Re: systemd effectively mandatory now due to GNOME
On 2013-10-27, Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au> wrote:
> * Some people say this means it needs systemd running as pid=1, same say it
> doesn't. Am still confused here.
The facts seems to be that logind/systemd in version 204 (the current
one in debian) doesn't need systemd as pid 1, but latest upstream
(version 205 and newer) does.
> * Some people say that the parts of systemd that Gnome uses should be split
> into a separate package, so, in theory, it should be possible to install
> just those parts without installing all of systemd. However the systemd
> object to doing this (I missed the reasons behind this).
It is more work for the systemd maintainers, and all people will gain is
a couple of kilobytes of free diskspace from the systemd executable
(haven't looked up its size)
> * Gnome is said to work fine even on platforms that don't have systemd
> installed. Does this mean that systemd is optional?
It is more a matter of defining 'fine'. Apparantly suspend/hibernate is
bound now logind, as well as user switching and a couple of other
features
> * For reasons I don't properly understand, some people seem to think a
> decision is needed to make or not make systemd the default in Debian.
It is more a matter of many people wanting a new init system because
features and others seems to not want something new because they know
what they have.
And since we can't have two init systems being the default, and we can't
expect maintainers of packages to actively test a bunch of different
init systems, we need a decision to be able to move forward.
> Have I missed anything or got anything wrong?
You missed a few bits, but yeah.
/Sune
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