systemd Overreach, Updated Slacklive, Bodhi Swag
systemd, the init system that wants to control it all, was updated recently and one of its changes kills off all background processes upon logout. In other news Bodhi Linux now offers mechandise at the SpreadShirt Store and Jesse Smith compared the upgrade process of popular distributions. Also today, Christine Hall reviewed Arch-based Antergos 2016.4.2 and AlienBob released an updated version of Slackware Live.
systemd is back in the news this time for a change in the default conf that has far reaching implications. According to the changelog "systemd-logind will now by default terminate user processes that are part of the user session scope unit (session-XX.scope) when the user logs out." If a process needs to stay running, they want you to set user to "lingering." Supposedly this was to "clean up" background processes but it's already causing lots of problems and bug reports. This can be reverted "at compile time," because so many users "compile" their own apps - especially system programs. All this is a pain especially for administrators of several to many machines. As one commenter said:
The way people using Linux (or any UNIX for that matter) have been starting background processes for the last 30 years is to just run it with nohup & or in a screen session. Now suddenly systemd wants to change this, by having you jump through extra hoops. From now on you have to manually set your user session to linger, or start your program in a separate user session, or edit some config file as root on every machine you maintain.
According to Sam Varghese's report, Lennart Poettering more or less said 'let them eat cake.' Package maintainers sound on-board as well according to Varghese. One of the main issues is that the change will catch so many by surprise, most not having a clue as to the culprit. There was little or no conversation before the change was instituted, and it sounds like very little will come from upstream.
Slackware Live received another update this weekend this time catching up with Slackware-current as of May 27. This release was rolled by liveslak-1.0.1 bring a few improvements. Some since our last report include support for Broadcom wireless, new boot time tweeks, and disabled SSH by default. Slackware-current has been quiet since May 27.
Bodhi founder, Jeff Hoogland today announced a new line of Bodhi mechandise at the SpreadShirt Store. On offer are several t-shirt varieties, a baseball type cap, and a water bottle. Hoogland also mentioned a free USB drive of Bodhi Linux for donations to the project of $25 or more. So, be sure to check that out.
In other news:
* Valve have not abandoned SteamOS or Linux