alt Hacker NewsSystemd does not solve the deployment problem, and will not unless it adds something like a systemd package manager.
It is interesting that Linux is far more widely used than alternatives that are not fragmented (e.g. FreeBSD) and has not standardised on one distro. Different people have different needs and preferences. People using Debian, Alpine, and NixOS are unlikely to agree on what they want.
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If you want to get a good idea of how different modern Linux APIs are now compared to before. Look at cPanel vs. cockpit.
cPanel had to maintain its own unified API above a slew of other interfaces, while Cockpit benefits from a unified OS API. And we're only getting started, we still have a long way to go.
Yes I love the diversity of the open source ecosystem, I love that people are free to create their own distros without systemd. But I love my distros with systemd too much to switch.
> Systemd does not solve the deployment problem, and will not unless it adds something like a systemd package manager.
It really doesn't need to provide a package manager. Systemd already basically has all the knobs for launching services in their own little world (`RootImage=`, `RootDirectory=` and recently `RootMStack=` (for a de-OCI'd layered container images)) or systemd-portabled. There are probably more things I forgot.