6 ms·

The thing is that the kernel, while large, has one defined purpose -- to provide abstractions of hardware resources and arbitrate those resources between progra

by cfallin 10y ago

The thing is that the kernel, while large, has one defined purpose -- to provide abstractions of hardware resources and arbitrate those resources between programs -- and thus conceptual simplicity, even if the source tree is huge. The POSIX syscall API is simple and the rest is just implementation. In contrast, systemd is conceptually complex -- its scope continues to expand to manage every little nook and cranny and configurable tidbit in the system. (I'm not arguing one way or another, just pointing out that the type of complexity is different.)

chris_wot 10y ago
Really? How is it complex conceptually? The main concepts you really need to understand is that of units, and for that I found a very well written piece by Digital Ocean on the topic: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/understanding-systemd-units-and-unit-files https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/understandi... Aside from that, there are a number of services and utilities, but I'm not sure how they are conceptually harder to understand that any other similar program or utility on Linux...
- cfallin 10y ago
  The core of systemd revolves around units, but the "systemd ecosystem" has expanded to logging (journalctl), bus management, a new way to set the hostname (hostnamectl), a login manager, fstab parsing and disk management, a new session/login management framework, networking (systemd-netword, or is it netctl now, or do people use NetworkManager? I'm on Arch and ended up choosing netctl but I still don't understand all the tradeoffs), and I'm probably missing something. Don't get me wrong -- I actually like some of the new thinking, appreciate parallelized bootups, and think service units are cleaner than the old /etc/rc.d mudball. I'd rather have things Just Work(tm) than play with wpa_supplicant and hibernate configurations on my laptop. But it's been a lot of new stuff to learn for someone used to the Old Ways, and it's kind of astonishing how fast systemd pieces have taken over different domains.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    Yeah, it can make my head spin too sometimes. But I just don't think that rapid change makes things more inherently complex for a system per se, it just means folks like us have to do more reading (and more grousing, I quite enjoy doing that on occasion, I must admit). Oh boy, I've just realised - I'm growing older! Eep.
  - bitwize 10y ago
    wpa_supplicant Just Works. NetworkManager is more like NightmareManager.

by cfallin 10y ago

chris_wot 10y ago

Really? How is it complex conceptually? The main concepts you really need to understand is that of units, and for that I found a very well written piece by Digital Ocean on the topic: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/understanding-systemd-units-and-unit-files https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/understandi... Aside from that, there are a number of services and utilities, but I'm not sure how they are conceptually harder to understand that any other similar program or utility on Linux...

cfallin 10y ago
The core of systemd revolves around units, but the "systemd ecosystem" has expanded to logging (journalctl), bus management, a new way to set the hostname (hostnamectl), a login manager, fstab parsing and disk management, a new session/login management framework, networking (systemd-netword, or is it netctl now, or do people use NetworkManager? I'm on Arch and ended up choosing netctl but I still don't understand all the tradeoffs), and I'm probably missing something. Don't get me wrong -- I actually like some of the new thinking, appreciate parallelized bootups, and think service units are cleaner than the old /etc/rc.d mudball. I'd rather have things Just Work(tm) than play with wpa_supplicant and hibernate configurations on my laptop. But it's been a lot of new stuff to learn for someone used to the Old Ways, and it's kind of astonishing how fast systemd pieces have taken over different domains.
- chris_wot 10y ago
  Yeah, it can make my head spin too sometimes. But I just don't think that rapid change makes things more inherently complex for a system per se, it just means folks like us have to do more reading (and more grousing, I quite enjoy doing that on occasion, I must admit). Oh boy, I've just realised - I'm growing older! Eep.
- bitwize 10y ago
  wpa_supplicant Just Works. NetworkManager is more like NightmareManager.