systemd - is it safe and why not

These seems vague handwavy things. Risky from what? Insecure from what? It wouldn't surprise me if it was invented by those that hate on systemd.

The criticism on systemd comes from a different aspect than freedom — it is free software and does not do proprietary stuff.

However, you can install Parabola GNU/Linux-libre with OpenRC.

Five years ago, I wrote https://trisquel.info/forum/systemd-free-trisquel-variant#comment-149916 to explain the conspiracy theories against systemd.

Insecure? I've never heard that. It seems plenty safe. Systemd is similar to the Linux kernel - it has a lot of developers and maintainers contributing to it, and there are a lot of distros packaging it, so there's a lot of code review going on all the time in one way or another.

systemd is fine by now.

it's systemE that i worry about

every once in a while, stuff gets re-written for like no reason

so i worry about systemE

There are a lot of people looking at, and contributing to the systemd source code, so if it were collecting user data we would know about it.

I'm sure it has some security vulnerabilities, like pretty much all software, but I haven't heard that it's particularly bad in this respect.

Actually there are 3 things and they aren't limited to just systemd, but also dbus, pulseaudio, pipewire, networkmanager, avahi and their libraries as well.

You cannot remove their libraries on some distros because they are forced even if you don't want or need them.

That is part 1

there is a lot of overengineered work put into it and adding features most people don't need (servers people!) and they keep adding new stuff all the time without removing much of anything. like add 15 things remove 1 at most type ideal.

That is part 2

The reason some people consider it insecure, is because its easier to focus on one thing well than to do many different things well.

The human mind can only focus on one thing at a time. For those of you who don't know. More than security though it has potential stability issues.

PID 1 goes down, the whole OS goes down. its good to have a unix based focus on something like that if nothing else needs it.

Also, these software things above, in general, dbus, etc... are meant to restrict people from using whatever they want. Systemd, dbus are definitely on my top 2 worst ideas I can think of. They are nearly impossible to remove. Otherwise more than Hyperbola would have such options.

that is part 3 and possibly more

Its easier to audit code that is smaller in size. At some point, the amount of eyes will be meaningless if the code gets too complex. Its not a hard thing to understand.

This as I have said is not just a systemd thing that concept either just to reiterate.

I don't think of this as a conspiracy and don't know why anyone would.

Its all just... weird that people think you can do a kitchen sink approach to software and not have a big mess.

That ideal boggles my mind... its beyond strange.

Btw, as a final note, I appreciate if sysvinit is too hard for people to maintain on its own. But there are other options. runit, openrc, s6, dinit

Each is better than the last as far as I know.

Btw, systemd has had some questionable functionality sometimes. like pinging to google by default. Who needs that? I hope that was a mistake on their part to add that to systemd. And dbus has hardware id in it. Hyperbola's wiki talks about it.

It was originally discovered in a Desktop environment called Draco Desktop. Strange right?

Basically, you get fingerprinted and other stuff can use that from dbus.

This is beyond absurd. Systemd has many bugs I am sure, but that one from dbus is bad enough on its own. And then there's the fact that a lot of these software types I mentioned are very corporately designed.

Its okay to use corporate software, but if the software is developed in a way that makes you think "THIS IS VERY CORPORATELY DESIGNED" that is a problem in my opinion even if its libre.

In French, "Système D" is a slang for resourcefullness :)