Hey. Well not sure whether this is actually welcomed or not,... but since some people have already started to share their personal feelings about the debate, I want to do so as well.
I've been using sysvinit for countless years (as most of us)... and I've tried both, systemd and upstart when the recent discussion began (which was, I guess, actually sparked indirectly by a post of mine, when I "asked" whether systemd was now mandatory due to GNOME depending on it))... I haven't really looked in depth at OpenRC or other solutions, since from the descriptions made by other people, I think it's not comparable to systemd/upstart. I'm maintaining a large Tier-2 for the LHC Computing Grid... so I guess I do have "some" ;) experience in what is useful in real life (like most other people here have of course as well). Now I guess it doesn't make much sense to repeat all technical arguments people have already brought up over and over again in this bug, so to make it short: >From a technical POV, I'd clearly go for systemd. Not only are (IMHO) it's core concepts and design superior... it also seems to provide much more and better features. Speaking only about Debian GNU/Linux... I'd even go as far, that I'd say we should in the long term, think about integrating the "other" features of systemd, like the Journal replacing rsyslog, or perhaps even having it in the initramfs (well, that is of course something one would really need to investigate closely)... In any case we should try to get something like the un-initramfs at shutdown, which systemd seems to support quite well. I think however, that a main part (50%) of the question systemd vs. upstart vs. something-else is not a technical one. Code, design and features can be improved or added. I think there is a strong political part in this decision. - At most upstream projects (the kernel, wayland, X, etc. pp.) people seem to at least think first about systemd... if they support upstart at all. Just look at recent developments like kdbus, which are clearly strongly "influenced/triggered" by systemd. So I fear that when going for upstart, Debian might sooner or later sit on a lone island (next to *buntu's island), having to spend a lot time to keep things working and adapted to upstart. - Most other major distros (except *buntu) have decided for systemd,... so again here,... with upstart we'd sit on a lone island, which ultimately would lead to many problems for sure. - In my opinion (and I'm sure some people will agree and others will contrary): RedHat has proven to be more "neutral" to projects it "governs" than Canonical. Actually, many people seem to think,... that Canonical has recently gone some strange paths, which somehow seem to lead them away from the community and classical open source ecosystem (just think about the whole Mir-story). - With upstart there is the contributor license agreement issue... which I think is a major political problem. - Last but not least... there are people (including myself, I guess),... which are concerned about the Debian/*buntu relationship in several ways... so having upstart the default init system, would give Canonical for sure some bit more of influence on Debian (and if it was just by technical decisions they make upstream). Of course one can argue, that this kind of influence might now be taken by RedHat. As another side note (which is not really a reason against upstart), but has also some political "impact", I guess... I really wonder what the decision "systemd vs. upstart in Debian" means to upstart? systemd for sure wouldn't bother much, if Debian decides for upstart. But it seems to me, that if Debian decides for systemd, this could be the end of upstart itself. Why? - *buntu would then permanently be completely alone on the upstart-island. - And since Debian packages would then focus on systemd, *buntu would get proper support for that for free - so why continuing to spend much efforts just for having an own init-system, which even provides no real technical benefits? Actually Canonical *is* known for dropping support or at least active development for their praised products,... think about bzr. Some last things: - While I think there should be a default init-system which all packages MUST support (which I'd want to be systemd)... others should be allowed as well. - I do have a big problem with projects (especially like GNOME) which sometimes seem to have an agenda of enforcing people to use the techniques they want. IMHO, open source IS about choice. But reality is probably, that one cannot do much about it. - I strongly like the idea of having k/freebsd and other non-Linux Debians,... and if it is just for diversity. Whatever decision is taken in the end,...care should be taken, that these ports can continue to exist. Best wishes, Chris. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
