Interesting that you list DNS, because in my experience one of the worst-implemented network protocols in pre-systemd Linux is the DNS client. The systemd implementation isn't perfect either, but it's a lot better.

The design of classic Linux DNS simply assumes that 100% of Linux systems are university lab machines, and that there is a single DNS server that is 100% reliable.

I've heard people making various arguments to support the classic Linux DNS client's failings as if they were features. These have included: that I should "fix" my telco's DNS servers (wtf!?), set up a HA load-balancing solution on premises (in my home!?), use anycast routing (really!?), reinvent the DNS protocol to not require multiple servers (I'll get right on that), or change third-party software to not require DNS (wat?).

When pressed, all of these people eventually boiled their arguments down to: Fine, yes, it's broken, but it's the way it is, that's what the man page says, that's what was established in the 1980s, and systemd is different so we don't like it!

It's mind boggling how conservative Linux people are...

I had zero problems with Linux’s dns client until about 3 years ago. The systemd one and whatever it replaced took 5 seconds to resolve anything remotely last time I checked. (It did cache after that, fwiw).

This was on some Ubuntu LTS. 18.04, maybe? I paved the machine, installed a distro that doesn’t chase the new shiny every six months, and moved on.

Most of these things are simply untrue. The idea that homed is "incompatible with SSH" is preposterous.

> Letting the init system talk to the network before userspace has the ability to setup firewalls gives me the heebie jeebies.

Are these just random claims? The init system is userspace, and you can have any service wait for anything to access the network, including disabling the whole network target and triggering it manually.

Here’s a remote exploit for the systemd DNS client: https://groups.google.com/d/topic/linux.debian.user/2KyNDWMj...

Here’s one for systemd DHCP: https://blog.erratasec.com/2018/10/systemd-is-bad-parsing-an...

Firewalls wouldn’t help with either of these, in fairness.

Okay, how do you get the ssh folder contents to validate the remote user, if validating the user is required to decrypt?

You can't. And the systemd answer is that you simply throw away ssh.

> The idea that homed is "incompatible with SSH" is preposterous.

And yet, any honest assessment of the pros and cons of the homed proposal has to discuss the impact on SSH users in the cons section.

> Letting the init system talk to the network

What?