14 ms·

There is some controversy about Systemd and Lennart Poettering, one of the main developers. Wikipedia have more info: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#

by runarb 11y ago

There is some controversy about Systemd and Lennart Poettering, one of the main developers. Wikipedia have more info: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#History_and_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#History_and_controvers... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering#Controversi...

MichaelGG 11y ago
What I don't get is, if systemd is so troublesome, why are so many distros picking it up? I know popularity isn't a perfect signal, but in this case of highly technical users that are distributing OSes it seems valid.
- _cudgel 11y ago
  I'd also like an answer to this question, as well as an answer to the question of what, in exacting detail please, was so wrong with the previous system it needed to be torn out and replaced? I definitely tend toward the curmudgeonly, but to this grumpy old man, it seems like we're replacing things simply for the sake of change.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Nah, the old system did need replacing [1], and plenty of them were in fact done. [2] Evidently they went understudied, though. [1] http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/system-5-rc-problems.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/sy... [2] http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/
    - _cudgel 11y ago
      Thanks -- this is exactly the sort of follow-up I was hoping for!
    - bigbugbag 11y ago
      it did, but systemd is not the silver bullet that will fix it. "It's often said that a half-truth is worse than a lie. In the case of systemd, a half-improvement is worse than a complete flop. People are focusing on the features they want to use and ignoring the ones that will come back to bite them later. No, my biggest problem with systemd is that it is repeating the mistakes of System V all over again. It's just given them a change of clothes to appeal to the 21st century." rest the rest at: http://www.steven-mcdonald.id.au/articles/systemd.shtml http://www.steven-mcdonald.id.au/articles/systemd.shtml for the debunking of the necessity of having journald see http://lpar.ath0.com/2014/05/18/why-i-dont-like-systemd/ http://lpar.ath0.com/2014/05/18/why-i-dont-like-systemd/
      - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
        I wrote the first full scale technical critique of systemd, so you don't have to tell me all that. I've read the articles, btw.
        bigbugbag 11y ago
        Sorry if I have bothered you, I wasn't replying directly to you but was actually aiming at adding a complement to your answer.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      At this point in time though i wonder if focusing on the init part is missing the forest for the trees. I think just as much of a stink comes with how you need to have systemd-the-init to use systemd-logind (replacing consolekit for session tracking) or any number of other possibly interesting, but tied to the hip of systemd, sub-projects.
- sulami 11y ago
  I'm just guessing here, but systemd makes some things more convinient by being overall more monolithic, like Windows, and especially distros that are targeting a less technical crowd want to be able to compete with Windows in terms of features and usability. Non-technical people most likely don't see any of the beauty of a strictly modular system or proper clean code. And this is not about the init-daemon, it is about systemd as a whole integrated suite of daemons that connect easily and add fancy new features, while on the other side you might have to modify two completely independent software projects to add a new feature that uses both, and even then there most likely are alternatives to each one, and you feature will only work with this specific combination. So a more monolithic system, which systemd is despite Lennard denying this, makes development faster, but will bite you in the long run, especially when the code and documentation quality is as poor as systemd's.
  - mgbmtl 11y ago
    I'm more tempted to say that systemd does well what previously you needed a dozen half-broken tools to implement. For example, isolating the /tmp of an application, monitoring the process and restarting if necessary, more logging options (and imho cleaner/more efficient). Then again, all this has been debated over and over again. In practice, people are adopting it. Haters are noisy. It's like reading about debates on IPv6 migration strategies.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      Process supervisors with reliable logging are nearly two decades old at this point. Isolating /tmp is then a namespacing feature, which in a system where execution state is composed as an explicit external manifest via chain loading (as opposed to serializing from a unit file into a private ExecContext structure, as with systemd) should be completely orthogonal to any one service manager. Else it is inflexible if it needs complex internal scaffolding. (Actually I think supervision goes back to IBM's SRC in at least 1992, but I'm not exactly sure if the earliest versions had anything beyond process management.)
      - XorNot 11y ago
- rincebrain 11y ago
  Part of the reason is that systemd has absorbed functionality of a number of additional pieces of software, to the point that they are no longer maintained discretely - udev being the best example. Another part of the reason is that Red Hat forcibly landed systemd in Fedora and then RHEL7, and RH is an elephant on the scale of Linux development.
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    So RedHat's choices impact Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, and SUSE so much? Honest question; I don't know the details. Or are you saying that distros rely on other components that are simply not feasible (maintained) anymore, so they have no choice? Just seems like if it's as bad as so many say, it just doesn't make sense for all these distros to blindly go along. Even the GNOME lockin doesn't seem like it'd explain it.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      Debian isn't really a leader. They're more of a passive target platform and their committee has people from various strokes of the Linux community. As such, RH decisions with significant influence definitely would impact them. Ubuntu, in turn, is symbiotic with Debian, though still quite forked from it in most aspects beyond the packaging infrastructure (now with Snappy diverging even further). Nonetheless, Unity needs GNOME and Canonical are still a small player who are perfectly capable of foreseeing future trends. Adopting systemd is the path of least resistance and will help them track Debian's packages better. Most RPM-based distros (openSUSE included) tend to follow RH's direction, so that's not surprising. Besides, SUSE has always been enthusiastic about most desktop efforts. Arch Linux have at least two systemd developers on their team (Tom Gundersen and Dave Reisner). In fact, it was tomegun who wrote the Arch migration rationale: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530, based on the usual fallacious arguments (http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fallacies.html http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fall...). Also, distros have blindly went along with other bad ideas before. The most prominent examples were HALd and LSB-style initscripts. In fact, I'm not sure why you're at all surprised. Large groups of people in real life have collectively made far, far more catastrophic decisions. Why would a bunch of distribution maintainers adopting a piece of software be so shocking?
- bigbugbag 11y ago
  Well that's a good question, I'd like to have an answer to that. debian adoption of systemd was a bumpy ride to say the least, it caused a few long time contributors to resign and others to fork debian to remove systemd in a new distro called devuan. Then again systemd gobbled other critical components such as udev, there's also gnome that made it a strict requirement, like a cancer it grows and takes over other components.
  - XorNot 11y ago
    Devuan is someone's extended tantrum and little more. Like every other rage-fork it'll die a slow death because who wants to develop on a platform founded on the premise of "why do we need to change anything? It's all working fine!"
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      And yet: https://git.devuan.org/explore https://git.devuan.org/explore They began work on a logind compatibility layer over ConsoleKit2, they're writing a NetworkManager alternative, they directly influenced and are supporting a udev alternative called vdev (which also has libudev compatibility), and a host of other things. For a rage-fork, it's pretty impressive. They're changing a lot. It's easier to just astroturf in the corner, though, I suppose.
      - simoncion 11y ago
        > ...they directly influenced and are supporting a udev alternative called vdev... Have you a notion as to why they're using vdev rather than eudev? What appears to be the vdev introductory blog post makes no mention of eudev.
        digi_owl 11y ago
        Possibly because vdev is a clean break, while eudev is still mostly about udev stripped from systemd. And that stripping will be more complicated moving forward, as i recall a recent systemd release moved various bits from udev to a new systemd lib. Leaving the udev interfaces as stubs to be removed at some undetermined future date.
- meddlepal 11y ago
  It's actually a pretty good system and IMO way better than previous attempts at init systems throughout Linux history.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Considering there's been ~15 of them, I doubt anyone has ever evaluated them comprehensively except post facto in light of the systemd integration.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      Yeah the most documented such evaluation, the Debian process, seemed to only evaluate sysv, upstart and systemd (openrc was briefly mentioned but quickly dismissed). The rest seems to have been executive decisions (with or without a "deal with it" meme accompanying), often by people already involved with systemd development.
  - brazzledazzle 11y ago
    I haven't evaluated all of the previous attempts since that would consume more time than I have available. Can you provide a comparison or some insights into why they're worse?
    - meddlepal 11y ago
      I can't comment on all of them, but I've dealt with a bunch. I'm out enjoying Halloween right now but if I remember on the morning I'll follow up.
      - brazzledazzle 11y ago
        If you get time that would be neat, I'm sure others would appreciate it too. I've heard good things about djb's daemontools from a few friends and colleagues but never had the chance to try it and if you have any insight on that one I'd really appreciate that.

by runarb 11y ago

MichaelGG 11y ago

What I don't get is, if systemd is so troublesome, why are so many distros picking it up? I know popularity isn't a perfect signal, but in this case of highly technical users that are distributing OSes it seems valid.

_cudgel 11y ago
I'd also like an answer to this question, as well as an answer to the question of what, in exacting detail please, was so wrong with the previous system it needed to be torn out and replaced? I definitely tend toward the curmudgeonly, but to this grumpy old man, it seems like we're replacing things simply for the sake of change.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Nah, the old system did need replacing [1], and plenty of them were in fact done. [2] Evidently they went understudied, though. [1] http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/system-5-rc-problems.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/sy... [2] http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/
  - _cudgel 11y ago
    Thanks -- this is exactly the sort of follow-up I was hoping for!
  - bigbugbag 11y ago
    it did, but systemd is not the silver bullet that will fix it. "It's often said that a half-truth is worse than a lie. In the case of systemd, a half-improvement is worse than a complete flop. People are focusing on the features they want to use and ignoring the ones that will come back to bite them later. No, my biggest problem with systemd is that it is repeating the mistakes of System V all over again. It's just given them a change of clothes to appeal to the 21st century." rest the rest at: http://www.steven-mcdonald.id.au/articles/systemd.shtml http://www.steven-mcdonald.id.au/articles/systemd.shtml for the debunking of the necessity of having journald see http://lpar.ath0.com/2014/05/18/why-i-dont-like-systemd/ http://lpar.ath0.com/2014/05/18/why-i-dont-like-systemd/
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      I wrote the first full scale technical critique of systemd, so you don't have to tell me all that. I've read the articles, btw.
      - bigbugbag 11y ago
        Sorry if I have bothered you, I wasn't replying directly to you but was actually aiming at adding a complement to your answer.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    At this point in time though i wonder if focusing on the init part is missing the forest for the trees. I think just as much of a stink comes with how you need to have systemd-the-init to use systemd-logind (replacing consolekit for session tracking) or any number of other possibly interesting, but tied to the hip of systemd, sub-projects.
sulami 11y ago
I'm just guessing here, but systemd makes some things more convinient by being overall more monolithic, like Windows, and especially distros that are targeting a less technical crowd want to be able to compete with Windows in terms of features and usability. Non-technical people most likely don't see any of the beauty of a strictly modular system or proper clean code. And this is not about the init-daemon, it is about systemd as a whole integrated suite of daemons that connect easily and add fancy new features, while on the other side you might have to modify two completely independent software projects to add a new feature that uses both, and even then there most likely are alternatives to each one, and you feature will only work with this specific combination. So a more monolithic system, which systemd is despite Lennard denying this, makes development faster, but will bite you in the long run, especially when the code and documentation quality is as poor as systemd's.
- mgbmtl 11y ago
  I'm more tempted to say that systemd does well what previously you needed a dozen half-broken tools to implement. For example, isolating the /tmp of an application, monitoring the process and restarting if necessary, more logging options (and imho cleaner/more efficient). Then again, all this has been debated over and over again. In practice, people are adopting it. Haters are noisy. It's like reading about debates on IPv6 migration strategies.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Process supervisors with reliable logging are nearly two decades old at this point. Isolating /tmp is then a namespacing feature, which in a system where execution state is composed as an explicit external manifest via chain loading (as opposed to serializing from a unit file into a private ExecContext structure, as with systemd) should be completely orthogonal to any one service manager. Else it is inflexible if it needs complex internal scaffolding. (Actually I think supervision goes back to IBM's SRC in at least 1992, but I'm not exactly sure if the earliest versions had anything beyond process management.)
    - XorNot 11y ago
rincebrain 11y ago
Part of the reason is that systemd has absorbed functionality of a number of additional pieces of software, to the point that they are no longer maintained discretely - udev being the best example. Another part of the reason is that Red Hat forcibly landed systemd in Fedora and then RHEL7, and RH is an elephant on the scale of Linux development.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  So RedHat's choices impact Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, and SUSE so much? Honest question; I don't know the details. Or are you saying that distros rely on other components that are simply not feasible (maintained) anymore, so they have no choice? Just seems like if it's as bad as so many say, it just doesn't make sense for all these distros to blindly go along. Even the GNOME lockin doesn't seem like it'd explain it.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Debian isn't really a leader. They're more of a passive target platform and their committee has people from various strokes of the Linux community. As such, RH decisions with significant influence definitely would impact them. Ubuntu, in turn, is symbiotic with Debian, though still quite forked from it in most aspects beyond the packaging infrastructure (now with Snappy diverging even further). Nonetheless, Unity needs GNOME and Canonical are still a small player who are perfectly capable of foreseeing future trends. Adopting systemd is the path of least resistance and will help them track Debian's packages better. Most RPM-based distros (openSUSE included) tend to follow RH's direction, so that's not surprising. Besides, SUSE has always been enthusiastic about most desktop efforts. Arch Linux have at least two systemd developers on their team (Tom Gundersen and Dave Reisner). In fact, it was tomegun who wrote the Arch migration rationale: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530 https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530, based on the usual fallacious arguments (http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fallacies.html http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fall...). Also, distros have blindly went along with other bad ideas before. The most prominent examples were HALd and LSB-style initscripts. In fact, I'm not sure why you're at all surprised. Large groups of people in real life have collectively made far, far more catastrophic decisions. Why would a bunch of distribution maintainers adopting a piece of software be so shocking?
bigbugbag 11y ago
Well that's a good question, I'd like to have an answer to that. debian adoption of systemd was a bumpy ride to say the least, it caused a few long time contributors to resign and others to fork debian to remove systemd in a new distro called devuan. Then again systemd gobbled other critical components such as udev, there's also gnome that made it a strict requirement, like a cancer it grows and takes over other components.
- XorNot 11y ago
  Devuan is someone's extended tantrum and little more. Like every other rage-fork it'll die a slow death because who wants to develop on a platform founded on the premise of "why do we need to change anything? It's all working fine!"
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    And yet: https://git.devuan.org/explore https://git.devuan.org/explore They began work on a logind compatibility layer over ConsoleKit2, they're writing a NetworkManager alternative, they directly influenced and are supporting a udev alternative called vdev (which also has libudev compatibility), and a host of other things. For a rage-fork, it's pretty impressive. They're changing a lot. It's easier to just astroturf in the corner, though, I suppose.
    - simoncion 11y ago
      > ...they directly influenced and are supporting a udev alternative called vdev... Have you a notion as to why they're using vdev rather than eudev? What appears to be the vdev introductory blog post makes no mention of eudev.
      - digi_owl 11y ago
        Possibly because vdev is a clean break, while eudev is still mostly about udev stripped from systemd. And that stripping will be more complicated moving forward, as i recall a recent systemd release moved various bits from udev to a new systemd lib. Leaving the udev interfaces as stubs to be removed at some undetermined future date.
meddlepal 11y ago
It's actually a pretty good system and IMO way better than previous attempts at init systems throughout Linux history.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Considering there's been ~15 of them, I doubt anyone has ever evaluated them comprehensively except post facto in light of the systemd integration.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Yeah the most documented such evaluation, the Debian process, seemed to only evaluate sysv, upstart and systemd (openrc was briefly mentioned but quickly dismissed). The rest seems to have been executive decisions (with or without a "deal with it" meme accompanying), often by people already involved with systemd development.
- brazzledazzle 11y ago
  I haven't evaluated all of the previous attempts since that would consume more time than I have available. Can you provide a comparison or some insights into why they're worse?
  - meddlepal 11y ago
    I can't comment on all of them, but I've dealt with a bunch. I'm out enjoying Halloween right now but if I remember on the morning I'll follow up.
    - brazzledazzle 11y ago
      If you get time that would be neat, I'm sure others would appreciate it too. I've heard good things about djb's daemontools from a few friends and colleagues but never had the chance to try it and if you have any insight on that one I'd really appreciate that.