this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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Fork time? Maybe all the anti-systemd zealots were right all along...

Edit: To address whether it is likely that this change will affect users: Gnome is planning a stronger dependence on userdb, the part of systemd where this change is being implemented. https://blogs.gnome.org/adrianvovk/2025/06/10/gnome-systemd-dependencies/

Final Edit: The PR has been merged into main.

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[–] Internet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Nah this is more systemd bloat and certainly invites criticism. Other inits aren't even commenting, let alone complying.

[–] amadaluzia@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Other inits aren’t even commenting, let alone complying.

This would be a fair point, if systemd wasn't more than an init system. While a service manager (init system) is included, systemd is a system manager. OpenRC, runit, and other init systems do not need to comment because their only task is to mount the necessary file systems, setup the device manager, and start daemons. systemd as a system manager not only needs to manage services, but it also needs to manage devices, logs, the hostname, etc.

[–] Internet@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Your system could honestly be fatter without systemd if you try to replicate everything it does with external applications.

Maybe so, but systemd's bloated feature creep still leads to security vulnerabilities. Another systemd root access exploit was just discovered a couple of days ago.

[–] amadaluzia@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Unfortunate. However, it seems that is snapd's fault. Here's the important part from the article:

Ubuntu automatically deletes old files from the /tmp directory after a certain number of days. During this cleanup, an important directory used by snap-confine may get removed.

Ubuntu configured systemd-tmpfiles to clean out /tmp after some days. That's why the issue is only present in Ubuntu systems. Therefore, systemd was doing it's job, and it just so happened to create the perfect conditions for a vulnerability in Ubuntu.

[–] Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Other inits are not relevant, because of their own choice to not do the job correctly last time they had a chance to

[–] amadaluzia@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I believe those other init systems we're in the right to, but that's only because they are JUST init systems. systemd can because it doesn't just provide an init system, it provide a suite of tools for Linux system management. Something like userdb would have to be implemented by another tool, where they could actually implement BirthDate if they so choose to (and probably should for it's continued existence).

[–] Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

Yes, I agree. The problem is such things never appeared, so alternatives to systemd never became relevant.