3 ms·

systemd fixes a lot of problems for a lot of people, and it wasn't "change for change's sake" - SysV-style init was a mess, and a sad leftover from a time when

systemd fixes a lot of problems for a lot of people, and it wasn't "change for change's sake" - SysV-style init was a mess, and a sad leftover from a time when disks were mechanical, and many other things that amount as anachronisms in 2016. If we never replace things with better things, we'd be using superpowered DOS machines to this day. I don't get the "knowledge has to be discarded and then has to be replaced by different knowledge" argument if the new knowledge is of a better tool. I'm not all in with systemd's ethos, but I don't see a significantly better tool around.

pmlnr 10y ago
Your comment sounds like preaching. > when disks were mechanical DISKS are STILL mechanical. They will always be. That is why it's called a disk. You thinking is limited to fancy laptops and not considering enterprise servers. > If we never replace things with better things Better? That is far too strong. Things are not always better but making certain use cases easier. That does not mean it's better. Systemd has nice features, indeed; but it's also limiting in terms of losing the capabilities of full blown shell script. Sometimes this latter is very handy. Edit: Downvote? Nice. Try commenting instead.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  No downvote from me but spinning disks are on the way out, all across the board including enterprise servers. It will take a while but they will definitely not 'always be' around. See also: vinyl records. They still exist but mainstream has moved on.
  - pmlnr 10y ago
    Disks are still present. They are way cheaper, so especially under big data, they are still irreplaceable.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      For now. Making unqualified statements about the future is where the problem lies. In the long run, silicon will win over spinning rust and 'the long run' seems to be a lot shorter than we previously thought.
    - vidarh 10y ago
      Disks are more expensive for most server use today than SSDs. You can't just look at cost per GB. You need to look at cost to process per GB, and then the vastly increased IOPS and transfer rates provided by SSDs makes them cheaper for most applications where data is regularly accessed at this point. There are niches, such as long term archival, backups, etc. where disks may still be competitive, but even those are rapidly being eroded. For things like web servers or database servers, I'll never provision another machine without SSDs.
- vidarh 10y ago
  > You thinking is limited to fancy laptops and not considering enterprise servers. All of the servers I manage except for a few legacy ones are SSDs by now, for the simple reason that they are cheaper to operate at this point: They consume less energy, and while their price per GB is high, their IOPS per GB is high enough that we can get away with far fewer replicas of each item of data and still get good enough performance. I can't afford not to use SSDs in every new server we provision. Not using SSDs in your servers today means you're behind the curve except in certain niches where performance doesn't matter but sheer storage volume does. That too is set to change within the next couple of years with current rates of cost reductions.

pmlnr 10y ago

Your comment sounds like preaching. > when disks were mechanical DISKS are STILL mechanical. They will always be. That is why it's called a disk. You thinking is limited to fancy laptops and not considering enterprise servers. > If we never replace things with better things Better? That is far too strong. Things are not always better but making certain use cases easier. That does not mean it's better. Systemd has nice features, indeed; but it's also limiting in terms of losing the capabilities of full blown shell script. Sometimes this latter is very handy. Edit: Downvote? Nice. Try commenting instead.

jacquesm 10y ago
No downvote from me but spinning disks are on the way out, all across the board including enterprise servers. It will take a while but they will definitely not 'always be' around. See also: vinyl records. They still exist but mainstream has moved on.
- pmlnr 10y ago
  Disks are still present. They are way cheaper, so especially under big data, they are still irreplaceable.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    For now. Making unqualified statements about the future is where the problem lies. In the long run, silicon will win over spinning rust and 'the long run' seems to be a lot shorter than we previously thought.
  - vidarh 10y ago
    Disks are more expensive for most server use today than SSDs. You can't just look at cost per GB. You need to look at cost to process per GB, and then the vastly increased IOPS and transfer rates provided by SSDs makes them cheaper for most applications where data is regularly accessed at this point. There are niches, such as long term archival, backups, etc. where disks may still be competitive, but even those are rapidly being eroded. For things like web servers or database servers, I'll never provision another machine without SSDs.
vidarh 10y ago
> You thinking is limited to fancy laptops and not considering enterprise servers. All of the servers I manage except for a few legacy ones are SSDs by now, for the simple reason that they are cheaper to operate at this point: They consume less energy, and while their price per GB is high, their IOPS per GB is high enough that we can get away with far fewer replicas of each item of data and still get good enough performance. I can't afford not to use SSDs in every new server we provision. Not using SSDs in your servers today means you're behind the curve except in certain niches where performance doesn't matter but sheer storage volume does. That too is set to change within the next couple of years with current rates of cost reductions.