Newest Version of Systemd Includes Experimental Feature for A/B-Style Updating

"Let's popularize image-based OSes," writes Lennart Poettering, "with modernized security properties built around immutability, SecureBoot, TPM2, adaptability, auto-updating, factory reset, uniformity — built from traditional distribution packages, but deployed via images."

As the Register puts it, the Systemd Linux init system continues to grow and develop, as does Linux itself. The nature of operating systems is changing. The design of Linux distributions is changing dramatically because modern ones are large, complex, and need regular updates. The Silverblue and Kinoite versions of Fedora do not have a package manager. You get a good image of the OS. Today's updates are distributed as a complete image. One live and one spare are the root partition of ChromeOS. After the OS updates the spare partition, you restart it. The second root partition is updated if everything works. If it doesn't all work out, you can just use the previous version again. The OS tries again on the spare instance when a fixed image is available. It sounds like a benefit to us that you always have a good OS partition. There are still well over a hundred million of them out there, and they may be down, but they are still happy. Systemd isn't going to be a package manager because ordinary distributions won't have a package manager at all. A/B type dual-live-system partition is one of the new features. For some insight into this vision, the lead architect of systemd has described it in a post.

Other updates include "changes to systemd-networkd, such as systemd-resolved starting earlier in the boot sequence, and more cautious allocation of default routes," the article points out, adding that new releases of systemd "ppear roughly twice a year, so the chances are that this will appear in the fall releases of Ubuntu and Fedora...

Don't despair if you still prefer to avoid systemd. There are a number of Linux distributions that don't use it at all.