Arch Linux distributes
systemd as its init daemon, and has deprecated SysV init in
June 2013. Debian is doing the same now and we see panic and terror
sweep through that community, especially since this time thousands of
my sysadmin colleagues are affected. But like with Arch Linux we are
witnessing irrational behavior, loud protests all the way to
the BSD camp and public threats
of Debian forking. Yet all that
is needed, and let's face it much simpler to achieve, is organizing a
specialized user group interested in keeping SysV (or your
alternative) usable in your favorite GNU/Linux distribution with
members that support one another, exactly as
I
wrote back then about Arch Linux.
Unfortunately I'm not aware of any such group forming in the Arch
Linux community
around sysvinit,
and I've been running SysV init alone as my PID 1 since then. It was
not a big deal, but I don't always have time or the willpower to break
my personal systems after a 60 hour work week, and the real problems
are yet to come anyway - if
(when)
for example
udev stops working without systemd PID 1. If you had a
support group, and especially one with a few coding gurus among you
most of the time chances are they would solve a difficult problem
first, and everyone benefits. On some other occasions an enthusiastic
user would solve it first, saving gurus from a lousy weekend.
For anyone else left standing at the cheapest part of the stadium,
like me, maybe uselessd
as a drop-in replacement is the way to go after major subsystems stop
working in our favorite GNU/Linux distributions. I personally like
what they reduced systemd to (inspired by
suckless.org philosophy?), but
chances are without support the project ends inside 2 years, and we
would be back here duct taping in isolation.