On Sun, Jun 25, 2017 at 01:49:20PM -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

[cut]

>
> This (your 1990 X11 terminal, X2Go, etc.) is all _network-based_
> multiuser, of course, using intelligent remote workstations. The aim of
> multiseat is to implement _locally attached_ multiuser, on attached
> terminals -- which is different in kind (IMO an almost entirely
> pointless niche use-case, but proponents disagree).
>
> I like how Arnt phrased it: 'Multiseat is unimportant, barely
> significant. The price of computers has dropped enough that the ones
> with UIs are now personal devices.' The economics if the multiseat
> aspiration doesn't, IMO, make sense in the 2010s. People who disagree
> are of course welcome to scratch their own itches, though it'd be nice
> if they didn't drag the rest of us along with them.
>

Let's be honest here: systemd proponents needed a few reasons for
their crusade. The first horse was "fast boot times", which was easily
revealed to be a legend. The second one was "multi-seat support",
which is totally useless today. The third one was "easy cgroup
management", whose real utility is at least questionable. The fourth
one was "reproducible boots", which might make sense in a VM farm,
where flawlessly provisioning a container in 5 minutes might be
important. The fifth one was "innovation, since sysv-init scripts are
hard to maintain" (for people who use MacOSX and are totally clueless
about scripting, we should add), which is again BS (Brutally
Simplistic).

The real reason was a completely different one: unify the low-level
userland under a single entity, so that all the distros would abide to
a single specification set by RedHat, and about which RedHat will sell
support, certifications, and related services. And, at the same time,
eliminating variety and alternatives in a core part of the system (the
low-level userland), which has traditionally been the territory of the
unix-wars.

As usual, marketing is at least slightly different from reality. And
wondering whether a cloths detergent will really give you the
fantastic results shown on TV -and for a lower price- is pretty
pointless.

systemd is here, so asking whether it was worth the effort or trying
to provide logical explanations for its existence (besides a carefully
planned strategy by RedHat) looks as useless as pondering about the
effectiveness of cloths detergents. The only way I see to avoid that
this total domination plan can succeed is to continue proposing,
developing, and maintaining high-quality credible alternatives, of all
sorts, on all fronts.

My2Cents

KatolaZ

-- 
[ ~.,_  Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - GLUGCT -- Freaknet Medialab  ]  
[     "+.  katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it  ]
[       @)   http://kalos.mine.nu ---  Devuan GNU + Linux User  ]
[     @@)  http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia --  GPG: 0B5F062F  ] 
[ (@@@)  Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ  ]