4 ms·

The real tragedy is that so many complain about systemd and insist it's awful, yet nobody ever bothers to actually make a better init system. It's either 1980s

The real tragedy is that so many complain about systemd and insist it's awful, yet nobody ever bothers to actually make a better init system. It's either 1980s crap that's totally unsuited to modern environments, or systemd with all its bugs and design flaws.

Bluecobra 8y ago
I thought that Sun did a pretty good job with SMF in Solaris 10, it’s too bad that Oracle did everything they could to ruin Solaris.
- sgt 8y ago
  They say Larry Ellison is still burning Solaris and other Sun books over the weekends. At one point his Japanese bamboo house almost caught fire.
onli 8y ago
There is runit, used in void. And OpenRC in Funtoo/Gentoo. And the systems used in alternative Operating Systems, Solaris just got mentioned. There are a bunch of better alternatives out there.
- Accacin 8y ago
  I believe in the talk he goes into why this (in his opinion) isn’t the case.
  - onli 8y ago
    I don't think so? I skipped only the questions, maybe there? I didn't hear him mention those other systems, might have missed that. You can argue that he does that indirectly: He likes that systemd provides something like a service layer, which the tools I mentioned don't really do. Maybe you mean that. That would work, I just happen to think he is wrong there. That's not the job of init, making it a plus point of an init system is some kind of mental gymnastics I don't agree with (though I liked that talk).
isostatic 8y ago
What modern environments? The problem with systemd is that it's replaced systems that met peoples needs with a single system that many people consider to be worse. Perhaps there are some niche environments that systemd is needed, and that's great -- but why break things for everyone else?
- loeg 8y ago
  To flip this around, if you replaced systemd with the old rc init in e.g. Fedora today, you could make the exact same argument: > The problem with [old init] is that it's replaced systems that met people's needs [systemd] with a single system [old init] that many people consider to be worse. > > Perhaps there are some niche environments that [old init] is needed, and that's great -- but why break things for everyone else? So the argument is kind of meaningless without a tie-breaker of some kind; perhaps popularity vote. I think you're under the impression that your views of systemd's relative suitability are held by the majority of users, but I believe that is incorrect.
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Change is something many people are naturally averse to, so to change something there should be a good reason for it. If you sell something and people choose to use it to solve a problem, that's great. If you force change on someone, and not only not deliver any benefit to them, but actually make things worse, expect pushback. Remember too that most people's systemd impact wasn't just replacing init, it was a whole raft of changes from log formats to dns. Imagine you had a working systemd setup and someone came along and replaced everything. They claim that there are use cases it's better for, but you don't see yourself with those use cases. You would be averse to that change. You then find out that pretty much every distribution going has got rid of systemd. I suspect you wouldn't be happy.
keypusher 8y ago
No, the tragedy is that you didn't watch the video, because the author isn't complaining or insisting that it's awful. Instead, he (a well-known FreeBSD developer) goes through the history of init systems and offers some justifications for why systemd is the way that it is, and what challenges might need to be overcome to make a "better" init.
- colpabar 8y ago
  zing!

Bluecobra 8y ago

I thought that Sun did a pretty good job with SMF in Solaris 10, it’s too bad that Oracle did everything they could to ruin Solaris.

sgt 8y ago
They say Larry Ellison is still burning Solaris and other Sun books over the weekends. At one point his Japanese bamboo house almost caught fire.

onli 8y ago

There is runit, used in void. And OpenRC in Funtoo/Gentoo. And the systems used in alternative Operating Systems, Solaris just got mentioned. There are a bunch of better alternatives out there.

Accacin 8y ago
I believe in the talk he goes into why this (in his opinion) isn’t the case.
- onli 8y ago
  I don't think so? I skipped only the questions, maybe there? I didn't hear him mention those other systems, might have missed that. You can argue that he does that indirectly: He likes that systemd provides something like a service layer, which the tools I mentioned don't really do. Maybe you mean that. That would work, I just happen to think he is wrong there. That's not the job of init, making it a plus point of an init system is some kind of mental gymnastics I don't agree with (though I liked that talk).

isostatic 8y ago

What modern environments? The problem with systemd is that it's replaced systems that met peoples needs with a single system that many people consider to be worse. Perhaps there are some niche environments that systemd is needed, and that's great -- but why break things for everyone else?

loeg 8y ago
To flip this around, if you replaced systemd with the old rc init in e.g. Fedora today, you could make the exact same argument: > The problem with [old init] is that it's replaced systems that met people's needs [systemd] with a single system [old init] that many people consider to be worse. > > Perhaps there are some niche environments that [old init] is needed, and that's great -- but why break things for everyone else? So the argument is kind of meaningless without a tie-breaker of some kind; perhaps popularity vote. I think you're under the impression that your views of systemd's relative suitability are held by the majority of users, but I believe that is incorrect.
- isostatic 8y ago
  Change is something many people are naturally averse to, so to change something there should be a good reason for it. If you sell something and people choose to use it to solve a problem, that's great. If you force change on someone, and not only not deliver any benefit to them, but actually make things worse, expect pushback. Remember too that most people's systemd impact wasn't just replacing init, it was a whole raft of changes from log formats to dns. Imagine you had a working systemd setup and someone came along and replaced everything. They claim that there are use cases it's better for, but you don't see yourself with those use cases. You would be averse to that change. You then find out that pretty much every distribution going has got rid of systemd. I suspect you wouldn't be happy.

keypusher 8y ago

No, the tragedy is that you didn't watch the video, because the author isn't complaining or insisting that it's awful. Instead, he (a well-known FreeBSD developer) goes through the history of init systems and offers some justifications for why systemd is the way that it is, and what challenges might need to be overcome to make a "better" init.

colpabar 8y ago
zing!