Debian 9 Stretch Stable Is Released! Check Out The New Features

I have been using Linux off and on since 1999 and much prefer an old school Linux install with the traditional SysV style init system along with a traditional Root account as well as a separate user account. Is the traditional init system better than Systemd? From an old school Linux user who understands how the old init system works and how to change run levels I would have to say no and perhaps if just looking at Systemd’s init system the Systemd is probably better but unfortunately the developers of Systemd have in my opinion and that of a large percentage of older users feel that they have violated a basic tenant of Linux that was brought over from Unix and that is to create a utility etc that does one thing and does that really well. The traditional init system only task was to initilaze a Linux system during the boot process. All the rest of tasks that need to be managed in a OS were handled by different and separate utilities that did their jobs really well and were very easy on system resources and for a lot of things there were a lot of choices as to what utility to use because there usually were several different ones that did the same thing, kind of like the choice in media players. So the developer of a distro or the end user if they did not like a particular utility that came as default with their distro could easily change it. Unfortunately the Systemd devs have decided that their package should be a Swiss army knife and do all things that are needed in your OS thus taking away the end users FREEDOM of choice. This freedom is and has always been the most important and a fundamental tenant of running Linux. However there seems to be a lot of lazy devs out there that just want Systemd to do everything for them. This is the problem with having so many distros of Linux there are a lot of guys out there that I feel are probably fairly new to Linux who perhaps were devs who have migrated over from Windows and do not have a good grasp and understanding of what has made Linux so great until fairly receintly and I believe that it is because Linux has always adhered to the KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid) principle, This is where the mantra of creating software and utilities that did one thing well and leave all the other tasks for a different app or utility came from. The basic problem I have personally with Systemd is not so much that it was created but that so many distros, like almost all of them have all adopted Systemd and have done so far too quickly and not enough developers fought against this new 800lb Gorilla on the block this new Monolithic Behemoth called Systemd. This new and so called improved init system has taken over the Linux landscape and already has restricted our freedom of choice. All too many software packages have begun listing Systemd as a hard dependency, you want to run our application well you just have to sign over your rights to having a freedom of choice. Even if you wanted to use a traditional init system and pick and choose all of the other utilities that are needed if you want there is still a couple of distros you can use and one of Gentoo. Oh that is almost true it is not if you happen to prefer the Gnome desktop because guess what, to use Gnome the devs of Gnome force you to also use Systemd because they have decided to make Systemd a hard requirement to use Gnome. I mentioned that I have used Linux off and on since around 1999, all of my computers dual booted Linux with Windows up until all of the Disros jumped on the Pulse Audio Sound Server all too quickly. I bring up Pulse Audio because though different I feel the same mistakes are being made with a too rapid deployment of Systemd. I cannot remember the exact date but it was probably around 2007 or 2008 when I stopped using Linux on a regular basis because I just got tired of chasing sound related issues that it seemed that no one was able to solve. Back at the beginning of Pulse Audio the vast majority of developers of distros did not understand how it worked and as a result there were a lot of crappy implementations of Pulse Audio and quite frankly the average user does not really need a sound server to begin with. Even if you have pulse installed you still need the old tried and true ALSA for the drivers to make your sound card work, Pulse Audio is just a sound server and has no drivers and has to use ALSA to output audio. Yes in some cases a sound server is more flexible but for most people they are only needing to do one thing with their sound at one time, they are watching a movie, or steaming in a video from Youtube or Netflix or playing some music and really do not need the added complexity or features of Pulse Audio. It first came on the sceen around 2004 but one of the major issues was that almost nothing was compatible with Pulse, OSS, ALSA as well as probably all applications that did anything with audio on Linux would not work with Pulse and all of it needed to be rewritten, and eventually even the Pulse API had to be rewritten. I cannot remember exactly when it seemed that all Distros were forcing Pulse Audio on everyone but I think it was probably around 2007 there is a quote from a developer of Ubuntu that stated on 2009 that he still was not satisfied with how Pulse worked in Ubuntu. Probably one of the major issues was caused by the simple fact that all of the audio applications had to be rewirtten and this took time. It was around this time, might have been 2008 that I pretty much stopped using Linux. At least if you really do not want to use Pulse Audio you could probably get rid of it but not so with Systemd and Systemd is far more dangerous and over reaching than Pulse Audio ever was. Today almost 19 years later the audio issues have been sorted out even with the intergraton of Pulste Audio. However I still feel strongly that the use of Pulse Audio or for that matter the use of any sound server should be optional and so should the use of Systemd. Everyone should have the option of using any init system that they choose and should be able to change as easily as it is to install or uninstall software using your package manager. All of the extra stuff that curretnly is in Systemd should be cut loose as independant utilites and give back the develops of Distros and the end user the freedom to pick and choose what software and utilities that power their Linux Box. I suppose that I will have to use Systemd whether i want to or not because all of the dev’s have decided to unilaterally take away my freedom of choice and this is what has me upset much more that a collection of software tools. I also fear that the longer that Systemd is used in its present state that as time passes we users of Linux will experience an alarming erosion of choice and freedom and in a few years because too many have given over their choice and power of choice to a handful of developers of Systemd and we will wake up to an ecosystem that will not be too different than if we were using Microsucks OS’s because we will probably loose all of our freedoms that we currently or at least that we had before Systemd was universally adopted.