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> Systemd hate is en vogue these days To be fair, Lennart Poettering could probably end war and famine forever in a single day, and some people would still fin

by krylon 11y ago

> Systemd hate is en vogue these days To be fair, Lennart Poettering could probably end war and famine forever in a single day, and some people would still find something wrong with that. On the other hand a certain amount of skepticism and criticism is very much in order. (I am saddened, though, by the way online discussions so easily deteriorate into name-calling and bitter ranting.) Just to be clear, I was highly skeptical of systemd initially, now I have two systems running Debian Jessie, and quite honestly I haven't noticed much of a difference one way or the other. So at least now I am more confident that we are not all going to die because of systemd. On the other hand, I wish there had been more initial coordination / portability work to make sure stuff like GNOME keeps working smoothly on *BSD as well.

bigbugbag 11y ago
On the other hand I was happy and welcoming of systemd then I started to experience way too many breakage due to attitude of the devs. When you have to spend 2 days to get to a remote server room and back because suddenly systemd decided that a device in fstab not present at boot would halt boot with error and at the same time the emergency shell was broken and going into a loop of asking for credentials, on a debian server, in production. Ok systemd works most of the time but after experiencing a few of these breakages I've become wary of anything systemd. Whatever it brings to the table is not worth the wasted time and headaches it causes.
- krylon 11y ago
  Oh my, that is bad indeed. Apart from the two-item sample of personal experience I am kind of torn about systemd - some of the problems it attempts to address are real, and addressing these in general seems like a good idea. The way it does so, however, sometimes (I am being deliberately vague here) brings along some problems of its own.[1] And the further systemd adoption and systemd's mission creep go along, the harder it becomes to backtrack and replace it in case somebody comes up with a better solution. [1] Like I said, I have not experienced any of these problems myself, but I have read a couple of reports from people that had problems with systemd that were definitely not just aesthetic.
  - pdkl95 11y ago
    > I have not experienced any of these problems myself That's the problem any time[1] a system is designed around ideological purity. Someone invents something clever that works most of the time for most people (with varying definitions of "most"), so they try to apply it everywhere. As no idea can account for everything[2], this sooner or later the inflexibility of the theory meets the variation of realty and some type of drama happens. Usually it's better to avoid anything that exhibits that kind of inflexibility and hubris. Systems that build in ways of handing the unexpected or patching around their own weaknesses are necessary or drama is inevitable. [1] Not just computer systems - this is true most of the time humans build systems. We see the same problems in religion, politics, and social constructs. It's such a common behavior, I suspect there may be an evolutionary basis for it (using a single common rule for many situations requires less energy). [2] Even the physicists are still working on that problem.
    - krylon 11y ago
      Agreed. Which is why I said On the other hand a certain amount of skepticism and criticism is very much in order. The problems systemd tried to address are real, and some of the ideas behind it are appealing. But the way it attempts to replace several important pieces of the system at once, and the way it is being forced on people in a "eat it or leave it"-style feels uncomfortable. Part of what made Unix what it is today is the idea to build a system that might be very far from perfect but that is easy to improve in small, incremental steps so one quickly gets a feeling for what works well and what does not.
      - digi_owl 11y ago
        Frankly i feel that way to many sub-projects within systemd is at this point "i can rewrite this faster than get patches past the maintainers". Often with the "hilarious" outcome that problem that was solved a decade ago crops up again in the new implementation within systemd.
      - groovy2shoes 11y ago
        Out of curiosity, what do you consider to be real problems that systemd is trying to address? (Honest question).

by krylon 11y ago

bigbugbag 11y ago

On the other hand I was happy and welcoming of systemd then I started to experience way too many breakage due to attitude of the devs. When you have to spend 2 days to get to a remote server room and back because suddenly systemd decided that a device in fstab not present at boot would halt boot with error and at the same time the emergency shell was broken and going into a loop of asking for credentials, on a debian server, in production. Ok systemd works most of the time but after experiencing a few of these breakages I've become wary of anything systemd. Whatever it brings to the table is not worth the wasted time and headaches it causes.

krylon 11y ago
Oh my, that is bad indeed. Apart from the two-item sample of personal experience I am kind of torn about systemd - some of the problems it attempts to address are real, and addressing these in general seems like a good idea. The way it does so, however, sometimes (I am being deliberately vague here) brings along some problems of its own.[1] And the further systemd adoption and systemd's mission creep go along, the harder it becomes to backtrack and replace it in case somebody comes up with a better solution. [1] Like I said, I have not experienced any of these problems myself, but I have read a couple of reports from people that had problems with systemd that were definitely not just aesthetic.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  > I have not experienced any of these problems myself That's the problem any time[1] a system is designed around ideological purity. Someone invents something clever that works most of the time for most people (with varying definitions of "most"), so they try to apply it everywhere. As no idea can account for everything[2], this sooner or later the inflexibility of the theory meets the variation of realty and some type of drama happens. Usually it's better to avoid anything that exhibits that kind of inflexibility and hubris. Systems that build in ways of handing the unexpected or patching around their own weaknesses are necessary or drama is inevitable. [1] Not just computer systems - this is true most of the time humans build systems. We see the same problems in religion, politics, and social constructs. It's such a common behavior, I suspect there may be an evolutionary basis for it (using a single common rule for many situations requires less energy). [2] Even the physicists are still working on that problem.
  - krylon 11y ago
    Agreed. Which is why I said On the other hand a certain amount of skepticism and criticism is very much in order. The problems systemd tried to address are real, and some of the ideas behind it are appealing. But the way it attempts to replace several important pieces of the system at once, and the way it is being forced on people in a "eat it or leave it"-style feels uncomfortable. Part of what made Unix what it is today is the idea to build a system that might be very far from perfect but that is easy to improve in small, incremental steps so one quickly gets a feeling for what works well and what does not.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      Frankly i feel that way to many sub-projects within systemd is at this point "i can rewrite this faster than get patches past the maintainers". Often with the "hilarious" outcome that problem that was solved a decade ago crops up again in the new implementation within systemd.
    - groovy2shoes 11y ago
      Out of curiosity, what do you consider to be real problems that systemd is trying to address? (Honest question).