Someday, I won’t be using Linux any more.
First you have to understand why I use it now: It is the single best replacement for commercial operating systems. It is so for me, and for some of my tech support clients. That is so because there are several commercially viable Linux distributions. They come with the bells and whistles and I don’t have to know too awfully much to make it work as a common desktop. Some years ago Linux started becoming easier to use, and recently is far easier than Windows or Mac.
But the easy to use commercially viable Linux brands have all adopted “systemd” and that was the beginning of the end. All the various distributions of Linux that work the way I do are infected with this monster. With each passing release, more and more of the system is sucked into this vortex and the user has less and less freedom to choose things he/she should very well have the freedom to choose. The arrogance of the “systemd” folks is off the charts; there are no words to express it. It will soon be unusable for me; it will make Linux too much like Windows.
The few Linux brands not using “systemd” are not commercially viable for the desktop. Most of them have way too much work the user must do, and therefore way too much technical detail that users would have to know, but really shouldn’t have to know. There is a sweet spot between too simple and too complicated, and those without “systemd” are together all too complicated. They don’t simply work the way I do, nor the way my tech support clients work. They are not viable. They might work for you, but it’s just more monumental arrogance to insist your way is the default. Lots of people will continue to use Linux, but my time with it is now short. I’m pretty sure Xubuntu 18.04 is my last Linux.
If I’m going to have to keep a fat book of tricks I have to do to make it work like I do, my current inclination is to switch to the BSDs. Let’s just say that, in my experience, FreeBSD (for example) is far less perverse in making things difficult, puts up fewer roadblocks for what I feel I must do. This won’t happen tomorrow, but sometime in the future when Xubuntu Bionic no longer serves my purposes, that’s when I’ll switch over.
And it’s not just “systemd;” lots of things in Linux Land have gone the wrong direction for me and for my clients. It’s been a good run over the last 20 years, but a lot of things have crept into Linux to kill it for me.
Just read a little on systemd. Sounds like a trip. Glad I’m not involved.
It used to be real simple to diagnose and correct issues connected with what gets load, when and how. Now it’s controlled by something wholly opaque, requiring very detailed knowledge of something designed to be obtuse. This planned obfuscation, and the arrogance about it, came on just about the time Linux was getting so very accessible to the less nerdy users of the world, that it amounts to shooting oneself in the foot. Linux elitism at its finest.
PCLinuxOS is systemd-unencumbered and has long been viable as a drop-in replacement for Windows. MX-17, based on Debian Stable, has systemd as a dependency but does not use it. It’s just “there” because abuncha other software ‘depends’ on it. Slackware-based SalixOS is also unpolluted andhas cool tools and defaults that make it kinda sorta user friendly.
Thanks, Robin. I may use PCLinuxOS on my Linux laptop because BSD has crappy support for ACPI, but I still prefer BSD. I’ve looked at Slackware and derivatives and they simply do not work the way I do.
Another Linux distribution that does not use Systemd is Devuan. It is based on Debian, which it is a quite user friendly distro, and if you are a Xubuntu user you may find it more familiar than BSD based systems – FreeBSD being, by the way, an excellent and reliable O.S.
I’ve got 32-bit, systemd-free antix running on a couple of really old but perfectly good desktop ‘puters. Adding Xfce to antiX is done in a few mouse clicks, and access to all the supercool newbie-friendly MX Tools makes for a sweet, novice-friendly systemd-free OS.