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I continue to be baffled at this widespread belief that Poettering somehow hoodwinked every single major Linux distro into accepting a shit product with, idk, hypnosis or something.

Is it not possible that systemd is simply better than the alternatives, and the distro owners are smart enough to notice that, instead of just wrapping themselves cultish mantras about The Unix Way and how anything which resembles a design used in Windows is bad by definition? Or could that not possibly be it and he must've used mind control magic.



Yes, it has always reminded me of the old "Apple just sells all those shiny devices because they're good at marketing" trope.

As if marketing alone could do that. Poettering does seem to be, to a casual observer, kind of a dick. Arrogant, dismissive of competing products... kind of like that other guy — also kind of a dick — who supposedly had that "reality distortion field" that hoodwinked all those poor saps into buying his phones.

There's no fucking way in hell you are able do that if the user base doesn't think the product is good. To those saying it, I always reply, "It may not be the product you want, but a shitload of people disagree with you, quite obviously."

I'm not personally a huge fan of the iPhone or systemd. But they are both clearly "the best" for the largest number of people. (And that is even clearer for systemd, as it doesn't cost hundreds or thousands of dollars more then the competing products.)


never said that.

just that his vision was garbage, and everyone knows. but he stood by it. and nobody was putting the same energy he was to either offer better or stop it (rejecting bad ideas also take energy. see gnome deep dive into garbage as another example)

Linux is mostly made from scraps (eg Bluetooth and wifi entire stacks) or misguided but funded things. the age of scratching own itch is mostly gone


> nobody was putting the same energy he was to either offer better or stop it

which was much easier thing to do, compared to an outsider, considering he was on Red Hat's payroll, along with the people (gnome/freedesktop crowd) he had need to convince




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