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I'm fairly skilled up with Linux, but I don't often read about anything the community is doing, saying or thinking. What is it that everyone hates about Systemd

I'm fairly skilled up with Linux, but I don't often read about anything the community is doing, saying or thinking. What is it that everyone hates about Systemd?

dmitrygr 9y ago
TFA has a nice link for that: http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_systemd http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_...
rekado 9y ago
Note that this is not a list of distributions hating systemd. Some distributions just don't use systemd for technical reasons or because of other design considerations. One example is GuixSD, which uses Guile for everything, including the init (via GNU Shepherd).
fatbird 9y ago
In its naive form, it seems very monolithic, which seems un-unixlike. And its adoption was largely driven by decisions by large distributions, rather than organic growth. To some, this feels very corporate and centralized, which seems un-linuxlike.
- garfij 9y ago
  Isn't being somewhat monolithic Linux-like in itself? I've always been under the impression that Linux is a monolith kernel approach to Unix. Unless we're all switching to Hurd, caring about a monolith init system while running the Linux kernel seems philosophically inconsistent.
  - JdeBP 9y ago
    Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390245 . You are, both of you, repeating an erroneous argument that has been repeated many times before.
    - fatbird 9y ago
      Please note that my comment carefully articulates the perception of systemd, without commitment to it being the reality. I actually like systemd, and don't care whether it's "monolithic" or not.
- wott 9y ago
  > And its adoption was largely driven by decisions by large distributions, rather than organic growth. Yes, that's not stated enough. According to systemd proponents, systemd was demanded. Truth is I've never witnessed or heard about a rush towards RedHat distributions because they had systemd first. Never. That's what should have happened if systemd was so attractive, shouldn't it? Nor have I ever heard a user demanding systemd in order to solve his problems. It was pushed by distribution maintainers, not users. I remember when Arch decided to switch to systemd. The maintainers made false claims (which were repeated by other distributions later) and false promises. They claimed that systemd would relieve them from the terrible burden of maintaining init scripts. Many times have I asked to give example of this burden, I was never given an answer. Of course, the software packages are mostly all already present, there are very few new ones coming who require an init script, and the existing ones have had their script running for years and years, there is very little fixing or evolution in those. It's difficult to give proofs of a burden that did not exist, but that claim persisted, despite never being backed by anything. Arch maintainers, in order to get allowed to switch to systemd, promised that the previous init system would stay beside systemd and be maintained. That was a swindle: once they got the agreement to proceed with systemd on that condition, it was a matter of only a couple of months for them to ditch that promise. And 6 months after, the maintainer who made this promise in order to butter the opposition up and pass the deal for systemd as Arch init, was hired by RedHat...
pmoriarty 9y ago
One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that. The second major issue is it growing way out of the bounds of being just an init replacement, thereby violating the so-called Unix Philosophy of doing one-thing well. For a user app to do that is one thing, but for a core OS component to do that just smells way too much like forcing Linux to be more like Windows, which a lot of hard-core Linux users are ideologically opposed to. The third major issue is that on most major Linux distros, users are not given an easy way to avoid using systemd, no matter how much they hate it or oppose it. The fourth issue is the apparent arrogance of the people responsible for systemd, and their off-hand dismissal of mature and widely respected unix conventions. The fifth problem is that when systemd breaks, troubleshooting and fixing it can be a lot harder than doing the same with an init script. All of this adds up to a storm of controversy that the systemd people mostly brought upon themselves. Had they just been more humble about their creation and waited until it was mature and well-tested and did all the wonderful things they claim it could and should do instead of stuffing what was widely seen as a broken-by-design piece of garbage down everybody's throat, maybe much of the Linux community wouldn't have been nearly so outraged by it.
- DamonHD 9y ago
  3: Users are not given an easy way to avoid using libc or the kernel calls or ASCII text either, so that a non-issue unless you already decided that it's important not to use those things.
  - setr 9y ago
    By virtue of being controversial, which is not true of your examples, this does indeed add to its list of issues
- jbverschoor 9y ago
  I'm sorry. But the "Unix" way is to do one thing well. Why is it that every single app needs to support a "daemon" mode? It is the biggest pain in the but. I love systemd. Finally a sane solution on linux.
upofadown 9y ago
For those into minimalism, systemd is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Over the years the Linux distributions have been adding more and more cruft on top. Systemd was a relatively large chunk of cruft and forced some to look the complexity of the whole system and not like what they saw.
jwilk 9y ago
https://lists.debian.org/87bn0aackz.fsf@hope.eyrie.org https://lists.debian.org/87bn0aackz.fsf@hope.eyrie.org (Yes, it's long, but it's absolutely worth reading.)

I'm fairly skilled up with Linux, but I don't often read about anything the community is doing, saying or thinking. What is it that everyone hates about Systemd?

dmitrygr 9y ago

TFA has a nice link for that: http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_systemd http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_...

rekado 9y ago

Note that this is not a list of distributions hating systemd. Some distributions just don't use systemd for technical reasons or because of other design considerations. One example is GuixSD, which uses Guile for everything, including the init (via GNU Shepherd).

fatbird 9y ago

In its naive form, it seems very monolithic, which seems un-unixlike. And its adoption was largely driven by decisions by large distributions, rather than organic growth. To some, this feels very corporate and centralized, which seems un-linuxlike.

garfij 9y ago
Isn't being somewhat monolithic Linux-like in itself? I've always been under the impression that Linux is a monolith kernel approach to Unix. Unless we're all switching to Hurd, caring about a monolith init system while running the Linux kernel seems philosophically inconsistent.
- JdeBP 9y ago
  Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390245 . You are, both of you, repeating an erroneous argument that has been repeated many times before.
  - fatbird 9y ago
    Please note that my comment carefully articulates the perception of systemd, without commitment to it being the reality. I actually like systemd, and don't care whether it's "monolithic" or not.
wott 9y ago
> And its adoption was largely driven by decisions by large distributions, rather than organic growth. Yes, that's not stated enough. According to systemd proponents, systemd was demanded. Truth is I've never witnessed or heard about a rush towards RedHat distributions because they had systemd first. Never. That's what should have happened if systemd was so attractive, shouldn't it? Nor have I ever heard a user demanding systemd in order to solve his problems. It was pushed by distribution maintainers, not users. I remember when Arch decided to switch to systemd. The maintainers made false claims (which were repeated by other distributions later) and false promises. They claimed that systemd would relieve them from the terrible burden of maintaining init scripts. Many times have I asked to give example of this burden, I was never given an answer. Of course, the software packages are mostly all already present, there are very few new ones coming who require an init script, and the existing ones have had their script running for years and years, there is very little fixing or evolution in those. It's difficult to give proofs of a burden that did not exist, but that claim persisted, despite never being backed by anything. Arch maintainers, in order to get allowed to switch to systemd, promised that the previous init system would stay beside systemd and be maintained. That was a swindle: once they got the agreement to proceed with systemd on that condition, it was a matter of only a couple of months for them to ditch that promise. And 6 months after, the maintainer who made this promise in order to butter the opposition up and pass the deal for systemd as Arch init, was hired by RedHat...

pmoriarty 9y ago

One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that. The second major issue is it growing way out of the bounds of being just an init replacement, thereby violating the so-called Unix Philosophy of doing one-thing well. For a user app to do that is one thing, but for a core OS component to do that just smells way too much like forcing Linux to be more like Windows, which a lot of hard-core Linux users are ideologically opposed to. The third major issue is that on most major Linux distros, users are not given an easy way to avoid using systemd, no matter how much they hate it or oppose it. The fourth issue is the apparent arrogance of the people responsible for systemd, and their off-hand dismissal of mature and widely respected unix conventions. The fifth problem is that when systemd breaks, troubleshooting and fixing it can be a lot harder than doing the same with an init script. All of this adds up to a storm of controversy that the systemd people mostly brought upon themselves. Had they just been more humble about their creation and waited until it was mature and well-tested and did all the wonderful things they claim it could and should do instead of stuffing what was widely seen as a broken-by-design piece of garbage down everybody's throat, maybe much of the Linux community wouldn't have been nearly so outraged by it.

DamonHD 9y ago
3: Users are not given an easy way to avoid using libc or the kernel calls or ASCII text either, so that a non-issue unless you already decided that it's important not to use those things.
- setr 9y ago
  By virtue of being controversial, which is not true of your examples, this does indeed add to its list of issues
jbverschoor 9y ago
I'm sorry. But the "Unix" way is to do one thing well. Why is it that every single app needs to support a "daemon" mode? It is the biggest pain in the but. I love systemd. Finally a sane solution on linux.

upofadown 9y ago

For those into minimalism, systemd is just the straw that broke the camel's back. Over the years the Linux distributions have been adding more and more cruft on top. Systemd was a relatively large chunk of cruft and forced some to look the complexity of the whole system and not like what they saw.

jwilk 9y ago

https://lists.debian.org/87bn0aackz.fsf@hope.eyrie.org https://lists.debian.org/87bn0aackz.fsf@hope.eyrie.org (Yes, it's long, but it's absolutely worth reading.)