+++ Saturday 22 November 2025 +++

More scary thoughts on the future of open source desktops
=========================================================

In my last years phlog "Scary thoughts on the future of the open
source desktop" [1] I explained that the domination of Linux in
the open source world constitutes a growing risk.

Today I read Joe Brockmeier's post [3], in which he points to the
blog post that Adrian Vovk -a GNOME contributor and member of its
release team- wrote last summer. This blog post is titled
"Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd" [2].

It states:

   GNOME is about to gain a few strong dependencies on systemd, and
   this will make running GNOME harder in environments that don't have
   systemd available.

I don't use GNOME, but many people do. GNOME also affects lots of
applications.

This development, the growing dependencies of GNOME on systemd, is
not unique. More and more components of the Linux environment are
either being replaced by systemd or become more dependent on it.

Which is bad news for the other open source platforms, like the BSDs.

Scary thoughts indeed.

[1] gopher://box.matto.nl/0/scary-thoughts-on-the-future-of-the-open-source-desktop.txt
[2] https://blogs.gnome.org/adrianvovk/2025/06/10/gnome-systemd-dependencies/
[3] https://lwn.net/Articles/1025560/



Last edited: $Date: 2025/11/22 09:39:58 $