Hi!

I am currently about to install PostmarketOS onto a phone.

Sadly I became aware of:

https://postmarketos.org/blog/2024/03/05/adding-systemd/

However I understand the reasoning.

More and more parts of stuff rely on some Systemd service. I have a growing
concern that we really see embrace, extend, extinguish at work here. Even
if it has not been planned that way it seems to work exactly like that.
But in a sense it has been a plan to convince all distros to use Systemd
from the beginning of Systemd development.

While Plasma still works well enough with elogind on Devuan, there are
issues as well. It seems to be hard to keep up with Systemd developments.
Also on a server with Incus I had to add runit service dir for Incus
manually. I am still looking forward to contribute this. But while it
would be good to first ask Debian Incus maintainer whether they would
accept in in their package, I'd rather avoid any possible conflict and make
a merge request for runit-services instead.

Are you tired of all this friction as well? Sometimes it seems to be
easiest to just give in and use Systemd. But I am not really inclined to
do that. Cause I remember the days when computing was fun – Amiga and
AmigaOS – and *simple*. I remember the struggle I had with implicit policy
in Systemd. Systemd just did things I did not agree with cause the Systemd
developers thought they know better than me what is good for me. I have
not forgotten all of this frustration and the arrogant replies in bug
reports I and others brought up.

How is it for you? Are you tired of this at times?

I intend to make sure the PostmarketOS I install is using OpenRC, the
standard init of Alpine Linux and see how I go from there. But in case
something then does not work, PostmarketOS developers may in future tell
me: Well use the Systemd version of our OS. Well it is a secondary /
backup phone to begin with, so bugs are not that severe to my daily
routine.

What gives me hope is that there is a GUI for Systemd called sxmo from the
suckless maintainers and they still like to stick with OpenRC:

https://sxmo.org/

I never have been a tiling window manager type of user so far… but maybe…
that would be an answer?

At least it seems OpenRC will be included in future versions of
PostmarketOS. Also I do not think Alpine Linux developers will switch to
Systemd.

And then there is Void Linux using runit. It could be a source for many
more service directories for Runit that may still be missing from Devuan.
More and more I think about cross distro collaboration. I think I explore
Void Linux some time in the future to see what they got. I really like to
see how complete they got things covered. They decided for runit and just
runit. I like to know how a Plasma 6 session feels there, whether they
already integrated Pipewire and so on.

Not surprisingly, most of the time above blog post by PostmarketOS
developers talk about GNOME not working with a polyfill for Systemd. GNOME
seems to be the most difficult desktop environment regarding this and also
for other topics. Plasma is still done also for FreeBSD and there is no
Systemd there. So Plasma developers did not yet introduce any hard Systemd
dependency. They support starting desktop services with Systemd, but if
Systemd user session is not around… they use traditional means to start
desktop services.

Really a reason for me not to even consider using GNOME. Also in other
circumstances I observed similar attitudes. GNOME developers knowing what
is best for everyone else. Last one of this installment was their icon
theme mess-up requiring Plasma developers to apply work-arounds for make
Plasma apps use the right icons when run on a GNOME desktop.

I wonder why can people not be nice to each other and work on
interoperability solutions that work for everyone?

Thanks,
--
Martin