1i5t5.duncan at cox
Aug 8, 2012, 11:57 PM
Post #30 of 44
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Jason A. Donenfeld posted on Thu, 09 Aug 2012 06:33:02 +0200 as excerpted:
> Redhat is pushing systemd very hard [and] it seems like lots of
> everything are joining a fast-paced systemd stampede. [I] think the
> general perception is that without any set of policies to manage the
> stampede, systemd will eventually take over.
>
> Maybe this fear is warranted. Maybe it's silly. I don't know. I am glad,
> though, that Gentoo is sticking with OpenRC, and I hope that the
> consequences of that decision are respected by ebuild maintainers.
... For now. Gentoo's sticking with openrc by default, for now.
(TL;DR: While prediction is risky, I believe openrc's a good bet out say
two years, but that people will be switching to systemd by then, and by
five years out, systemd will be assumed. But given that some gentoo devs
run larger gentoo installations and won't want to switch to systemd on
servers, I expect that openrc will still be supported five years out, but
a decade out's just too much unforeseen change away to predict.)
Consider that say five years is a long time in Linux, which evolves "at
internet speed." While I personally plan on continuing to use openrc for
the time being, I also expect that in five years, I and most everyone
else on "desktop Linux" will have been "assimilated" into the systemd
borg.
Consider... five years ago was 2007. Android hadn't been released yet at
this point in 2007 (November, according to the LWN 2007 timeline I'm
looking at [1]). Nokia releases the N800. KDE4 was yet to come out
(January, 2008) altho the PR machine had been in full swing for awhile.
Gnome3 was still a ways out. GPLv3 is released and Bruce Perens among
others predicts Linus and Linux will switch after kicking and screaming
for a couple years. Kernel 2.6.20-2.6.23. Con Colivas quits the kernel,
but eventually releases the brainfuck scheduler without attempting a
mainline merge. The MS/Novell agreement and controversy. AMD announces
that it is opening up ATI graphics documentation. SCO files for chapter
11 (which just now it's trying to convert to chapter 7) bankruptcy. One-
laptop-per-child XO goes into mass production. SAMBA gets access to the
MS protocol docs...
For gentoo in 2007, Daniel Robbins returned for a very short period, got
in a fight on this list and left in a bit of a huff after his demands to
list-ban the other party weren't just magically followed as they had been
years before.
Especially the Android thing is interesting. Who would have predicted
that it would have the market share it does today, and that Nokia and
Blackberry would be where they are?
The point being, five years is a LONG time in Linux/FLOSS. Five years
from now, many of the gentoo's current developers will have moved on,
hopefully to have been replaced. As such, even if no gentoo devs change
their minds, it's quite likely the new blood will be changing gentoo's
direction.
Five years from now, I expect xorg will be fading and the big desktops
(will xfce replace gnome due tot he gnome3 fiasco? mate? cinnamon? kde5/
kde-frameworks?) will be focusing on wayland.
And five years from now I expect the big desktops will require systemd
and whatever it has engulfed by then, for many of their big features.
Hopefully there will be USE flags to toggle that, much as there are USE
flags toggling udev assuming features today, but that remains to be
seen. Of course, five years ago hal was still big too, so five years
from now systemd might be fading as well, for all I know.
But it's worth noting that at least for me, and I'd assume at least some
others, the problem with systemd isn't that people are entirely opposed
to it, but rather, the speed with which it is happening, and the
perceived immaturity and continued heavy development of the systemd
solution as it exists today. In another two years, I really expect it to
be showing signs of stabilization and maturity. In 2-3 years, I expect
it to be a rather more reasonable and stable solution than it is today,
something that most people won't have such a problem with. And by five
years out, I think that most will have already switched.
I do hope/expect that five years from now openrc will at least still be
supported as an alternate, for use with legacy xorg and for no-GUI server
installations, etc, but I really expect that systemd will be the assumed
default by then, much as udev is the assumed default today, even if
static dev or the simple kernel devfs are still supported, but as
exception-case.
And even if it's not mainline gentoo supported, there's the kde-sunset
overlay precedent, with user support but cooperation from mainline gentoo/
kde to try to keep conflicts to a minimum. I expect openrc will at least
get /that/ level of support. And actually, given that a number of gentoo
devs support larger installations of gentoo and aren't likely to be
wanting to switch servers, etc, to systemd just because it's there, I
expect there will still be active gentoo developer support for openrc,
the key missing resource in the kde3 case, so openrc will continue with
mainline gentoo support likely out seven years or so. Beyond that,
pretty much /everything/ is in too much flux to try to predict, so I
won't even attempt to /guess/ whether openrc, or for that matter, pretty
much /any/ important today gentoo component, will be around at least "as
we know it" in a decade.
So I really expect people to be switching to systemd 2-3 years from now,
and that it'll be the gentoo default in 3-5 years, tho openrc will almost
certainly be supported in /some/ form, at least comparable to the kde-
sunset overlay and probably officially, at least five years out. But a
decade out, all bets are off!
----
[1] LWN 2007 timeline, one big page version:
http://lwn.net/Articles/307167/
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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