>> > Basically, it was a completely inconsistent mess before systemd. >> > Now you at least have a central place where you can configure your >> > system behaviour. > In the past, we had *no consistency*: inittab had one thing, display > managers another, ACPI scripts another...if you wanted a specific > policy, you had to change three or more separate systems. > > Along came [a new system] which provided a single place to define a > consistent policy.
systemd provides a single place to define a consistent policy, provided your system uses systemd. > Now, you may not like [a new system] for any number of reasons, related > or unrelated to this example. You may not like the default policy that > is now applied using [a new system], but that does not change the > essential truth of the previous paragraph. Debian GNU/Linux offers alternative init systems, which people choose and use. They have their, often different, "default" settings. The Debian system does not impose a specific architecture. People often use the system's building blocks to build custom systems. In that case though, they also take on the responsibility to integrate them in the way they design the behavior of the system. If the conversation is restricted to a default installation using systemd, then I think the default policy could be different for laptop/desktop systems and for multi-user/server systems. It makes sense to me. In anycase, it should be a documented configuration option to allow for alternative use cases.