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Pretty much all of those were de facto standards, as provided by X.Org, util-linux, wireless-tools, the syslog protocol, fstab(5) and so forth. The situation wa

Pretty much all of those were de facto standards, as provided by X.Org, util-linux, wireless-tools, the syslog protocol, fstab(5) and so forth. The situation was nowhere near as grim as is often presented, considering much of it was just standard kernel and shell interfaces. Encrypted storage has always had multiple different approaches, and remains so.

digi_owl 11y ago
And those that grumbled about it was more often than not people working to automate large server farms or similar, not your average software dev.
- athrun 11y ago
  Automating large server farms is a very different job from being an Independent Software Vendor (ISV). One difference is that as an ISV you don't have a lot of control on the way the system is setup, you have to start with assumptions and then work from there. -> Your job is to make your software work on fragile systems. When you are dealing with managing systems at scale, hopefully you know exactly what you're dealing with. You don't have to make assumptions, you _control_ what components are on each box. -> Your job is to make your systems run broken apps :)
athrun 11y ago
I disagree. You're referencing to specific _tools_ being used as a de facto standard and this is certainly true to some extent. However, the incompatibilities come from how these tools are configured: there are numerous ways of interfacing/configuring X.org, syslog, networking and wireless tools, etc. Generally each distribution comes up with its "own true way" of doing it. This introduces a lot a pain for anyone trying to come up with a generic way of working with underlying subsystems. It's not impossible but it takes a lot of effort, is very fragile and needs an ongoing maintenance to keep up with the changes introduced by the distributions. My point is that systemd exposes a set of capabilities and known interfaces you can rely on being there. This is far from being enough but it still an improvement in my eyes.

digi_owl 11y ago

And those that grumbled about it was more often than not people working to automate large server farms or similar, not your average software dev.

athrun 11y ago
Automating large server farms is a very different job from being an Independent Software Vendor (ISV). One difference is that as an ISV you don't have a lot of control on the way the system is setup, you have to start with assumptions and then work from there. -> Your job is to make your software work on fragile systems. When you are dealing with managing systems at scale, hopefully you know exactly what you're dealing with. You don't have to make assumptions, you _control_ what components are on each box. -> Your job is to make your systems run broken apps :)

athrun 11y ago

I disagree. You're referencing to specific _tools_ being used as a de facto standard and this is certainly true to some extent. However, the incompatibilities come from how these tools are configured: there are numerous ways of interfacing/configuring X.org, syslog, networking and wireless tools, etc. Generally each distribution comes up with its "own true way" of doing it. This introduces a lot a pain for anyone trying to come up with a generic way of working with underlying subsystems. It's not impossible but it takes a lot of effort, is very fragile and needs an ongoing maintenance to keep up with the changes introduced by the distributions. My point is that systemd exposes a set of capabilities and known interfaces you can rely on being there. This is far from being enough but it still an improvement in my eyes.