Do users care though? I don't. I select a Linux distro based on how popular it is because frankly they are all pretty excellent these days.

I go for popular distros because it's more likely that bugs are found and community help is available.

I also do very little customization. If the default window system is Gnome, that's what I use. If it's KDE or something else, that's fine too. Again, they are all good enough.

I use Linux, I'm a huge fan of it, but I'm not dogmatic. Using Linux is a way for me to get work done, but it isn't the goal itself.

Some care. I don't think it'll ever be "mainstream". But I certainly care. I switched from Arch to Gentoo and systemd was one of the reasons.

And no, I don't really expect Gentoo to be something most people use. But to me that's the beauty of open source. If someone, or a group of people care enough, they can make it happen, if someone else finds it useful too doesn't necessarily matter.

Exactly, I use Debian because it has a large user base and community. But that's precisely why it's important than the mainstream distributions continue to support the traditional Unix init. People don't want to have to switch to some obscure distribution simply to avoid systemd.

There isn't much reason for a mainstream user to touch a system with a traditional init nowadays either.

There isn't much reason for a mainstream user to care what the initialization sequence looks like. Can they run the applications that they need to? That's about all a mainstream user cares about. Linux is just boring infrastructure that needs to be there. All the interesting stuff happens in user land.

The problem sort of is that (the rest of) Debian wouldn't work with them on this.

You are quite right, as the overall Debian's stance on systemd was far from praiseworthy. They allowed themselves to be pushed around too far by the "end-user" (desktop-users) mentality of the gnome and few such other upstreams.

This is a very good news. Indeed it would have better if the Debian had been a little bit more flexible and sensible on this issue.

Congrats Devuan folks! My heartfelt thanks too.

Edit: added my thanks and clarification for desktop-user.

This is fairly untrue. If you had an opinion that you don't like systemd, that's perfectly OK...but to cast doubt on the fairly open (and very brutal) CTTE process to select systemd is very unfair.

IMHO it is always good to doubt the status quo..but to discredit the winning fight put up by systemd against Shuttleworth and Upstart is very biased. The technical tradeoffs in systemd may not be worth it to you... But it won on technical merit.

FWIW I can't wait to see the next Holy War around snap packages.

How dare they consider end users! What is the world coming to?!?

I am not against them considering the end users. But getting pushed around by "end-user" (please read desktop-user) focus is way too unacceptable behavior, especially for a community like Debian.

edit: added clarification for end-user.

> getting pushed around by end-user focus is way too unacceptable behavior

why?

It seems that GNOME had developed a strong dependency on systemd, which drove the whole process. I'm guessing "end-user" here means desktop user. I've used debian as a desktop and a server, and in the past it's been pretty easy to have it fill both roles; at this point though, systemd is basically forced onto a server system which involves a lot of changes and very little improvements for the server environment: the previous init scripts worked, my servers don't need to respond to hardware changes, or sleep, i didn't need a new ntpd, dhcpcd, syslogd, named (well ok, maybe, but unbound is what i want), anything else d.

Thanks for clarifying "end-user" here means desktop user. I did mean desktop user. It's so sad that the Debian community chose to ignore server users to achieve the goal of pleasing desktop users. Servers and many other users do not need the gnome at all.

And I am a server user of Debian and happy with systemd. Finally an init system that can reliably detect failing daemons and that allows me to set restarting policies.

Could you recommend a good tutorial on writing init scripts with systemd? I'm moving over from using upstart.

Remember the first rule for migrating to systemd.

* http://askubuntu.com/a/626858/43344

* http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/sy...

* http://askubuntu.com/a/613814/43344

And read the doco that comes with your operating system (presumed to be Ubuntu, given that you say that you use upstart).

* https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemdForUpstartUsers

Perhaps because end users only focus on one thing, be it faster boot, or better service management, but are rarely well versed enough to understand the long term implications of using a monolith like systemd.

I might be one of those users. Could you explain what these long-term implications are?

because there are several thousand desktop linux users, and hundreds of millions of linux servers, embedded and mobile devices.

Except they weren't.

I thought the Debian people had a vote and the choice was to go with systemd.

It was a technical committee who took the decision, if I recall correctly.

The was also a general resolution after that:

https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003