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Comment by embik | Hacker News Reader

The characterisation of systemd in this post really bothers me, particularly this:

> 70 binaries just for initialising and logging

It’s just not true. Those 70 binaries provide much more functionality than an init system, they can cover a significant portion of system management, including a local DNS resolver, network configuration or system time management. You can dislike the fact everything is so tightly integrated (which feels ironic given that the post goes on to praise a user space from one team), but let’s at least be correct about this.

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> including a local DNS resolver, network configuration or system time management.

Do. Not. Want.

So, I have this pile of 70 binaries that are inexplicably tied to my init system, and (in my, informed enough for me, opinion) they're all garbage. How do I remove them without breaking init?

This month's fresh hell: I have a problem where the systemd replacement for xscreensaver (logind, maybe? Good luck finding the culprit, let alone the manual!) won't accept my password unless I exit the current X session with "switch user" then restore the session using the normal login screen.

There's a whole section on JWZ's xscreensaver page (from over a decade ago) explaining how to avoid this class of bug, but what does he know?!?

That reminds me; I wonder if a *BSD is a good enough daily driver for the pine book pro yet (it's probably easier to port their kernel than to fix Linux userspace, after all...)

> So, I have this pile of 70 binaries that are inexplicably tied to my init system, and (in my, informed enough for me, opinion) they're all garbage. How do I remove them without breaking init?

Depending on distro, all can be substituted for alternatives (assuming they're used at all, I've seen a number of distros package the kitchen sink "just in case")

Nothing about using systemd as pid1 required using any of their other developed tools, even logind. Find a distro that doesn't use them, or roll one yourself.

It's a mistake to see "Systemd" as a single application - it's a collection of developed-together (so tend to work slightly nicer together) userspace tools - like FreeBSD without the libc and kernel, or GNU coreutils or similar. People don't seem to complain too much about those "Bundling Everything Together".

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