this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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What are your thoughts on a possible NixOS without systemd? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I like the idea of nixOS and will definitely try it in the future to see how portable I can make the setup be (hopefully a couple of files that can configure the entire machine).

But the only thing in my mind that is stopping it not being the absolute almost perfection of a tech-savy distro is the reliance of systemd, which has software that I as a user will never going to touch which adds unnecessary bloat to the init (also more unnecessary attack vectors). And if I really needed to have some of the systemd programs, there are replacements out there that do the job that can be later installed when needed, like having log files and stuff.

What do you think of some day seeing a fork of nixOS that uses other init systems and works well? Or is it just me that likes this idea? Like a voidish nixOS 🤔

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Does Void linux come with a way to handle systemd service files? I'm curious how people do it when so many packages require a daemon running.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

For daemons, its simply symlinking the services in the 'sv' folder to the var/services, it should be running after that.

Not sure how compatibility with systemd apps work on other inits but for what I know the packages that are shipped focus on specifically the init system that you are running (from whatever repo you use to install on the distro, for example artix has other inits besides runit).

Edit: Also you have the 'sv' command on runit that acts exactly like systemctl. You can stop, start and all that stuff

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

You need to take a look at Artix Linux first before considering this. They offer four different init systems, including runit, s6, dinit, and openrc. The Artix devs have done a lot of work creating service scripts that interact with many common packages. They also have done integrated eudev and have created an elogind alternative called seatd in a push to remove systemd from their distro.

I'm not on NixOS (I use Artix with runit), but imho if you're going to take on creating another systemd-less distro, Artix is the one to take inspiration from. They simply have done it better than the others (Devuan, Void) imho.

I personally would be interested in seeing a NixOS fork without systemd, solely because it sounds intriguing. But I'll admit it sounds like it would be a pain to maintain.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm going to move to Void Linux soon as well! I'm very excited.

But I did saw this simple ln -s (symlink) between the /etc/sv folder and /var/services. But who is maintaining / creating those runit files? The Void community? What if something is indeed missing?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Its just a way to setup the daemons to start every time you boot, I don't think there is really a maintenance of sorts is just replacing systemctl with sv.

Edit: Works well, I don't think you should worry about it, probably there is a deeper explanation on the void linux docs