Re: embrace, extend, extinguish

[Haines Brown <haines@histomat.net>]

I hestitate to enter this thread, given its nasty tone, so please don't
attack me if I pose some non-partisan questions.

An issue came up whether debian Jessie can run without systemd. I'm
currently running Wheezy without systemd installed, but I get this:

  $ dpkg -l "*systemd*" | grep ii
  ii libsystemd-daemon0:i386 44-11+deb7u4 i386 systemd utility library
  ii libsystemd-login0:i386  44-11+deb7u4 i386 systemd login utility library

As best I can make out, these libraries are there so that daemons and
log-in services that are designed to run under systemd will continue to
function. Can I remove these two packages and still have my old line
applications, like emacs, continue to function?

Next spring I'll likely upgrade to Jessie, and it seems that Jessie will
use systemd. A question came up but was never answered whether Jessie can
install sysvinit and make use of it instead of systemd. What is the
answer?

My wife used to run Windows and has now fled to a Mac. When things went
wrong on her Windows machine, I found them very difficult to fix. More
often than not I could only reboot and cross my fingers. On the other
hand, if I spend some time, I usually can fix Debian problems. Will the
expansion of systemd to acquire a monothic control over my system mean
that a non-expert like myself will be less able to maintain their
system?

Haines Brown