Developers of the postmarketos project, working on a Linux distribution for smartphones based on the Alpine Linux package base, standard MUSL SILL, and a set of Busybox utility, have announced the possibility of utilizing the Systemd manager in their systems. After a year of work on SystemD support, they have prepared and made available for testing an assembly prototype in which Systemd is used instead of the OpenRC initialization system.
Although support for creating assemblies based on OpenRC will be retained for now, at least until this system is used in Alpine Linux, users building Postmarketos images will have the option to choose OpenRC in PMBOTSTRAP. Moreover, developers planning to continue using OpenRC are those working on assemblies with the graphic shell sxmo (Simple X Mobile), based on the composite manager of SWAY.
Despite the fact that Alpine Linux does not support Systemd and uses the MUSL Bibliotek, Systemd mocking will continue to be based on the Alpine Linux package base. Postmarketos developers have had to use additional patches to support Systemd, which they plan to integrate into the main Systemd composition.
The implementation of Systemd support was deemed necessary due to the challenge of maintaining an OpenRC-based initialization stack as GNOME and KDE increasingly depend on Systemd components. To ensure the operation of GNOME and KDE capabilities linked to Systemd, various layers had to be utilized, as the absence of some necessary functions in the layers of continuity posed a challenge for developers.
For example, to ensure compatibility with Hostnamed, Localed, and Timeded services, the Openrc-settingsd layer was used instead of the EuDev package. Furthermore, elogind was used in place of logind, Logbookd replaced Journald, the package superd was used for the functionality of “Systemd –user,” and wax was used instead of systemd .timer.