"R" class virus
In my opinion, systemd is a virus.
There is a striking parallel between systemd in Linux and the registry in Windows OSs.
Systemd in Linux brings back memories of my difficult transition from W3.11 to W95, with the end of the familiar and usually well documented *.ini files I understood (and could tweak when things went foul) to the obscure workings of *the registry*, which took me a few years to get a minimal hold of, basically through unending trial and error grief.
After a few years (W95 to XPSP3) I understood what it was all about: a developer sanctioned virus running inside the OS, constantly changing and going deeper and deeper into the OS with every iteration and as a result, progressively putting an end to the possibility of knowing/controlling what was going on inside your box/the OS as it became more and more obscure.
When systemd appeared in Debian (I used Ubuntu) and saw what and how it did it, I realised that systemd was nothing more than a registry class virus which was infecting the Linux ecosystem at the behest of the developers involved and the complicity or indifference of most of the others.
So I moved from Ubuntu to PCLinuxOS and then on to Devuan.
Paranoid?
No. Just strongly convinced that there are people both inside and outside IT that actually want this systemd takeover to happen and are quite willing to pay shitloads of money to push that agenda.
Poettering is undoubtedly the prime suspect but surely not the only recipient.
I don't see this MS cozying up to/barging into Linux and areas of influence (GitHub, WSLinux (!), etc.) in various ways as a coincidence: these things do not happen just because or on some senior manager's whim.
What I do see (YMMV) is systemd being a sort of a putsch to generate a convergence of Windows with or into Linux, which is not good for Linux and will be its undoing.
But there's really nothing new here: it's just the well known MSbrace at work.
It's been going on for more than 30 years, should anyone be surprised?
I think that it would probably be a good thing that the awesome manpower behind all the Linux projects scattered out there team up to find common ground instead of everyone of them wanting to do their own thing while mindlessly waving the flag of choice, a flag which they are set to lose if they do not react fast enough.
The writing has been on the wall for a long time now.
And it's well past the time to heed the warning.
O.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
