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Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...



On 2017-04-01 at 20:08, Catherine Gramze wrote:

>> On Apr 1, 2017, at 7:30 PM, Patrick Bartek <nemommxiv@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> Never came across those during my research before posting my
>> initial query here.  And I read a lot of articles.  Still have
>> found nothing stating exactly why Linux distros don't offer a
>> choice of inits during install, even in "expert" mode.  You can
>> choose just about everything else.  I doubt that particular option
>> was even considered.
> 
> The Debian page: https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd 
> does a pretty good job of explaining the reasons for the switch.
> 
> My best guess as to the lack of an init system choice would be the
> huge ripple effect on documentation, making it harder to document
> Debian when the user may be using either a sysvinit shell script or a
> systemd utility. Not to mention the added developer time of
> maintaining two init systems.

Eh? You *do* have a choice of which init system to run; many people
running Debian are still using sysvinit, myself included. The system
handles this just fine; if you file a bug report via e.g. reportbug, it
will automatically detect which init system you're running and include
that information in the bug report.

What you don't have is a choice *in the installer* of which init system
to *start out with*. The installer will always set up systemd (possible
unusual situations involving preseeding aside); if you want sysvinit
instead, you have to break out of the do-things-for-you friendly install
process and do some package installs + uninstalls by hand.

This makes it harder for people to get a non-systemd init system in
place (particularly people with less technical experience), and harder
to be sure that all traces of systemd-used-as-init-system have really
been removed from the machine.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

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