers was proprietary software I needed for uni classes that couldn't run under musl. I am not saying void is perfect. I switched to gentoo. As said the documentation isn't always the best (if it exists). The development team is small so packages can sometimes be a bit outdated, and the amount of packages is quite small. All in all: void is a good distro but (like all distros) has certain problems. xbps however is not one of them. It is, in my opinion, one of the best binary package managers.

>>89032 >xbps-src is in my opinion more than adequate it's not. it may be better than arch's fuarrrked up sudo-dependent pkgbuild or pkgmake or makepkg (forget its name), but otherwise it's soykaf. can't even build anything without cloning the entire repo and most of the time you don't even know what you're doing because there's no documentation. >I don't know what you mean xlocate >That's a selling point in my opinion rather stupid one. what's the point of having uselessly simple init scripts when debian's sysvinit scripts have tons of posix sh examples of how those can be made to be useful? >I like musl like breaking things? what's the benefit of using musl for average kid like you? if you really need the benefits you'll just go with gentoo anyway. maybe alpine, though idk if alpine is any better than void >The only thing i neded to run in containers was proprietary software I needed for uni classes that couldn't run under musl. and the only thing you ran beside those were your browser, alacritty and vim. maybe urxvt instead >void is a good distro but is worse for daily use than most others.

Why should I use anything other than systemd as long as I'm not too concerned about nor bloat nor security? I was just reading up upon https://nosystemd.org/#problems and most of them feel to arise from it being battle tested, not much of these are something that happened en masse, and I'm sure that more would happen if OpenRC, runit and whatnot would be adopted by the masses. The only problem that I can truly see with systemd is that it tries to replace absolutely everything with its own initiative, and does it in a hostile manner, but this does not push me over the top i.e changing the distribution.

>>89232 you've basically named the issues, whether you care or not is up to you. for most the issue can be more philosophical too, due to systemd being as dominant as it is, which some people may be opposed to, but, y'know, it's really up to you to make a judgement

>>88796 Regarding PipeWire: OpenRC has user services now. They are described as experimental on the gentoo wiki, but I have not run into any issues with it.

Another reason to dislike SystemD just got merged. userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954 "Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws ..."

https://www.mail-archive.com/debian-devel@lists.debian.org/msg390277.html >systemd-censord >All communication will be over D-Bus "creating a bespoke API for each of the hundreds of government censorship requirements that debian will presumably now be following will result in much duplication of effort and an unreliable user experience" "a universal framework allowing easy addition of new rules will greatly reduce developer time over individual ad-hoc implementations of each new freedom restriction"

Turns out, on a default Ubuntu install of 24.04 or later, there's local privilege escalation to root because of a vulnerability in systemd. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-3888 https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-research/2026/03/17/cve-2026-3888-important-snap-flaw-enables-local-privilege-escalation-to-root