VMS has a versioning filesystems, which is a useful thing to have. It's also pretty secure (once you disable scripts in mail subject headers).

I'd contend it has a role in server systems, but really it's a struggle to think where else it would fit.

Even leaving aside free speech rights:

We do not have bills of attainder in free societies, nor even in semi-free ones like ours (Article I, Section 9, of U.S. Constitution).

I say this even though I hate TikTok, and wish it would die horribly in a fire.

Rule of law is more important than my, or anyone else's, personal preferences.

I am seeing more people using their phones as their primary, if not only, computer device. If it's not a phone, it's probably a tablet, or maybe a laptop.

There are many reasons why I and many others do not like, trust, nor voluntarily use systemd. These are just some.

Unfortunately, we've been mostly outvoted. All major distributions use systemd.

But the freedom of choice inherent in the Linux ecosystem means there are usually other choices. My Gentoo Linux system has bits and pieces of systemd installed, as dependencies of other projects, but does not run systemd as PID 1 (first process, responsible for managing all others). And it will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

This is an aside, but I found I could not walk into a local office supply store and buy a decent laptop bag.

Went to literally a dozen or so, only to end up with a crappy one without nearly enough pockets, compartments, etc. to truly replace the old one I had.

Brick and mortar retail is dying in large part because the online shopping experience is just better.

It's become pretty easy to build desktop PCs from parts that have been vetted in advance to verify Linux support.

The laptop story on the other hand is very much hit or miss, and you may not get the quality, features, performance, or price you'd have gotten from a vaguely comparable Windows box.

And the tablet story? Completely and totally bojanxxed. A decent GNU/Linux tablet (not Chrome, not Android) is almost impossible to find at any reasonable price.

To fully understand the problems with systemd, you need to understand some basic tenets of modern software development:

    * Single Responsibility principle: Each piece of software should do one thing well, rather than multiple things poorly.

    * Keep It Simple principle: Each piece of software should be as simple as possible, though no simpler.

    * Reuse: All functionality common to multiple pieces of software should be its own piece of software.

    * Dependency Management: All software should explicitly list the specific versions of its dependencies; all software should avoid unnecessary breakage between updates.

    * Communications: Be strict in what you send (follow agreed protocols, APIs, etc.). Be liberal in what you accept. (As long as input is unambiguous and sufficient, accept it, even if it contains information you did not expect.)

    * Use versioning, including semantic versioning where appropriate.

    * Don't gratuitously replace working and tested code without a good reason. Don't re-invent a perfect wheel to make a potentially crappy one.

    * Design and build a system in such a way that testing of each piece as well as each business requirement can be automated.

    * Security. Minimize potential attack surfaces. Use the safest languages, code, constructs, system calls, etc., possible.

OK, so these are just a few things we developers try to keep in mind at all times.

Lennart Poettering is not a dumb guy, and he has had some good ideas at times.

However, systemd disregards many of these very core principles. Often gratuitously so.

While initially sold as a replacement init system, which for sure is needed for some use cases, it has morphed to become a large and growing part of Linux user space.

The entire Internet was almost brought down a couple weeks ago because of an exploit involving, though not directly caused, by systemd.

There will be more such exploits, and systemd provides a HUGE attack surface because of its unique status as the process that starts, stops, logs, and monitors all of the others.

Nontechnical end users, and distribution maintainers, are generally OK with all of the above because of the fact that it makes many parts of their lives easier.

But software developers such as myself understand the risks, and many, including me, find them unacceptable.

Pawn to Deep Space Nine. Check.

Those sneaky bggrs are forever altering memory to avoid consequences.

It's not what it lacks. It's because it uses newer components. As you make the transistors smaller and reduce the voltages, you increase the damage a cosmic ray strike will do. Yes, the chips are rad-hardened, but anything that gets through will have greater impact and have a greater risk of frying a component versus flipping the bit. The rad hardening will also have improved, but the risks will have increased faster than the protections.

However, there will undoubtedly be better error-correction in NH at circuit level, Voyager only error corrected the communications not the processor or memory. So I fully expect bit flips to be fixed silently, so I expect data to be of greater robustness. So in terms of quality of output, I expect NH to beat Voyager by a long way.

(I'm ignoring the efforts by the anti-science lobby to shut down NASA and the Deep Space Network. If they succeed, all communication will be permanently lost. But that won't be a technological fault, that will be a massive social fault on a scale comparable with Crusaders destroying the Imperial Library in Constantinople.)

Linux won't capture the desktop market unless Microsoft is broken up due to them repeating antitrust activity they have been repeatedly convicted of. But that won't happen because the US is too dependent on its supply of what's basically electronic heroin.

If you include Chrome PCs, that's been and gone.

Sun tried to go the Networked Computing route and bankrupted themselves.

Internet connectivity is far too slow and far too unreliable for most tasks. Worse, most apps still use TCP and UDP, despite better transport protocols existing. And IPv4 is still mainstream, despite IPv6's benefits.

The Internet is also not secure, due to NSA demanding the IETF withdraw IPSec as a mandatory requirement for IPv6.

No, thin clients with overpowered central servers (the mainframe architecture) was abandoned for good reasons and every attempt to return to centralised computing has failed for good reasons. Companies are now even starting to abandon the cloud.

If it's Boeing, I ain't going.

I hate being pessimistic, but I'm not sure there's a fix

Probably not, in a society that values only self, and not others, and certainly not rule of natural law.

In a society in which people actually gave a shit, I'd say progress would be not only possible, but inevitable.