Thanks! I mean, it’s more Linux in general than anything furry related, but talking about it with other furs is nice. :3

Finally, we’re not just the Crazy Weirdos anymore!

It’d be awesome to get alternate init systems on, say, Debian hammered out into a more user-friendly shape. It’s already fairly decent but feels a tad precarious and the initial setup is way too involved. (We’re running OpenRC personally.)

– Frost

It’s not about “the unix philosophy”.

It’s about how one project is trying to do more, and more, and more, and more, and trying to entrench itself as deeply as possible so you can’t just use something else if you don’t like it.

(Oh, and this new political stuff? Now there’s a concrete reason to use something else.)

The problem with systemd isn’t technical, it’s political, IMO. Oh I mean sure there’s plenty of technical reasons to hate it too (binary logs anyone?), but that’s not the main problem.

systemd would actually be pretty nice, if it stuck to just being a service manager. Unfortunately, yeah.

Oh, and everyone ALWAYS goes “oh but the only other option is a hodgepodge of scripts! you don’t want a hodgepodge of scripts! bow down and accept systemd”. Ever seen, like, any of the other init systems that are out there? We’re running OpenRC right now and it’s pretty fantastic. (Granted, sysv scripts are still the lowest common denominator, but there are other options. OpenRC’s got declarative service files too, and they’re actually way nicer than systemd’s service files when you need to break out of the declarative format and do a little script stuff. systemd made us stuff everything into one line.)

And before you dismiss me as Just Some Oldhead™, we actually moved to Linux (from Mac) well AFTER systemd was already entrenched. So this isn’t a “you hate change” thing.

– Frost

Email might actually be one of the easiest to move off of, thankfully!

There’s plenty of stuff out there, both free and paid. You can even use your own domain if you have an extra $15 or so a year. A lot of the paid options let you use your domain with them (and then if you ever need to change providers, you can keep your email address). And you can use both webmail and actual mail apps.

Youtube though… yeah, there aren’t really any good alternatives for that.

– Frost