While I disagree with the basis of the comic, I love that you made it. Keep it up. Open source art is always super cool.

I’m out of the loop. How does Carmen Sandiego fit into the whole init system debacle?

Let us all remember that, at least back when it started, the establishment alternative to systemd was a product named after its original operating system, System V UNIX, which is a direct descendent of the original UNIX from AT&T. This sysvinit software used complicated shell scripts to manage daemons. Contrary to some opinions, these shell scripts were not “just working”; they were in fact a constant and major maintenance burden for Linux distributions. When I started on Linux at least, Debian had a suspiciously large fraction of bugs on init script breakages.

All this is to say that the new system, systemd, doesn’t have to be anywhere near perfect to be worth replacing sysvinit.

People argue that systemd is rejecting the “UNIX philosophy” of small tools that do one thing well. I argue that this UNIX philosophy is not some kind of universal good with no tradeoffs. It’s an engineering rule of thumb. There are always tradeoffs.

People argue that systemd is too much like Windows NT. I argue that Windows NT has at least a few good ideas in it. And if one of those ideas solves a problem that Linux has, Linux should use that idea.

Needs larger hips because bloated.

Re the comic: great art! Can’t wait to read more. I’m already curious about these characters and their setting.

Re the topic: I have to agree with Benno Rice here. While systemd is far from perfect, there is a lot that it got right, and there are a lot of reasons it became the most widely adopted init system—no, it’s not because the project owner is well-connected, that’s for Apple and M$. We should learn from that, instead of outright dismissing the users that have reasons for wanting/using it.

More generally, this falls under the “should the tech adapt to the user or the user adapt to the tech?” debate. Systemd chose to aim for broadly applicable while still being easy to use for beginners who just want to “set it and forget it” (the tech adapted to the user). Meanwhile, savvy users have figured out exactly how they want their init configured, and the bare minimum they need to do so, so they’re willing to learn a different system (the users adapting to tech).

I’m not even close to saying systemd is The Best™, nor even that it’s good. But it is good at what it wants to be, and it satisfies the overwhelming majority of gnunix users. Instead of writing them off as misguided followers of evil, maybe we should listen to their needs and try to find a way to tailor an init system to them.

Spoiler: we don’t do that because they want something that takes care of everything systemd does, that’s as widely supported, and that requires minimal setup and maintenance. They want systemd.