On 02/10/2017 10:37 AM, Elena ``of Valhalla'' wrote:
Running GNOME without systemd is a different beast: I don't know if it has happened already, but sooner or later systemd will be required because of an *upstream* decision. Debian fully supports a number of other Desktop Environment and window managers, some of which (e.g. KDE/Plasma) have a committed to being multi-platform and thus will not for the foreseeable future force the use of systemd.
Current GNOME needs systemd interfaces which is why the not yet stable GNU distribution GuixSD uses extracted parts of systemd like elogind to provide them so it can run GNOME without running the systemd init system (which it cannot do on GNU Hurd). So GNOME only needs parts of systemd. See:
https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/news/gnome-in-guixsd.html
I don’t know what Debian GNU/Hurd does. Either way, it’s the distributions’ problem.
Regards, Florian