Linux

The Systemd init system and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. It has greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “just werks” distros, but it has destabilized GNU/Linux society, has made life unfulfilling, has subjected users to indignities, has led to widespread psychological suffering (in the BSD world to physical suffering as well) and has inflicted severe damage on the Unix world. The continued development of Systemd will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the Unix world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “just werks” distros.

The Systemd system may survive or it may break down. If it survives, it MAY eventually achieve a low level of physical and psychological suffering, but only after passing through a long and very painful period of adjustment and only at the cost of permanently reducing users and many other Unix processes to engineered products and mere cogs in the Systemd machine. Furthermore, if the system survives, the consequences will be inevitable: There is no way of reforming or modifying PID 1 so as to prevent it from depriving users of dignity and autonomy.

If the system breaks down the consequences will still be very painful. But the bigger the system grows the more disastrous the results of its breakdown will be, so if it is to break down it had best break down sooner rather than later.

We therefore advocate a revolution against the Systemd system. This revolution may or may not make use of violence; it may be sudden or it may be a relatively gradual process spanning a few decades. We can’t predict any of that. But we do outline in a very general way the measures that those who hate the Systemd system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against that form of society. This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution. Its object will be to overthrow not distros but the init-system basis of the present GNU/Linux ecosystem.