@Gnuuser, I partially agree and disagree. Letâs say the OS is like a tool. Windows tries to be everything to everyoneâadvanced stuff AND simple use and youâre right, itâs all about the money.
On the other hand, you have Linux, which is more like having a handle on which you install exactly the tools (distro) you need for the job. So just like using different tools for different tasks, different machines get different distros!
Microsoft and Apple have a monopoly, and there are tons of court cases that prove it.
Yeah, âopen source is like cancerâ is what Microsoftâs Steve Ballmer said back in 2001. They were (and probably still are) scared of it.
So a couple notes here. Systemd, while commonly and largely the default init system in Linux, isnât necessarily part of Linux distrobutions. In fact there are some protest distros that were built expressly to get away from it. Regardless I personally like Systemd but to each his own. The audio subsystems of Linux have long been one of the shortcoming of the OS and Pipewire largely corrected the issue. And for Snaps and Flatpaks thosre arenât necessarily a default (perhaps in some distros but not all).
Yes, it is. Itâs so ingrained in Linux these days that all kinds of software packages have come to depend on it, and the few distros that eschew Systemd have to go to some lengths to keep it out. After more than a decade, most of the bugs (that sysvinit, the previously prevalent init system, didnât have to begin with) are now fixed, but I still prefer something simpler, such as runit (used by e.g. Void Linux), or FreeBSDâs rc scripts.
Regarding the (slightly off-topic) discussion regarding Linux distributions: Itâs all just software. Your Linux kernel doesnât care, you can uses SysV-style init scripts, systemd, whatever pleases you(Iâve been known to use a shell script as init for some embedded purposes).
Of course you have to respect the software dependencies, like Gnome more or less requiring systemd(there are workarounds, of course).
And while I donât like systemd(in particular itâs handling of networks, DNS specifically), in general it just works.
Regarding backups, you can btw easily do that with systemd(or regular cron scripts) ;D
If youâre willing to re-install, make sure you have different OS/data partitions, and just make a backup of the complete bootable block-device(dd if=/dev/sda bs=1M | gzip > backup_sda.img.gz), and (incremental) data backups to some other location using rsync/whatever.
Restoring an image-based backup is super simple and reliable.
Letâs say the OS is like a tool. Windows tries to be everything to everyoneâadvanced stuff AND simple use and youâre right, itâs all about the money.