I have recently been exposed to a lot of stuff against systemd.

I know its an old debate that has inflamed people for a long time, I am not looking into restarting it as I never took a stance into it in the past anyway.

I am myself a almost 30+ years power user of Linux and I have never used systemd much myself since it never fixed any issues I had with the previous approaches, and since I am a good user of Gentoo, always loved the freedom to just keep using OpenRC and din’t ever bother with systemd.

I like the Unix approach and at the same time, if it is not broken don’t fix it, is my basic idea. So my approach to systemd has been not of dislike, rather of I don’t care, I don’t need it. And I never needed it anyway.

After reading trough most of the links below I start to think that maybe my stance could be more than simple technical.

What are other lemmy-ers idea on all this?

I didn’t knew about Microsoft taking over the Linux Foundation either, and I am getting concerned about the real freedom behind my beloved Linux.

TLDR: I don’t dislike systemd, I never cared about systemd. Do I need to start caring now due to all this non technical issues?


(The following is a post on the #libreware telegram channel on the 7th/8th of February 2025)

Lennart Poettering intends to replace “sudo” with #systemd’s run0. Here’s a quick PoC to demonstrate root permission hijacking by exploiting the fact “systemd-run” (the basis of uid0/run0, the sudo replacer) creates a user owned pty for communication with the new “root” process.

This isn’t the only bug of course, it’s not possible on Linux to read the environment of a root owned process but as systemd creates a service in the system slice, you can query D-BUS and learn sensitive information passed to the process env, such as API keys or other secrets.

https://fixupx.com/hackerfantastic/status/1785495587514638559

Nitter mirror: https://xcancel.com/hackerfantastic/status/1785495587514638559

Here are some links about #systemd #alternatives for #Linux in no particular order. Which are your favorite alternatives and distros?

https://suckless.org/sucks/systemd/

https://unixsheikh.com/articles/the-real-motivation-behind-systemd.html

https://sysdfree.wordpress.com/

https://nosystemd.org/

https://skarnet.org/software/systemd.html

https://the-world-after-systemd.ungleich.ch/

https://ewontfix.com/14/

https://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=120652

https://www.devuan.org/os/announce/

https://www.devuan.org/os/init-freedom

https://thehackernews.com/2019/01/linux-systemd-exploit.html

https://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fallacies.html

https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/systemd-it-keeps-getting-worse/

https://systemd-free.artixlinux.org/why.php

Some more added here too: https://start.me/p/Kg8keE/priv-sec

#systemd #Linux

    • ShimitarOPA
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      5 hours ago

      Exchange of opinions is a great way to learn and broaden your views.

      • Rogue@feddit.uk
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        4 hours ago

        In that case why not share your opinion?

        Instead you’ve claimed you’re neutral and shared links to the views of 15 other people.

        You haven’t even provided any context on these articles. Or quoted anything from them that you are concerned about.

        Everything about this screams you’re asking in bad faith just hoping to waste people’s time or start an argument.

        • ShimitarOPA
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          1 minute ago

          And yes you exactly waste people time :)

          Jokes apart, well i think that having a core component so much linked to IBM and Microsoft is a potential danger to Linux itself. What if it was the kernel to be in the hands of Google and Microsoft? Where would Linux as we know it be going to?

          This is concerning, i think. I thought it was clear from the first post. I dont want to share an opinion on how good or bad systemd is from a technical point of view, because i do not have such an opinion because i use OpenRC and never used systemd long enough to judge it from a tech pov