You can also read The problem with the anti systemd attitude.
This is not just hatred towards systemd, it can do things very well, the direction it is going isn’t great.
This is by far the most nuanced critique of systemd I’ve ever seen. I don’t fully agree with its conclusions personally, but I think it makes a lot of good and valid points about its architecture and its flaws. It feels like such a breath for fresh air in comparison to the most vocal anti-systemd types who vaguely and angrily gesture at “scope creep” and refuse to elaborate further.
If you think OP’s link is nuanced, try this one: https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2020/05/02/0/
“Soldier Found Deep In Jungle, Still Fighting For Extinct Empire!”
This guy was complaining in the blog post about how bloated systemd is because it uses 36MB of space and it could be done with ~6MB if you used different tooling.
If you’re the kind of user where 30MB of disk space genuinely matters either at scale or in some very niche edge case, then you’re also the kind of user who won’t have much trouble using an alternative init system or building/tuning your own.
Okay, I agree 30MB isn’t a big deal, but that’s not really an argument not to optimize. The entire Debian Stable mirror for example has like 70,000 packages in it. Let’s say all of those packages took the position that “A few extra MB doesn’t matter.” If each one had just 1 extra MB that is 70GB of extra bloat. If each one had 2 extra MB that is 140GB of extra bloat. If each one had 30MB of extra bloat that is 2.1TB of extra bloat. Now obviously thats a very unrealistic, and extreme, example, but the point is that with a super complex operating system things add up. We should appreciate the nit picky little dudes who yell over 30MB because they’re probably responsible in part for a good bit of cumulative extra disk space for the rest of us.
The article is full of dishonest nonsense. It compares file sizes without comparing features. Well, actually it’s blatantly lying by saying that the setups have the “same functionality” when they clearly do not. For example, systemd-homed supports encrypted home directories which is potentially a useful feature for shared PCs, but the non-systemd setup uses nothing for managing /home, so it takes 0 bytes. NetworkManager has a size of “N/A” apparently. It looks like there should be notes or citations but they’re missing. They’re archived here if you’re interested, but it’s just a bunch of upstream URLs; this doesn’t show us what the author is comparing.
The other related point is also nonsense:
We can evaluate the “systemd isn’t monolithic” claim based on how it’s packaged and distributed.
Well, no. We can evaluate how distros package systemd, not what systemd is or isn’t. The author uses Arch Linux to show that a systemd-based setup requires 36MB. But as the article itself states, arch linux puts every single binary into a single package. Not mentioned in the article is how Arch Linux also bundles other stuff most people don’t need in the packages, like header files, programming manual pages, completions for various shells, default configurations not part of systemd etc. Is the non-systemd setup done in the same way or is the author manually installing 6 executables and calling it “equivalent”? We can’t know because one the one side we have a real (worst-case) example of Arch Linux packaging systemd, and on the other side we have “to get the same functionality without systemd, a distribution could use”.
None of this illustrates any waste of space on the entire Debian Stable mirror if you’re worried about that. In fact the bundling of systemd component into a small number of packages saves space for Debian (though it potentially wastes space for your PC).
Ah okay. I was just taking issue with the idea that a few MB don’t matter. Thanks for expanding on your point. I’m very much pro-optimization got no real opinions on systemd tho.
While I get the sentiment, isn’t the fact that systemd is broken into various components and you can use or choose not to use each part of it still within the unix philosophy? You can use the init system without using the rest. It just integrates well with the other components.
That argument is addressed in the article. With few practical exceptions, systemd components expect you to be running the other systemd services. E.g. running systemd without journald is not a supported usecase.
Not supported doesn’t mean it won’t work
Fair enough, but there’s a reason no one runs almost any of the systemd services in isolation. There’s a big difference between “takes a bit of tinkering” and “need to maintain massive patch files to make journald independent of systemd”
Yeah that’s fair. I will say that I’ve used distro’s that used systemd and journald, but not resolved, networkd, etc and it worked fine.
Even if it is, the biggest problem is that there isn’t today a big distro that is not using it. Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSuse, Arch, Debian, are all using systemd. One can say, you can try Void or Artix, Void repos are small, Artix is small (and kind of non-reliable) project. Or go to Gentoo and compile your applications, no ty.
Did the author intentionally omit systemd-boot or am I missing something? The EFIStub part of it seems to be the only way to package a UKI. Void Linux even has a package with just the Sub for uses wanting to go that route.
Linux is the second-most popular descendent of Unix, the first being OSX.
This ruffles my feathers. Disregarding servers where Linux has near monopoly, surely Linux is installed on more devices and has more users than OSX? OP is clearly counting only desktop users
Linux is the second-most popular descendent of Unix, the first being OSX.
Linux is not really a descendant of Unix. It is a Unix clone, but its roots do not trace back to Unix.
Same here, also all embedded system on linux + smartphone. I guess the author meant desktop usage. Still I am very unsure about the world at large. This is north-American take.
Every time someone posts about systemd I just paste in the link to the Tragedy of systemd video https://youtu.be/o_AIw9bGogo and move on
Amazing talk, was hoping somebody would’ve linked it and was not disappointed
That talk is so good. Great idea.
I haven’t read the whole article yet, but it bothers me how athe author mistakenly calls the init (with the process id 1) pid 0, which is special and belongs to a part of the kernel.
Yeah, I noticed that too. At the end of the day, it’s not particularly important, but it is a bit of an embarassing mistake.
That article contradicts itself a bit, especially about journalctl. I also don’t see how an article from 4 years ago is related to the current direction?
I was also confused for a moment due to the way my Lemmy client shows it, but op has actually linked two articles, one from 2022 and one more recent.
I am pretty sure this is from 30th of July 2026 (and not 2025 as the article says, the blog menu seems correct). Did I miss something about it being 4 years old?
It was the 2nd link, Lemmy showed me that rather than the first.
I read the article and find the title to be clickbait.
