Hey guys, I have been using a Linux for a while and I always thought as long as some software is Open Source, its good enough.
What are other considerations that make for good FOSS software? In which of these does systemd fail? Is that why it’s criticized or is there some other reason?
systemd is only used to initiate booting of a system afaik and, in the past, it was criticized for overreach (as in it did more than its predecessor did).
now-a-days, it seems to be criticized for pre-complying with big brother like laws like age verification.
Ahem, it does a ton more than merely “initiate booting” (logging, time, user management, device management, the list is long and it is really hard to find a piece of basic system functionality it hasn’t subsumed), please don’t spread misinformation.
you must have missed this part:
Nope, but “more” doesn’t adequately capture the scale of it. Given that you talk about a predecessor (singular) I presume systems programming is not your specialty?
op was asking about linux specifically and neither sysvinit, upstart, openrc, or runit did more than booting
No shit. “More” is technically correct. “A metric fuckton more” conveys the appropriate scale. It’s not like systemd added a handful small features, it has subsumed nearly everything between kernel and userland. (Note that proponents usually point this out as a good thing; It’s uncontested, you just seem blissfully unaware)