30 ms·

I refuse to use systemd to this day. It's unbelievably complex and became established through political power play rather than any sort of merit. Which is witho

I refuse to use systemd to this day. It's unbelievably complex and became established through political power play rather than any sort of merit. Which is without a doubt not what I expected to see in the Linux ecosystem.

isatty 8y ago
I do too, for personal use (OpenRC on Gentoo user through and through), but due to the adoption of systemd by popular distributions I don’t see an alternative for work. Unfortunately.
- geggam 8y ago
  I moved all my personal things to OpenBSD due to the Linux community move away from unix standards
  - DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    seconded. the Linux fanboy community (which I've no doubt been part of until today and still defend bc of the FOSS spirit) is just getting too much. Linux is a victim of its own success. Bloat and inconsistency everywhere and compared to openBSD they rather move fast and break things rather than chose coherent design. Linux Security as it exists today is an oxymoron. Not to mention the community that consists in BSD of people who know what they do and can be trusted with auditing code. Linux code audits are a joke ... they rather hurl abuse at security guys (e.g. "masturbating monkeys") or outright ignore them ... (no time to discuss esthetics and coherent design because it's all about shipping fast at all cost - the same and only way they do in their day jobs ...)
  - smhenderson 8y ago
    That's what I did as well. But I also continue to use Slackware which doesn't have any current plans to move to SystemD. It was the first Linux distro I ever used and I still love it to this day. I've used many different systems for work over the years but I've kept at least one Slackware laptop or desktop going since early 1995 when I first found a Slackware CDROM in the back of a book about learning Linux. Although it gets new software, bug fixes and minor updates here and there it's remarkably similar today to what it was then. And I find it Just Works, I've had very little trouble with it over the years. I think I like it too because it always felt like the most traditional Unix like distro I've ever used and also more BSD than System V which I also generally prefer.
    - geggam 8y ago
      I do have Slackware as well, so far it hasn't left its roots.
  - asveikau 8y ago
    I like OpenBSD a lot, but I have to nitpick your description: OpenBSD diverges from "standards" when they decide the standard doesn't make sense. They are not afraid to tear down working things when they decide it's necessary, and I've faced a lot of release-to-release breakage, forced reconfigurations, or features I've relied on go completely missing without a lot of warning. Still a great project that I use every day, I'm not knocking it. It's just not a great example of a change-averse type of stability.
- toast0 8y ago
  If you've got the career capital, move somewhere that doesn't use it? Look for places that run servers on FreeBSD, perhaps.
yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
Yeah, it's not so terrible technically, but politically I despise it. Especially when the people involved take a stance of "we're not actually going to discuss this or debate why this might be the best way to do it, we're just going to slowly try to make your life harder and harder until you give in" ( https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2010-September/000391.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2010-Se... )
- craigsmansion 8y ago
  If it's not technically terrible, it's not technically terrible anymore. All the initial "ooh and aah" factor of SystemD came from using the kernel's cgroups mechanism, which was a dumpster fire by itself--something dropped by google in the kernel for easier maintenance with the understanding that no one should be stupid enough to use it for something important...enter SystemD. Apparently cgroups is in better nick these days (as is SystemD), but until the likes of Al Viro come around and give it a clean bill of health, I think I'll pass.
  - Xylakant 8y ago
    So no docker for you either?
  - devereaux 8y ago
    cgroups are essential to properly limit daemons on baremetal servers without the overhead of containers (so more bang for bucks). For example, you can make sure some poorly written python daemon will never use more than 50pct of the cpu or over 1 Gb of ram - and systemd services will nicely restart the daemon if\when that happens. By not using systemd you are depriving yourself of essential tools in modern sysadmin (timers alone are worth switching to systems compared to cron anachronistic hacks)
    - dijit 8y ago
      You can use cgroups without systemd. Them being released at similar times does not mean systemd implemented them, they exist completely separately to systemd. Literally: mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/<groupname>; echo 100000000 > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/<groupname>/memory.limit_in_bytes is all you need for cgroups.
m45t3r 8y ago
This is not true. systemd did standard multiple interfaces in Linux ecosystem. It is much easier to get things working nowadays than it used to be. systemd became standard thanks to meritocracy (important people in most distros decided to adopt systemd, it was not a "political power play"). It is complex, and there are bugs like any other kind of software[1], however like any other software it is improving. [1]: For example, I used to hit multiple concurrency bugs in sysVinit used by Arch Linux. The only way to fix them was to find the correct order that system worked. No more problems of this kind thanks to systemd dependency resolving.
- geggam 8y ago
  Important people choosing to use instead of letting the community decide is the definition of political and not merit
  - theamk 8y ago
    At least for Debian, technical committee (elected by the community) could not choose between systemd and upstart [0], so systemd was the final winner. There was overwhelming desire that sysvinit should go. And when this question was brought to general election, community decided it did not care: [1] So I am not sure who those "important people" were, why do you feel they did not represent you, and what would community choose, in your opinion. I, having worked with upstart, can say it is worse than systemd. [0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708#6729 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708#672... [1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003#outcome https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003#outcome
    - codedokode 8y ago
      Interesting, I didn't know that Debian has a constitution.
    - kasabali 8y ago
      > technical committee (elected by the community) Technical committee members are not elected by community, they're appointed by the DPL. https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-6 https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-6
na85 8y ago
Me too. Ironically, systemd is why I bought a Mac. It's so hard to find a linux distro that actually works on a laptop but doesn't use systemd, so I eventually just gave up on Linux entirely. That left me with BSD, Windows, and macOS. I tried FreeBSD and OpenBSD but performance was atrocious and noticeably worse in almost every way than Debian and win7 on the same hardware. I'm sure BSD makes a good server OS but it's just not mature enough for serious work unless I was willing to keep my laptop plugged 99% of the time. But what's the point of a laptop if the OS performs so poorly it won't even last a 4-hour flight? I similarly seem to be the last guy on earth who still remembers the bad old days of Microsoft's dominance so I won't pay for windows. The winner by default is therefore apple.
- Tor3 8y ago
  Devuan works fine on my laptop and doesn't use systemd. It's nearly exactly as Debian otherwise.
- pedroaraujo 8y ago
  You bought a Mac because of systemd? Isn't that some sort of overreaction?
  - gpm 8y ago
    I don't particularly think so. The amount of my time that systemd has wasted is insane. Buying a mac would have saved me all that time... if only I liked their hardware more.
    - setquk 8y ago
      systemd has wasted a ton of time for me as well. Then again I just bought a new MacBook air and they keyboard gave out after two weeks and it gave me a rash. Can't win at all.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    Don't tell him about launchd
kadendogthing 8y ago
Can we just ban/flag these comments already? They're so obviously false and their motivations aren't sincere. Political colorization of other people's choices because you don't like it, with a thin veil of technical grandstanding masquerading as insight, on top of needless hyperbole is just stupid.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  Can we just ban/flag these comments already? They're so obviously false and their motivations aren't sincere. Political colorization of other people's choices because you don't like it, with a thin veil of political grandstanding masquerading as insight, on top of needless hyperbole is just unhelpful. Honestly, I get that you like systemd. I understand wanting to not talk about it anymore. But not wanting other people to be able to talk just because they disagree with you is ... not a compelling perspective.
  - kadendogthing 8y ago
    >Honestly, I get that you like systemd. No where did I state that. >I understand wanting to not talk about it anymore. I didn't say that. >But not wanting other people to be able to talk That's certainly not my motivation. How dare you even claim that is something I want. It's an unsubstantiated comment that doesn't offer anything to the conversation. It provides no context, nothing to argue against, no examples, no solutions, but it's allowed because it fits within the HN userbase's opinion. An opinion often grounded in narrative and not facts. It uses conspiracy theory accessories and grandstanding. That's it. Your comment isn't clever because it just reveals you couldn't be bothered to read what was being stated, and then even had the audacity to prescribe positions to me that I never stated. And certainly have never stated on this board.
dsign 8y ago
I worked with both SysV init and updstart. Upstart was not too bad. SysV init was giant piles of bash-script, always slightly different from service to service and from distro to distro. Bash is a language which two decades after, working full time in Linux, I don't completely grasp. Just a few months back we got a client still stuck on SysV init, we ran this algorithm with him: https://xkcd.com/2083/ https://xkcd.com/2083/
- insertcredit 8y ago
  If you don't grasp bash after two decades of Linux experience, you should maybe question yourself as to why that is rather than blame bash. Maybe you never properly spent a few days fulltime trying to learn it? I'd take bash scripts without hesitation over systemd any day of the week. I can debug bash with my eyes closed. Every single time I had to debug systemd, I wanted to kill myself.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - elmo2you 8y ago
    Personally, I totally agree with you. Aside from the political power play that made systemd "popular" (/adopted), it also gained traction because of a lack of skill among the ever growing user base of Linux. Quite a few of the "problems" that systemd claimed to solve where solvable in SysV init, but it required skill/experience. A bit like claiming to be a car mechanic and bashing an old car because you can't tune the ignition timing, because it doesn't have a board computer doing it for you and you don't have the skill/understanding to do it yourself. In the past, you often were required to have at least some skill/experience to get Linux to work for you. Today, it's more about choosing the right tools to use Linux with a just a bare minimum of skill/experience. An understandable development for sure, but it also opened the door for software of questionable quality, which has at least part of its popularity to thank to the ignorance of a significant part of the user base.
    - tyu1000 8y ago
BenjiWiebe 8y ago
As a counter point, I personally enjoy using systemd to manage my home servers and PC. And I have written unit files for quite a lot too, and enjoy it. Surprisingly, it seems as if different people have different tastes/opinions. :)
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  And I wish we could just use it for services! But alas, it comes with a free mandatory proctology exam, by a guy with really big hands, called "pid 1". What's also kind of funny to me is, it wasn't designed for cloud-based services. We now have to invent whole new systems that look a lot like systemd just to manage distributed decentralized services that run on Linux systems. Systemd would have been great for everybody if it had been developed by people with different priorities.
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  I also enjoy systemd much more than sysvinit, having a uniform service structure vs messy shell scripts really does make a difference.
  - insertcredit 8y ago
    The fact that people keep repeating the "messy shell scripts" fallacy is proof of how effective systemd propaganda has been. The vast majority of Linux systems on the planet, which ship software made by Google, do not run systemd.
    - AsyncAwait 8y ago
      > The vast majority of Linux systems on the planet, which ship software made by Google, do not run systemd. WTF? Are you talking about Android? The user does not even interact with the init system on Android at all, what are you even talking about? It's not "systemd propaganda" that has been effective, it's the anti-systemd propaganda that seems to get dumber every time I see it.
      - 8y ago
gsich 8y ago
systemd is very easy and nice to use. Why waste your life writing init scripts.
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  Woah there, careful with that opinion.
  - gsich 8y ago
    Most of HN loves to flame systemd, yet still use it. There is no suitable alternative on Linux.

isatty 8y ago

I do too, for personal use (OpenRC on Gentoo user through and through), but due to the adoption of systemd by popular distributions I don’t see an alternative for work. Unfortunately.

geggam 8y ago
I moved all my personal things to OpenBSD due to the Linux community move away from unix standards
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  seconded. the Linux fanboy community (which I've no doubt been part of until today and still defend bc of the FOSS spirit) is just getting too much. Linux is a victim of its own success. Bloat and inconsistency everywhere and compared to openBSD they rather move fast and break things rather than chose coherent design. Linux Security as it exists today is an oxymoron. Not to mention the community that consists in BSD of people who know what they do and can be trusted with auditing code. Linux code audits are a joke ... they rather hurl abuse at security guys (e.g. "masturbating monkeys") or outright ignore them ... (no time to discuss esthetics and coherent design because it's all about shipping fast at all cost - the same and only way they do in their day jobs ...)
- smhenderson 8y ago
  That's what I did as well. But I also continue to use Slackware which doesn't have any current plans to move to SystemD. It was the first Linux distro I ever used and I still love it to this day. I've used many different systems for work over the years but I've kept at least one Slackware laptop or desktop going since early 1995 when I first found a Slackware CDROM in the back of a book about learning Linux. Although it gets new software, bug fixes and minor updates here and there it's remarkably similar today to what it was then. And I find it Just Works, I've had very little trouble with it over the years. I think I like it too because it always felt like the most traditional Unix like distro I've ever used and also more BSD than System V which I also generally prefer.
  - geggam 8y ago
    I do have Slackware as well, so far it hasn't left its roots.
- asveikau 8y ago
  I like OpenBSD a lot, but I have to nitpick your description: OpenBSD diverges from "standards" when they decide the standard doesn't make sense. They are not afraid to tear down working things when they decide it's necessary, and I've faced a lot of release-to-release breakage, forced reconfigurations, or features I've relied on go completely missing without a lot of warning. Still a great project that I use every day, I'm not knocking it. It's just not a great example of a change-averse type of stability.
toast0 8y ago
If you've got the career capital, move somewhere that doesn't use it? Look for places that run servers on FreeBSD, perhaps.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago

Yeah, it's not so terrible technically, but politically I despise it. Especially when the people involved take a stance of "we're not actually going to discuss this or debate why this might be the best way to do it, we're just going to slowly try to make your life harder and harder until you give in" ( https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2010-September/000391.html https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2010-Se... )

craigsmansion 8y ago
If it's not technically terrible, it's not technically terrible anymore. All the initial "ooh and aah" factor of SystemD came from using the kernel's cgroups mechanism, which was a dumpster fire by itself--something dropped by google in the kernel for easier maintenance with the understanding that no one should be stupid enough to use it for something important...enter SystemD. Apparently cgroups is in better nick these days (as is SystemD), but until the likes of Al Viro come around and give it a clean bill of health, I think I'll pass.
- Xylakant 8y ago
  So no docker for you either?
- devereaux 8y ago
  cgroups are essential to properly limit daemons on baremetal servers without the overhead of containers (so more bang for bucks). For example, you can make sure some poorly written python daemon will never use more than 50pct of the cpu or over 1 Gb of ram - and systemd services will nicely restart the daemon if\when that happens. By not using systemd you are depriving yourself of essential tools in modern sysadmin (timers alone are worth switching to systems compared to cron anachronistic hacks)
  - dijit 8y ago
    You can use cgroups without systemd. Them being released at similar times does not mean systemd implemented them, they exist completely separately to systemd. Literally: mkdir /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/<groupname>; echo 100000000 > /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/<groupname>/memory.limit_in_bytes is all you need for cgroups.

m45t3r 8y ago

This is not true. systemd did standard multiple interfaces in Linux ecosystem. It is much easier to get things working nowadays than it used to be. systemd became standard thanks to meritocracy (important people in most distros decided to adopt systemd, it was not a "political power play"). It is complex, and there are bugs like any other kind of software[1], however like any other software it is improving. [1]: For example, I used to hit multiple concurrency bugs in sysVinit used by Arch Linux. The only way to fix them was to find the correct order that system worked. No more problems of this kind thanks to systemd dependency resolving.

geggam 8y ago
Important people choosing to use instead of letting the community decide is the definition of political and not merit
- theamk 8y ago
  At least for Debian, technical committee (elected by the community) could not choose between systemd and upstart [0], so systemd was the final winner. There was overwhelming desire that sysvinit should go. And when this question was brought to general election, community decided it did not care: [1] So I am not sure who those "important people" were, why do you feel they did not represent you, and what would community choose, in your opinion. I, having worked with upstart, can say it is worse than systemd. [0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708#6729 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708#672... [1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003#outcome https://www.debian.org/vote/2014/vote_003#outcome
  - codedokode 8y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know that Debian has a constitution.
  - kasabali 8y ago
    > technical committee (elected by the community) Technical committee members are not elected by community, they're appointed by the DPL. https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-6 https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution#item-6

na85 8y ago

Me too. Ironically, systemd is why I bought a Mac. It's so hard to find a linux distro that actually works on a laptop but doesn't use systemd, so I eventually just gave up on Linux entirely. That left me with BSD, Windows, and macOS. I tried FreeBSD and OpenBSD but performance was atrocious and noticeably worse in almost every way than Debian and win7 on the same hardware. I'm sure BSD makes a good server OS but it's just not mature enough for serious work unless I was willing to keep my laptop plugged 99% of the time. But what's the point of a laptop if the OS performs so poorly it won't even last a 4-hour flight? I similarly seem to be the last guy on earth who still remembers the bad old days of Microsoft's dominance so I won't pay for windows. The winner by default is therefore apple.

Tor3 8y ago
Devuan works fine on my laptop and doesn't use systemd. It's nearly exactly as Debian otherwise.
pedroaraujo 8y ago
You bought a Mac because of systemd? Isn't that some sort of overreaction?
- gpm 8y ago
  I don't particularly think so. The amount of my time that systemd has wasted is insane. Buying a mac would have saved me all that time... if only I liked their hardware more.
  - setquk 8y ago
    systemd has wasted a ton of time for me as well. Then again I just bought a new MacBook air and they keyboard gave out after two weeks and it gave me a rash. Can't win at all.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  Don't tell him about launchd

kadendogthing 8y ago

Can we just ban/flag these comments already? They're so obviously false and their motivations aren't sincere. Political colorization of other people's choices because you don't like it, with a thin veil of technical grandstanding masquerading as insight, on top of needless hyperbole is just stupid.

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
Can we just ban/flag these comments already? They're so obviously false and their motivations aren't sincere. Political colorization of other people's choices because you don't like it, with a thin veil of political grandstanding masquerading as insight, on top of needless hyperbole is just unhelpful. Honestly, I get that you like systemd. I understand wanting to not talk about it anymore. But not wanting other people to be able to talk just because they disagree with you is ... not a compelling perspective.
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  >Honestly, I get that you like systemd. No where did I state that. >I understand wanting to not talk about it anymore. I didn't say that. >But not wanting other people to be able to talk That's certainly not my motivation. How dare you even claim that is something I want. It's an unsubstantiated comment that doesn't offer anything to the conversation. It provides no context, nothing to argue against, no examples, no solutions, but it's allowed because it fits within the HN userbase's opinion. An opinion often grounded in narrative and not facts. It uses conspiracy theory accessories and grandstanding. That's it. Your comment isn't clever because it just reveals you couldn't be bothered to read what was being stated, and then even had the audacity to prescribe positions to me that I never stated. And certainly have never stated on this board.

dsign 8y ago

I worked with both SysV init and updstart. Upstart was not too bad. SysV init was giant piles of bash-script, always slightly different from service to service and from distro to distro. Bash is a language which two decades after, working full time in Linux, I don't completely grasp. Just a few months back we got a client still stuck on SysV init, we ran this algorithm with him: https://xkcd.com/2083/ https://xkcd.com/2083/

insertcredit 8y ago
If you don't grasp bash after two decades of Linux experience, you should maybe question yourself as to why that is rather than blame bash. Maybe you never properly spent a few days fulltime trying to learn it? I'd take bash scripts without hesitation over systemd any day of the week. I can debug bash with my eyes closed. Every single time I had to debug systemd, I wanted to kill myself.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- elmo2you 8y ago
  Personally, I totally agree with you. Aside from the political power play that made systemd "popular" (/adopted), it also gained traction because of a lack of skill among the ever growing user base of Linux. Quite a few of the "problems" that systemd claimed to solve where solvable in SysV init, but it required skill/experience. A bit like claiming to be a car mechanic and bashing an old car because you can't tune the ignition timing, because it doesn't have a board computer doing it for you and you don't have the skill/understanding to do it yourself. In the past, you often were required to have at least some skill/experience to get Linux to work for you. Today, it's more about choosing the right tools to use Linux with a just a bare minimum of skill/experience. An understandable development for sure, but it also opened the door for software of questionable quality, which has at least part of its popularity to thank to the ignorance of a significant part of the user base.
  - tyu1000 8y ago

BenjiWiebe 8y ago

As a counter point, I personally enjoy using systemd to manage my home servers and PC. And I have written unit files for quite a lot too, and enjoy it. Surprisingly, it seems as if different people have different tastes/opinions. :)

peterwwillis 8y ago
And I wish we could just use it for services! But alas, it comes with a free mandatory proctology exam, by a guy with really big hands, called "pid 1". What's also kind of funny to me is, it wasn't designed for cloud-based services. We now have to invent whole new systems that look a lot like systemd just to manage distributed decentralized services that run on Linux systems. Systemd would have been great for everybody if it had been developed by people with different priorities.
AsyncAwait 8y ago
I also enjoy systemd much more than sysvinit, having a uniform service structure vs messy shell scripts really does make a difference.
- insertcredit 8y ago
  The fact that people keep repeating the "messy shell scripts" fallacy is proof of how effective systemd propaganda has been. The vast majority of Linux systems on the planet, which ship software made by Google, do not run systemd.
  - AsyncAwait 8y ago
    > The vast majority of Linux systems on the planet, which ship software made by Google, do not run systemd. WTF? Are you talking about Android? The user does not even interact with the init system on Android at all, what are you even talking about? It's not "systemd propaganda" that has been effective, it's the anti-systemd propaganda that seems to get dumber every time I see it.
    - 8y ago

gsich 8y ago

systemd is very easy and nice to use. Why waste your life writing init scripts.

kadendogthing 8y ago
Woah there, careful with that opinion.
- gsich 8y ago
  Most of HN loves to flame systemd, yet still use it. There is no suitable alternative on Linux.