I'm happy to see that you don't hate systemd. That was the last shoe to drop. I'll complete the switch to BSD now!

Dragonfly BSD works quite well on the desktop, as does Funtoo Linux, which is systemd-free. Gentoo also works and still uses OpenRC by default, although there is growing concern some of the devs are quietly preparing to push a systemd agenda (kdbus patches in the kernel, one of the devs commenting he hopes systemd would become the Gentoo default, and a habit of the moderators in the Gentoo forums to shut down any discussions critical of systemd).

Linus may not be showing good leadership in this instance, but not everyone has drunk the urine just yet, and there are others stepping up to the plate to maintain or create alternatives.

Wow. Someone recommends my book (which is on-topic for the discussion). I thank them. And we're both marked trolls.

The critics are right. This site really has gone downhill.

Thank you, whoever you are! Free software and the threat of software patents and copyright law to our basic freedoms to create were very much on my mind when I wrote the novel. Very glad you enjoyed it!

Jean-Michel Smith's science fiction novel _Autonomy_ would be a good summer read. It's about a small group of open source revolutionaries who work to transcend through their own singularity. Unfortunately they are hounded by government agencies and the UN, who want to destroy them without ever understanding what they are and what they offer the world. It's a clever novel that promotes a lot of open source values. http://www.amazon.com/Autonomy...

Thank you, whoever you are! Free software and the threat of software patents and copyright law to our basic freedoms to create were very much on my mind when I wrote the novel. Very glad you enjoyed it!

Which distro are you using that isn't already infected by systemd? I'm SO glad Gentoo still allows me to use OpenRC...

Me too! I use both funtoo and gentoo, at work and at home, but here's a pretty good sized list of options for those who like debian, arch, and other distributions:

http://without-systemd.org/wik...

If you're stuck with Red Hat, your choices have been pretty much taken from you, and you should probably be looking to change to something else, but otherwise you probably have the choice of using OpenRC or upstart, and someone has probably already figured out how for you.

Building the kernel now.

Very cook feature list, with arguably the best feature being that they managed to keep kdbus and more systemd nonsense from infecting the kernel code. I'm especially looking forward to trying out ext4 encryption on my laptop.

None of those schemes should make you happy, whether it's done via cash or done via debit card.

Yeah, they should.

See what I did there?

ust wait until Daesh (aka ISIS/ISIL/IS) decide to use this to target people in the west who criticize their particularly noxious brand of Islam, and as in target, I mean track you in real time and behead you on the street, at their leisure.

Not sure why your post was marked flamebait. It's a chilling possibility, that illustrates in very stark terms why we cannot afford to simply give up and allow our privacy to be stripped away, and why we need to roll back the invasions into our personal and digital space marketing firms and government agencies have already made. Our very lives may depend on it. Facial recognition is terrifying in this context.

Google and bing don't help. Google highlights creationist mythology as though it were scientific fact, and bing has the same nonsense cropping up as its first hit. Clearly these mysanthropes have managed to game the search engines, and the search engines can't be bothered to fact-check their own results (or highlighted articles! Come on Google, grow a brain!). A pity they can't use that same intelligence to think their way out of their own ass.

Such as "shooting in portrait"

Well.. sorry to say this but this particular advanced and complex technique has been used by every idiot with a smartphone recording videos for years.

Also... 6k video scaled up isn't 8k. it's 6k video with some random pixels thrown in for marketing reasons.

US Industry (Cisco et al) betrayed a basic position of trust. They did so when they helped facilitate the Great Firewall of China and assisted the Chinese government in imprisoning dissidents. Hell, they did when obese captains of industry were on TV signing accords with Chinese politicians days after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

However, facilitating the NSA's indiscriminate violation of everybody's privacy worldwide was a step too far for just about everyone, and now they are getting the smackdown they so richly deserve after decades of betraying our most basic, sacred constitutional principles.

In short, fuck every tech company who cooperated with the NSA. You haven't even begun to get what you deserve.

I've experienced literally none of those things on any of the Macs or iOS devices that I come in contact with daily. Are you certain that those aren't particular to your own system?

I've run across most of those issues at one time or another on Mavericks, on both my work macair and my wife's powerbook (the display port drop-outs are particularly annoying). It isn't helpful to simply dismiss issues people raise ... frankly, it makes you sound like a systemd developer. Better for all of us if these issues are raised and fixed (even if the corporate master in question will never officially admit such issues exist). Then we all win.

> Gentoo + OpenRC here, fuck systemd. If the rest of you enjoy having something shoved down your throats for political purposes

THANK YOU FOR TELLING US WHAT YOU USE!

His point is that you have more reasonable options for a server Linux system than a distribution that has adopted an opaque init system like systemd that is being pushed largely by the desktop crowd (not that you need it for a good desktop...lots of people have been running modern Linux desktops since the 1990s, and have kept up with the latest changes, without adding the complexity and opacity of systemd).

Some options for a systemd desktop OR server Linux system:

• Devuan - a fork of Debian with systemd removed (https://devuan.org/)
• Arch + Openrc (http://systemd-free.org/)
• Gentoo + Openrc (http://gentoo.org)
• Funtoo (http://funtoo.org)

and many more. All of which many find to be much more suited for servers than Fedora or Debian with systemd.

I met a couple of the Nebula folks at the Chicago Printer's Row Lit Fest yesterday. Very nice people, with a genuine interest in Sci Fi and deep knowledge of the Genre.

A really nice change from the Hugo acrimony of weeks past. I'm delighted to see Niven in there ... he's certainly waited long enough! I'm even more delighted to see a number of books I haven't read yet winning ... looks like my pile of summer reading just got higher.

Let's not pretend everyone has issues with systemd. Plenty of people are totally ok with it.

Until they have to debug a boottime issue (which crops up quite frequently in production environments with systemd). Some overworked desktop/power-management developers and lazy devops folks have been seduced by the promises of systemd, but all it takes is one morning wasted tracking down boottime issues within binary logs and quirky systemd corner cases to make it clear just how bad an idea systemd has turned out to be.

Unfortunately, by then their strategy of subsuming other projects (sianara ntp, it was nice knowin' you), enforcing dependencies, making it more difficult to maintain alternatives (dropping support for biosdevname=0 for example) will have made it difficult if not impossible for those who wake up to switch to something that adheres to more sensible unix norms. I have used Linux since 1993, on my desktop since I could get X running with twm, and later through the gauntlet of enlightenment, gnome, KDE, e17 etc., but I fear this really is the beginning of the end for Linux as a viable alternative to anything. Unless of course Google steps up to the plate with a solid alternative (after all, they don't seem to use systemd in chrome OS). OpenRC is great, but with power management developers refusing the support anything other than systemd, it faces an uphill battle despite being a well established and in most ways a superior init system.

Perhaps the Debian Fork, Gentoo, Funtoo, Arch without Systemd, etc. will succeed in joining forces to maintain a sensible alternative or two. Because otherwise you might as well run OS X ... you get the same byzantine init and config crap, without the other hassles that in the past were worth it to run a clean Linux system, but certainly aren't with systemd in the mix.

Depends on if the US air force can independently verify that what they whacked was actually a terrorist HQ.

... and whether or not the moron was on-premises when it was bombed. If not, you might have to wait for the beheading video before nominating him.