This just isn't true. Ubuntu didn't offer users a choice with upstart, and other distributions never seriously offered an alternative to sys v init. Distributions offer choices when it's convenient/possible. Most distros don't offer alternative kernel builds because it's a pain to do and they feel it's not worth the effort. Most (all?) distros don't bother supporting the BSD coreutils in place of GNU (and in fact many packages depend on them being the GNU versions). Once again, it's not impossible it's just not felt worth the effort.

It takes real effort to support multiple init systems, so the question becomes, is it worth it? The people actually doing the work in many distributions don't think it is. You can either work to change that by putting in your own time/money, try to convince them that it is worth the time, or just use systemd.

This is exactly what is happening. Distribution maintainers are choosing to use systemd because they find it the best of the options available. Nobody is strong arming anyone as far as I can see. Also, once again, the only people I see making this political are those who seem to find systemd emotionally repulsive. All of the arguments I've seen in favor of systemd are purely of the "it works better and has more features" variety.

Yeah but that's life man. Every single distribution is made by people who thought other people might like what they like. For a while, you were lucky enough to have similar preferences to some of them, but then you diverged. I'm sorry but that's just how it goes. There are distributions that don't use systemd but maybe someday there won't be except for tiny, poorly maintained ones. I guess that sucks for you but it is what it is.

For the record though, that's not forcing anything down your throat; that's other people making their own choices about their projects, and that happens to effect you.

The way I see it you have two choices: Learn to like or at least deal with systemd, which, let's be frank, isn't actually that radically different from other init systems, or put forward some real arguments for why something else is better. See who you can convince and maybe you'll get lucky and there will be enough support to maintain quality non-systemd distributions well into the future.

That article you linked is just awful. "Dear Leader Lennart Poettering"? I've been using systemd on Arch for years now, and very happy with the switched as it has a lot of nice features. I've been trying to follow the controversy (which completely surprised me when I first encountered it) but I still can't figure out what the big deal is.

Many of the arguments seem just flat out wrong. Systemd doesn't pull everything into pid 0, and it isn't being "forced" down anybody's throat. All of the various distributions are choosing to use it or not via their normal decision making processes. People keep talking about politics, and maybe I'm just missing it, but the only politics I'm seeing are from people like you who use highly charged, emotional language (and liken "opponents" to mass murderers) when talking about what init system to use.

The rest of the arguments I'm seeing, like the one in the link you posted, just seem like the most inane things to fly into such a rage about. So the systemd author thinks it's good to have a collection of systems libraries and tools that are uniform and high quality. That makes him a fascist liar? Somehow systemd is supposed to be anti-Unix or anti-Linux or something. I'm not sure how that makes sense. All of the other UNIX's I can think of do essentially the same thing (and more) and the idea that Linux is about small independent projects is odd given that Linux itself is a gigantic (and still growing) monolithic kernel, as opposed to Windows and Mac which are both hybrid Micro-kernels. Even more, most of the base userland for most Linux distributions is GNU, which is also a top-down managed project that aims for uniformity and high quality.

Literally the only argument I've seen that is even close to reasonable is that some people like text logs and journald is a binary log format, and fixing that requires adding one line to a config file.

Please, someone explain this to me.

Here is the interesting thing in my eyes. My guess is that while most of those are actually pretty solvable it is almost certain that there will be situations that trips up the computer whereas a human would have no problems. Even still, the comparison isn't between computers and humans in particular situations, but computers and humans overall.

Imagine if we lived in a world with computer driven cars and someone suggested humans start driving themselves. Imagine the itemized lists people would create that described all the ways that humans slowness, distractibility, and limited data collection capabilities would lead to danger. Humans and computers are good at different things. The issue is which is better on average.

The problem remains though that even if it is safer overall to let the computer drive, are people really going to give up control when, inevitably, there are highly publicized cases of humans getting injured or killed in situations that a human driver could have easily avoid?

I mean, you can do what you want obviously but your logic is terrible. Firefox updates don't actually break computers (at worst they could break the browser causing you to... use a different one for the few hours before the fix comes out) and people really do get viruses which really do break their computers or, in the more likely case, turn their computers into bots and steal their financial information.

I don't give a crap about new features and I haven't had plugin issues in a very very long time. I just want bug/security fixes and the latest standards support. Speed improvements are certainly welcome though.

For something as important as a web browser the updates have to be automatic and in the background. Most users are so afraid of doing anything to their computer they never install updates and then we end up with a bunch of vulnerable web users (who are also holding back newer web features).

Yes, it does require a bit more care on the part of the vendor to make sure they don't automatically break everyone's computer but that is a necessary risk.

Now I won't have to go 10 rounds with the wife to keep the ff on her mac up to date.

Oh shit
http://www.whitepages.com/

Ah yes of course, because you say so!

Bottom line. We depend on science (the method and the global community) to give us the best predictions available to us. It's not perfect but it doesn't have to be to still be the best. Climate researchers and departments exist at prestigious and respected universities all over the world and there has never been a reason given other than "We don't like their conclusions" for why we shouldn't listen to them.

Given all of that: The global climate scientist community says climate change is happening, that's it due to human activity, and that there could be dramatic negative consequences to not trying to slow it down. That's it. That's the end of the argument in terms of what facts we should consider when forming public policy. It really is that simple.

If you have some stunning evidence or argument to the contrary then get involved and publish a paper but until it's accepted as true by the majority of climate scientists public policy shouldn't be affected. I'm sorry if you wish it were otherwise.

Tell that to the computer you're using which depends on two centuries worth of scientific advancement. The goal of science is to account for bias and get closer to truth in spite of it, and it's obviously worked. The same system that brought you electromagnatism, antibiotics, and plastic has now brought you climate change. You can bet against them but history isn't on your side.

Thank you, this whole thing is such a monumental embarrassment. I was feeling quite proud of the community over the whole SOPA thing and now we've exposed ourselves to be semi-illiterate morons.

Guess what folks, there isn't really such a thing as a completely censorship free country. Even in the western world we have laws against posting copyrighted material, denying the holocaust, state secrets, certain types of pornography, etc... If they didn't comply with these laws they wouldn't be allowed to operate in the country. Unless you think it makes sense for twitter to get shut down/arrested/blocked/sued into oblivion in the United States and Europe, this policy is the best that can be done. This doesn't affect whether they follow the laws of China or other oppressive governments. Let me know when they start infringing speech beyond what is currently accepted in the first world.

I even saw someone comment on that horrible Forbes article about this that if Twitter was announcing when they censor stuff, wouldn't that mean that they were informing on people to their oppressive governments. /facepalm

The law is giving one company a competitive advantage over another for no good reason. Now, under this agreement, they are treated the same. Where's the problem? Why exactly does Amazon deserve to have artificially lower prices than B&N? This has nothing to do with the Man holding down the productive class (or whatever).

Are you just suggesting that there shouldn't be sales tax? If that's the case you should just say it because what you did say was melodramatic and silly.

So what should a free individual do when they don't like what a company is doing? Maybe refrain from purchasing from them? Maybe tell friends and advise them to not buy from them either? Maybe even go on to a web site and post about it? Tell me when I start suggesting something unreasonable.

I'm not sure how this happened but at some point poeple got confused and started thinking that because companies are set up to always maximise profits we shouldn't be allowed to criticize any of their attempts to do so. There is a difference between wanting government regulation and using your right as a free person to criticize the actions of a company.

Sony is being anti-consumer and as a consumer that pisses me off. Other companies have found ways to make money without resorting to the lock-in BS that Sony prefers. I will not buy from them, and I will say why very loudly so that they and everyone else knows exactly why they aren't getting my business.

I just don't get the whining. Not only are there multiple high quality browsers for every major OS, but two of the top four of them are open source. Each team is going to have their own vision for their product and that's just part of life. If you want a level of customization that Chrome doesn't provide, Firefox with it's huge extension database seems like a good match.

Problem solved