I run Debian on my laptops and several servers. On my laptop I've had several recent occasions when it has been irksome to try and find the cause of a service not starting or shutting down, and I've concluded that I'd like to move away from systemd as I don't like the binary log.
This isn't a conceptual/design issue as I don't know enough of init fundamentals to make an informed judgement. It also isn't related to the recent Slashdot article about DNS crashes and root privs escalation. https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/07/03/0343258/severe-systemd-bug-allowed-remote-code-execution-for-two-years or the (possibly incorrectly reported) statements by Lennart Poettering noted at "What are the pros/cons of Upstart and systemd?" https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5877/what-are-the-pros-cons-of-upstart-and-systemd I additionally find the configuration and documentation off-putting. These are trivial points, but the classic /etc config files seem to be being replaced with ini style files with non-explicit defaults. The documentation is wordy and also sometimes obtuse. e.g. "To disable a configuration file supplied by the vendor, the recommended way is to place a symlink to /dev/null in the configuration directory" and repeated references to "vendors" (which is almost certainly the wrong word). Simply put; systemd doesn't suit me. Its a bit like being asked to use an graphical editor instead of vi. Or being forced to use Windows. My laptop doesn't feel like my machine anymore. Is there a pure Debian alternative? Thanks Rory