You could replace your init system with your own in any distro. So yes, you could. Nothing is stopping you. thats what makes the antisystemd arguments absurd, you can replace it if you want.

That is wrong. Systemd complies with POSIX. POSIX mandates a minimum level of functionality, it does not mean you cannot add additional APIs and functionality that goes beyond what POSIX requires. The arguments of this vile systemd crowd wastes everyones time, at least now they can go off into their own little fork and stop bothering everyone else with their insane babbling. The systemd people are make a mountain out of a molehill because systemd doesnt take away any functionality, if you want your programs to start from a shell script or from a system V init type set up, you can configure it that way because systemd supports the sys v init system in full. Systemd is fully backward compatable with the traditional init system. This is why they are full of it.

Its interesting that a patch on privelege seperation escalation, while be ranked serious, would have so little effect on most users because most computer illiterate users do not know how to use them, the OS contains what is a major problem in that it does not encourage these users to use the feature.

Most of your common windows users do not use any kind of privilege seperation, they go right in as a superuser account, because, they don't even know what any of this stuff is. Windows ironically seems designed in such a way that it assumes that every user is a very literate on how to properly setup and use an operating system. To get the situation with viruses under control would require having a model whereby the system comes default in a secure, recommended state but also allows expert users to override that if necessary. Most common users will not do this, they can barely understand anything in the control panel anyway. The resulting situation would not be perfect but better than now but also would not prohibit customization by experts.

This initial state would put the user in a non-priveleged account by default and would not offer a login choice for an administrator account. It would also include a prohibition on executing any user downloaded programs in the users directories, only programs which are root writeable only in the main system directory would be executable, this makes it much harder to download and execute viruses. Programs could only be installed via an app store, or via a physical distribution that has been registered, approved and cryptographically signed by OS vendor. Program installers would be given the minimum permissions they need to install themselves and would install into an file system overlay environment, allowing any effects of the installer to be easily tracked and reversed, they would not have direct access to a large number of system files which they have no need to touch, and would be restricted to their own subfolder in the registry.

I find it ironic that Mandatory access control, which is more badly needed on newbie computers to stop these users from downloading EXEs to their home folder and executing them, is unavailable in Home Premium, where the feature is most badly needed.

The restrictions could be disabled from the control panel if needed but the idea is that most users use the default configuration that they are given so this would be a vast improvement over how things work now. The proliferation of viruses would be drastically reduced from all of this.

These ideas are good ones for any operating system which are for illiterate computer users.

I dont see an issue with systemd, since it allows for sys V style init to be used. Why not ship a set of script type initialization scripts and let people who do not want systemd simply configure their system either so that systemd will start regular sys v init or bsd type scripts, or let them change /bin/init to point to the alternatifve init system of their choice. Most people complaining about systemd are system administrators who have the skills needed to change the configuration of the init system to whatever they need. So why dont they just change their own systems to use whatever init system they think should be used? The answer to this is not that this elite crowd doesnt have a choice, its that this elite crowd insists on trying to force on EVERYONE ELSE what they think is the right way. That ties into what the mentality of this elite crowd is. For years this elite crowd has fought at every turn any attempt to make Linux easier to use for common, everyday users as a Windows alternative. Why do they do this? its because the reason that they use Linux is to prove to them selves that they are elites because they can use an operating system that is nearly impossible to use and thus they have proven their eliteness. Therefore, Linux must be nearly impossible to use except for a very small elite few and must be made as difficult, convoloted to configure and use as it possibly can be. This explains their behaviour.

You imply that .NET is not used widely and that something like Qt is. .NET is pretty widely used in companies, much more than Qt is. Yes, it is due to brand recognition, marketing and due to companies buying support contracts from Microsoft. Its also due to the labor pipeline, more people are trained for .NET due to Microsofts certification programs and marketing of learning materials to colleges which encourages colleges to teach it. Microsoft is good at marketing and knows to get uptake you need to market to the labor supply and as well to businesses and this means creating off the shelf materials and support systems which makes your product look like a safe, well documented, well supported solution with a large company behind it that won't leave you hanging and require all sorts of unexpected expenses. Microsoft knows you have to get into the colleges where the CS grads are coming from and that by CS grads being exposed to .NET in college they will carry that over into their jobs and as well companies know there is a large supply of .NET labor when they buy into the platform.

This is where open source fails, they have not been able, Red Hat for instance, been able to penetrate the colleges to create a supply of labor for their stuff as well as Microsoft has. They have not created the certification programs that businesses like and which creates confidence in there being a labor supply that is fairly consistent.

I for one welcome our new cyber-roach overlords.

Does this mean that RF cable television systems will be able to expand their bandwidth?

Did you ignore the first paragraph? I mentioned many positive attributes about systemd. There are capabilities there that would allow for much greater capability than before, such as if we wanted to start a program on of many system events, such as a filesystem event.

There are features in systemd that conceptually make sense, such as being able to tie the starting of a program to a system event, such as the insertion of a USB device or a file event, or any other system event, including the starting of another program. The concept and the implementation are two things, the concept can be good but the implementation may not be. It may also be that while the included concepts are a good base, they would benefit from additional refinement. The implementation in systemd may need some improvement, some more features and customizability ought to be added, but the general concepts are sound.

My view on systemd is that for most users it is fine and suitable. People who don't want it can configure systemd to start up a traditional BSD type script from which they can start their daemons, at which point that the presence of systemd would be imperceptible. Given that its high powered system administrators who want a traditional init model are knowledgeable enough to take an off the shelf distro with systemd and modify the system to their own liking, they really dont have any excuse as to why they cannot configure systemd to start their own init script and use that to start their daemons rather than directly from systemd.

Its probably even possible for these sysadmins to replace the /bin/init program with their own init program, whatever they want that to be. If they don't like systemd, being such experts, why don't they just configure their own systems not to use it?

So this whole uproar about systemd is NOT about whats best for or what common users want, what its really about is a few sysadmins forcing their own way on everyone else, and actually about making Linux difficult to use for common users. This elite group regularly opposes anything that would make Linux more useable for common people. Its as if they actually want to make sure that open source software never really becomes something that is common and ubiqitious by making the learning curve for Linux so steep that it keeps people on Windows. Many of these sysadmins actually do not want common users to use Linux or for Linux to be a desktop OS, they consider to be Linux an elite club and that Linux should be almost impossible to use without a degree in computer science, because it gives them a feeling of elitism to be able to use an OS that is almost impossible to use.

The OS X kernel code is taken from FreeBSD and Mach, It is a hybrid of both kernels. So part of OS X does come from FreeBSD.

From what I understand of systemd is that you can still set it to spawn your own init system, whether they be shell scripts or a more tradtional init program and then configure that to run your programs. All you need to do is disable the services from starting from systemd and then configure systemd to start your own init script to start your stuff. Problem solved.

It is not a troll. The term "troll" is an abused and meaningless term and without really any identifiable meaning anymore except one that is entirely subjective. You assume that if someone posts something that you disagree with that automatically it means that they are just trying to make a strike at you, when in fact its most likely that its an honestly held position. Maybe the initial meaning of the term troll was a message posted with opinions that are not honestly held by the poster, the problem is you HAVE NO IDEA and cannot tell intuitively if a poster honestly believes in what they post or not, which means that it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to tell if a message is a troll or not. That is why the troll identifier is meaningless and without any value whatsoever and is just a tool to be abused by those who want to silence opinions and views other than their own. Its a censorship tool in other words used by the weak, shallow minded and intellectually bankrupt who would rather censor others rather than put up a thoughtful and civil rebuttal. Thats why the troll label should be abolished.

What you want is a system that can be configured how you want it, not OSs that are hardwired to work one way or another that cannot be changed. There is no reason why Unix should be good at one thing and Windows good at another if the user can configure it to work the way they want and run just the services they need, but where the service they need is available if they need it. we need to get away from this "can't have vs. can have and must run" mentality. How about "can have and run only if you want".

To do network transparency you do want a vector based protocol like the X protocol and the GLX protocol, not the bit scraping and bitmap based ones, especially on a slow link. VNC has its uses but its not the be all and end all, there is need for a vector protocol.

I'm really waiting for an x86 phone that can be bought in the USA. These have been available for years in India (!!!!), its really appalling that you cannot yet buy one in the US of all places.