So the other day, I had to figure out if udev is still supported without using systemd, since the source trees have been merged, and we’re using Ubuntu at work which doesn’t use systemd. (answer: yes)  This research brought me to this systemd comparison page, detailing the differences between sytemd, Upstart, and SysV.  Not knowing much about init systems(besides Upstart and a little bit of SysV), systemd seems to have a lot of features in it – but as I’m reading these features, I’m wondering: should an init system do all of these things?

There seem to be a lot of things which aren’t particularly useful.  But perhaps they are(as I said, I’m not an expert on init systems).  They seem to be creating a particularly complicated system, and it seems to me that many of the features that they espouse could just as easily be handled by a separate program.  Of course, having a separate program does have its downsides, since it can make the startup logic more obtuse.

Also, I really like how in the ‘Miscellaneous’ table there’s a row for the SCM that is used.  I’m thinking “Who the hell cares?”.