> Face it: the linux userspace has always sucked. Linus punted on it way-back-when (to be fair, he was a solo dev working on a kernel, he had his hands full) and opted for the gnu tools, but those (other than the compiler and libc and a few other spots like grep) have never been best-in-class.
Which userspace are you claiming is better then? Linux used to offer the best userland experience in the world, because you had control over every part of it, and since things were loosely coupled you could mix and match at will (e.g. prefer BSD grep or Solaris tar? No problem, install them).
> Somehow, this ended in a holy war and corresponding schism. It makes no sense to me. Are linux users upset that someone dared question their decades of suffering under a poorly-designed userspace? Agree or disagree with systemd's decisions, it's hard to fault someone for making and releasing software and offering it as an alternative, even if it sucks.
They didn't build a better alternative and let users choose to adopt it organically. They made a wilfully incompatible, tightly coupled thing, and then pressured other projects to hard-depend on it (e.g. Gnome).
This is quite literally the antithesis of everything that Linux and Unix stands for. The whole reason people were able to use the GNU tools with the Linux kernel is because they are loosely coupled and communicate through standardised interfaces. Systemd by contrast doesn't run anywhere but linux, and you need closely matched versions of everything: your linux has to match your udev has to match your systemd has to match your dbus has to match your gnome has to match your...
If systemd had been around when GNU and Linux were starting out, the whole project would have been literally impossible. It's a betrayal of everything those projects stand for.
> pressured other projects to hard-depend on it (e.g. Gnome).
GNOME wasn't pressured in depending on it. There deciding to depend on logind over ConsoleKit. Initially logind could be used without systemd, that changed after a systemd version due to cgroups v2. There's quite a bit of overlap between the people maintaining ConsoleKit and the people wanting to make use of logind, so there was a push by some GNOME maintainers to use logind.
The arguments against were often quite weak. When pointed out that ConsoleKit was unmaintained for years the answer could often be summarized as "why does it need development".
> It's a betrayal of everything those projects stand for.
Stuff like this makes maintainers of things just ignore you. There might be a valid point in your argumentation, but why bother.
Which userspace are you claiming is better then? Linux used to offer the best userland experience in the world, because you had control over every part of it, and since things were loosely coupled you could mix and match at will (e.g. prefer BSD grep or Solaris tar? No problem, install them).
> Somehow, this ended in a holy war and corresponding schism. It makes no sense to me. Are linux users upset that someone dared question their decades of suffering under a poorly-designed userspace? Agree or disagree with systemd's decisions, it's hard to fault someone for making and releasing software and offering it as an alternative, even if it sucks.
They didn't build a better alternative and let users choose to adopt it organically. They made a wilfully incompatible, tightly coupled thing, and then pressured other projects to hard-depend on it (e.g. Gnome).
This is quite literally the antithesis of everything that Linux and Unix stands for. The whole reason people were able to use the GNU tools with the Linux kernel is because they are loosely coupled and communicate through standardised interfaces. Systemd by contrast doesn't run anywhere but linux, and you need closely matched versions of everything: your linux has to match your udev has to match your systemd has to match your dbus has to match your gnome has to match your...
If systemd had been around when GNU and Linux were starting out, the whole project would have been literally impossible. It's a betrayal of everything those projects stand for.