Adding systemd to postmarketOS
You heard it here first folks: systemd is coming to postmarketOS! As a mobile oriented OS, our main goal has always been to work for everyone. From technical folks to casual users. postmarketOS should have all the benefits you expect from a Linux based distribution, such as being free software, respecting your privacy, getting updates until your device physically breaks, respecting your attention and not shoving advertisements in your face. Your phone should be a tool you use, not the other way around.
This is of course not an easy task, one of the main blockers we found as we collaborate more closely with KDE and GNOME developers is that they have a hard time with our OpenRC-based stack. In order to get KDE and GNOME working at all, we use a lot of systemd polyfills on top of OpenRC. So while we are technically "not using systemd", in practice we already do use a large chunk of its components to get KDE and GNOME running, just different versions of those components. While we are very grateful for everybody who works on these polyfills, we must point out that most aren't a full replacement, and take additional effort to support and maintain. As much as we might want to romanticise the idea of spending 6, 12, 24 months attempting to come up with an even vaguely competitive alternative to systemd, we would quite simply rather be working on making postmarketOS better.
An update
In LWN also:
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Adding systemd to postmarketOS
The postmarketOS project, which produces a GNU/Linux distribution for phones and mobile devices, has announced that it is in the early stages of adding systemd to make it easier to support GNOME and KDE.
Users who prefer the OpenRC init system are assured they will still have that option when building their own images "
As with text editors, some people are really passionate about their favorite init systems. When discussing this announcement, please keep a friendly tone. Remember that we all share the love for free and open source software, and that our communities work best if we focus on shared values instead of fighting over what implementations to use.as long as OpenRC is in Alpine GNU/Linux (on which postmarketOS is based)
":Proof-of-concept images are available now for a limited set of devices. Users are warned these images are "
buggy, unreliable, and NOT suitable for use on a device you rely on
". Those interested in helping with testing and development are encouraged to follow along and report bugs on the systemd issue at GitLab.
It's FOSS News:
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postmarketOS is Bringing Systemd to Linux Phones
postmarketOS is a security-focused, open-source Android alternative based on Alpine Linux, which follows a modular approach to development. The whole operating system is divided into small packages that can be installed on devices sharing the same CPU architecture.
All of that, as a result, keeps postmarketOS quite bloat-free in nature, with the user also having the freedom to build it manually, while excluding any packages that they don't want on their smartphone.
Interestingly, with a recent announcement, the developers have now signalled a shift towards systemd, in a bid to improve how the development of postmarketOS progresses.
Latest Update:
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postmarketOS in 2024-03: systemd and more trusted contributors
It's mid-March, and here comes a new update on what has happened in postmarketOS for the last month! For the Core Team, this month has been characterized for the classic post-FOSDEM hangover: a mix between a huge amount of excitement, and the realization that real life exists, and not every weekend there's FOSDEM. As you hopefully all know, part of that excitement has been the final touches for making systemd changes public. If you have not read the systemd announcement yet, please make sure to do so. But in short, systemd gets added for KDE and GNOME based UIs and will be the default there in pre-built images, and we put in a lot of work to make sure that Sxmo can still use OpenRC and it is even possible to build your own KDE and GNOME based images with OpenRC if you prefer. However, it's also been an exciting month for other reasons. Since we started writing the last post, there has been more than 150 MRs merged in the postmarketOS namespace, and this seems to be a consistent upwards trend!