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Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd

160 points by mepian 7y ago

Arbalest 7y ago
As a write once read many system, the abandonment of systemd isn't a big deal I suspect. You don't write to the system area and expect it to persist, and so making modifications to the init system basically isn't going to happen. The modularity doesn't really make as much of an impact then. So any backlash from unhappy users who can't install xyz with one click and have init work properly, not a big deal. Anyone who uses something more complex like an overlay system with it likely has more of an interest in the internals anyway, particularly given the nicheness and age of the distribution.
znpy 7y ago
I see a lot of hate about systems and I used to loathe it too. Then I took a course on systemd specifically and it opened my eyes, and now I'm quite fond about it. Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. It has quirks and bugs like all software, but I think it works very well, all things considered. To those who say that it's complex and does a lot of things: it's complex because it does a complex work.
- znpy 7y ago
  Regarding knoppix abandoning it... Meh. Knoppix is a live system, so all of the things systemd was designed for don't apply. I guess it can make sense for their knoppix's use case.
  - craigsmansion 7y ago
    Knoppix is very installable and usable as a main operating system. Knoppix claim to fame is automatic configuration. If your Xorg or sound was giving you grief after a fresh install, you'd live boot Knoppix and copy the configuration files back to your installation. From this p.o.v. it makes sense for Knoppix' use case, because, as stated by Klaus Knopper: "This bypasses systemd's interference with many system components and reduces the complexity of the overall system."
    - Kwpolska 7y ago
      > Knoppix claim to fame is automatic configuration. If your Xorg or sound was giving you grief after a fresh install, you'd live boot Knoppix and copy the configuration files back to your installation. Is it really so? I would expect all distributions to have stolen that feature by now. Xorg works out of the box basically everywhere. I've had a glitch with a microphone on a 3-pin jack on a Ubuntu system, and I doubt Knoppix would have known that a modprobe config change was needed.
- rwmj 7y ago
  systemd is a perfectly fine init system. The problem is that it comes bundled with a whole bunch of other tools for handling networks, cron, ntp, etc which really ought to be separate projects. By bundling them with the successful init system they're not exposed to the usual Darwinian selection processes that shake out the best free software.
  - nickserv 7y ago
    They're separate binaries, and can be easily unbundled. That they're part of the same project is actually a win for me, it helps to make the various components work well together. Also there is a common thread or philosophy in how things are built, making learning easier. In fact "the system is a single project" approach reminds me of the BSDs, which is arguably better than Linux as far as usability and security is concerned.
    - pdkl95 7y ago
      > They're separate binaries https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024256
      - nickik 7y ago
        When you design a library you have to design a way to interact with it. Complaining about systemd because of that is basically saying 'I don't like the api you provide'. People who hate systemd want traditional C API, systemd wants message passing. If you don't like some of binaries, you can remove them and make your own package. If you don't like a particular implementation you can write your own subsystem that uses the same API (as many projects have done). Basically its just people complaining that it does work exactly as they want, when in reality message passing is the exact right way to make system like that.
    - labawi 7y ago
      Unification wouldn't be a such an issue, if it was done with forethought, design and consistency, like BSDs tend to have.
- qubex 7y ago
  I concur with your characterisation of systemd as “doing one thing, and doing it well”. Those who seem to malign it most are those who are, for historical reasons, profoundly conversant with the myriad daemons, configurations, and init systems (generally) of “old UNIX/Linux”. They have a point and a genuine axe to grind, I’ll concede, but systemd is an enormous simplifier for those who are recent to the scene: learn systemd, and you’ve learnt how to manage (most) of your system at a very low level.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    Systemd is Red Hat’s version of the old “embrace, extend, extinguish” playbook.
    - qubex 7y ago
      No it isn’t. Firstly: they weren’t the originators of systemd, they simply hired the guy who first developed it to continue developing it. Secondly: it: being open source and GPL, anybody can use it or fork it and not be due anything to Red Hat. Thirdly, it isn’t extinguishing anything as a business strategy; it’s just out-competing alternatives in the “mindshare” arena.
      - elygre 7y ago
        Without having much opinion on systemd, hiring the developer sounds very much like “embrace”. Continuing developing sounds like “extend”.
        majewsky 7y ago
        By that logic, every company that funds open source development is eeeeeevil.
        robin_reala 7y ago
        Embrace in the EEE metaphor specifically refers to an existing standard or pseudostandard.
      - 7y ago
- hyperman1 7y ago
  I think you are missing the point: Something like systemd has a good reason to exist. But the devil is in the creating team. We've seen pulseaudio, a good system in theory, but an untrustworthy unstable system in practice. And if it wont work, it is so complicated and non-transparent that you need a specialist. Taking a step backward from Alsa is hard, and they managed to do it. Now that same team is messing with system critical stuff. We know from the kernel command line debug debacle they rather see the world burn down than admit they did something wrong. They are again creating a super-complicated incomprehensible half- documented mess, that puts it tentacles everywhere. But the stakes are a lot higher. I am not saying they are incompetent. At a low level, the code works. But at a high level, something is very wrong. Bugs can be fixed, but arrogant architecture astronauts not listening to their users, messing with core infrastructure, that's where systemd keeps failing.
  - orf 7y ago
    > We know from the kernel command line debug debacle they rather see the world burn down than admit they did something wrong Can you expand? I've not heard of this.
    - Tomte 7y ago
      IIRC, they printed more messages to the console when booting Linux with a debug parameter than Linux could handle. Systemd developers were like "nobody can tell us how much detail to print", until the kernel developers made clear that the boot console belongs to them and if systemd doesn't back down immediately they would take away all console access. Systemd then backed down.
      - turbinerneiter 7y ago
        So you are saying two teams maintaining two systems which are working together tightly had a conflict about how those systems are supposed to work together and resolved it after some heated discussion? Sounds like Open Source to me.
    - hyperman1 7y ago
- pdkl95 7y ago
  > does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system "managing the system" is not "ONE [problem]". A big part of the problem with systemd is this presupposition that management of something as large and complex as a modern OS is a single monolithic[1] problem. > it's complex because it does a complex work. See, you agree that it's a complex problem! It's so complex with so many different use cases it isn't even possible to have one solution, because some of those use cases are mutually exclusive. Hench why a modular design is important, so it isn't too difficult to replace the management of different areas if needed. > It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. That "missing layer" isn't well defined. There certainly wasn't any "missing layer" on my old server, or the compute boxen we used at ${research_lab}. If you're talking about desktop system, I agree that there was a gap between traditional system management and the GUI, but that isn't really a new "layer" between kernal and user space (it might involve GUI userspace programs with perhaps some of them being SETUID or a privileged daemon). [1] Any objections trying to claim systemd isn't a tightly coupled, monolithic design will be ignored. If you think the number of binary program files is in any way useful as an objection, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024256
  - ninkendo 7y ago
    > it isn't even possible to have one solution, because some of those use cases are mutually exclusive Could you elaborate? What of systemd’s use cases conflict with one another?
  - AsyncAwait 7y ago
    You still have s6, openRC etc. as choices, but it's funny that nobody of the anti-systemd folk was willing to pick up the work needed to maintain consolekit, yet when logind came around, had lots of strong things to say. How about picking up the work as well? And none of the alternatives seem to really get away from the bash script paradigm & more towards the declarative side of things, which doesn't feel like much beyond keeping all that was terrible about sysvinit around in thin wrappers. Maybe GuixSD is the one exception to this.
    - pdkl95 7y ago
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  > It's complex because it does a complex work Hence it's pointless because it doesn't make things any simpler. All it does is making things monolithic and wrapping concepts that are perfectly fine by themselves, forcing third-party software to write to systemd's APIs. > Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. "Managing systems" is not what is meant by "doing one thing, and doing it well". Systemd takes over init scripting, logging, host names, IP, time, locale, and login, plus tens of more services. Making development of this software a Lennart Poettering/RH-only business rather than community-driven. The trend to get rid of systemd and its metastasis into most of Linux is excellent news. Note that Slackware and Devuan are also systemd-free (and have been from the beginning).
  - ses1984 7y ago
    As an end user, meaning a web app developer, I actually like systemd a lot. I perceive the software quality to be good enough. I've used it in production since 2014 and encountered zero bugs. It does seem to me to be vastly simpler compared to the old way of doing things. I don't really feel strongly either way. I'll be pretty sad if Debian and redhat diverge.
    - tannhaeuser 7y ago
      I don't know what you're doing to start your web/app server, but for eg. apache httpd it's a matter of sudo apachectl start (and likewise for all SysV-like startup scripts). For node, it's node <yourapp.js> (or rather using node-forever or node-cluster in prod). If you want to have it started on boot automatically, you put that line into your startup script. It doesn't get any more simple and transparent than that. Why would you be sad if Debian and RH diverge? Linux started as a one-man show and became a huge community effort because it could run a wealth of F/OSS software. If you want a single-vendor OS, there's Windows, Mac OS, the BSDs, and others. Or maybe IBM RHEL in the future.
      - ses1984 7y ago
        If you do `sudo apache start` in production, how do you do it? Log in to the server and type it in? What about log and metrics agents, how do you start and configure those? Also why are you so judgemental? I don't want Debian and rhel to diverge because I have clients who use both and I don't want to have to do more work to support both.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  > Systemd actually does ONE thing Yeah, except that the "one thing" it does is "everything".
- devit 7y ago
  The best way to see systemd is simply as the userspace part of the Linux kernel, with a similar monolithic but modular design.
- tiew9Vii 7y ago
  I'm an end user. As an end user I don't mind SystemD for writing / managing service unit files. I often find the restart policies and one time only jobs useful especially in cloud with automated deployments. My feelings on SystemD as end user are neutral, it does have some useful things but I understand some of peoples grievances with it. On the other side I have some OpenBSD systems and the simplicity of OpenBSD service management just being plain bash files is really pleasing to use if anything because of the simplicity and power/functionality it provides without actually doing much itself.
  - tannhaeuser 7y ago
    Congrats on "getting" the Unix philosophy! Nit: OpenBSD uses ksh not bash
- StreamBright 7y ago
  No, systemd does many other things than just managing the system. It provides time, dns, dhcp and other services. None of which is required for achiving what it is suppsed to do: managing unix services.
- crb 7y ago
  Can you link to the course you did?
- std_throwaway 7y ago
  > it manages the system It manages the system in a way that not everybody needs or even likes. To the people who hate it, it solves problems that other people have but brings new problems that they now have. It's not so much about if it's good or bad but more about whom it was made for.
- badrabbit 7y ago
  It has it's place but it doesn't work for everyone. I mean,there's something called user-acceptance testing for software dev lifecycles right? (Not a pro dev myself) systemd obviously has an issue being accepted by a lot of users even after almost a decade now(?) Even before systemd there were other init systems used by different distros. The fact that systemd demands other things to adopt to it instead od smoothly integrating with existing systmes is one pain. A bigger pain is how it is expected to work well for everyone. I mean, dislike for "one size fits all" solutions is a major reason why most Linux users became Linux users.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- axaxs 7y ago
  I used to be a sysadmin. I still hate systemd, and think a lot of who like it are suffering from Stockholm syndrome (joking, maybe :)). It's not that I don't understand it, or use it, because I've been forced to for years. It's that it made everything about my job harder, and abstracts or attempts to abstract everything. As an end user, I get liking it. It's fast, and mostly works. As a person who likes to poke and prod, it's a gross nightmare of inconveniences.
- gabrielblack 7y ago
  > it manages the system No, really. I, the system administrator, manage the system(s). Does Systemd make my life easy ? No, again. It's something I have to deal for. If I could, I would follow the example of Knoppix.
Svoka 7y ago
I did a small ask around the room in the office, no one heard about Knoppix. Good for them, I guess.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Logan's Run? :)
- mepian 7y ago
  It's okay to flaunt your ignorance if you can claim that your peers are ignorant as well, I guess. Knoppix was one of the first, if not the first, popular live CD distributions.
  - nickserv 7y ago
    The other day at the office, I was the only one that had heard of, let alone used, Slackware. I am also the oldest in the team, this is probably no coincidence.
    - interfixus 7y ago
      I have worked at more than one place where I was the only one who had heard of Linux. I skip paraphrasing the 'let alone used' part, for of course everyone was using it in their routers and phones and proverbial toasters. It is my clear impression that many Windows users would be hard pressed to explain what 'Windows' is and does.
      - salawat 7y ago
        Oh God. I've embarked on a project to try to relearn how Windows works again, and I'm actually having a terrifying time of it. I"m starting to realize where so many holes in my understanding exist, and abhor how for so long I was just content to accept most things in Windows just happened. Then I started actually digging into log files and various software distro's and tried to connect all the dots. Long story short, nothing scares me more now than a computer program that I can't explain why it's doing what it's doing. SystemD falls into that trap for me. It may just be a case of sitting down and reverse engineering it until it clicks, but until then, I'd rather not trust anything important to it.
einpoklum 7y ago
Good - but I wish that change would have been coordinated with Devuan instead of duplicating the effort. And by the way - if you're doing something Debian-based - make it Devuan-based, it's pretty straightforward. http://www.devuan.org/ http://www.devuan.org/
- johnr2 7y ago
  >if you're doing something Debian-based - make it Devuan-based, it's pretty straightforward. It's also pretty straightforward to switch Debian systems back to sysvinit.
  - einpoklum 7y ago
    No, actually it isn't straightforward. There a lot of artificial dependencies that you can't break. I mean, conceptually it's not difficult, but in practice it is. See also: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/433346/34868 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/433346/34868
    - johnr2 7y ago
      >There a lot of artificial dependencies that you can't break. You still need libsystemd0 which is a compatibility library. It's actually unfortunately named, as it isn't part of systemd itself. I've been using sysvinit on my Debian workstations since systemd became the default. It takes me about 5 minutes to switch a new system over (admittedly I don't use Gnome or KDE). The stackexchange thread you linked is out of date and switching is getting easier. I recommend following the debian-init-diversity mailing list for further info.
mobilio 7y ago
systemd is good for desktop and server systems. But i was seeing that in Embedding Linux or IoT distributions that doesn't make sense since they're run on limited resources.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  No, it's bad for desktop and server systems. It has a lot of bugs and mis-features, and ties too much functionality together.
  - geofft 7y ago
    I've been professionally maintaining large deployments (thousands of machines) using systemd for years now, as well running systemd on my Linux desktop for as long as upstream has defaulted to it, and I can't recall a single bug or a single negative business impact from tying too many features together. I recall on multiple times wanting to upgrade but I'm pretty sure it was always because I wanted fancy new features, not for a bug. (That's not to say systemd has no bugs. I expect it does. We either just didn't run into them, or we tested whatever complex thing we wanted to do—far more than could be expressed in any other init system, process keeper, or systemd competitor—found it didn't work, and moved on. That would be indistinguishable from systemd intentionally not having some fancy feature, and it definitely didn't affect us in production.) Meanwhile, I can remember numerous concrete bugs in the Linux kernel, concrete misfeatures, and downsides from having a monolithic kernel where if one thing goes south everything does. But nobody warns me to avoid Linux....
- SahAssar 7y ago
  Well, systemd is great for responding to events (like devices and networks going up/down) so it seems like a good fit for embedded/IoT. If anything it'd be bad for servers since those are (usually) basically a couple of services and daemons brought up at boot and not changed during runtime, with a few interfaces that never change. Systemd is not that heavy to run when configured correctly (which is what the distro should do).
  - 7y ago
tdewitt 7y ago
The fact that we're still having _this_ conversation, after after a decade since being released and years after mass adoption, should say a lot. I can't think of any other software I have to use on a daily basis that gets so much heat, every time it comes up. One can make all the arguments for it they want but the continued public comtempt means something.
- aeyes 7y ago
  The list in the Linux desktop world is honestly pretty long and could be extended at will. Some examples: Wayland, GNOME 3, KDE Plasma, Nvidia drivers, PulseAudio, DBus
  - tdewitt 7y ago
    Wayland is nearly vaporware, gnome 3 is optional, kde plasma is optional, nvidia drivers are optional and have functional FOSS replacements, pulse I'll grant you (and hope you see the irony) and dbus I can't honestly comment on because the little direct interaction I've had with it was fine but mostly I don't think about it. The flaw with your list is that half of it is optional and anyone who doesn't like those things doesn't have to use them. My daily driver is xfce on xorg. Two of the three components in your list that are mearly mandatory came from the same engineer. Why we do we keep accepting his code? FWIW, the desktop world is less important and I run Linux as a desktop. The nightmares I get from systemd are all about my servers. If we could have left servers alone, people like me wouldn't even have cared. As it is, I have to get out the kid gloves when I'm dealing with my service platform because Bad Decisions are now system standard.
    - Xylakant 7y ago
      > Wayland is nearly vaporware Fedora has been defaulting to Wayland on fresh installs for at least two or three releases and generally it’s working okish. There’s still a lot of software lacking proper wayland support, though.
      - tdewitt 7y ago
iikoolpp 7y ago
Been using systemd since whenever it became the default on Arch. I love it. It just works and I've never had any problems with it. I'd rather use it over any arcane bash-based system any day.
gridlockd 7y ago
Has anyone used Knoppix lately? It has so much pointless junk in it, I do not see the argument against systemd.
narnianal 7y ago
Irrelevant distro abandons core element of all platforms. Next Lada abandons motors and goes to foot pedal acceleration or what? If you want to gain users again you should search for innovation, not abandon it.
doiwin 7y ago
Everything I know about systemd is bad. When I want to write a script that runs on startup, I expect that I can just put (or link) it in some directory where the scripts are that get started on startup. Or that there is one main script that calls all scripts that are intended to be startet on startup. I do not want to write a "service" that has some "only run once and then discard" flag or whatever. When I want to look at logs, I want to use the tools I like. less, grep, tail etc. I do not want to dabble with some binary format and its tooling. When I want to start or stop a service, I want to call a script that does that. A script which I can look at and see what it does. Like /etc/init.d/apache2. I do not want to execute some magic command like "service apache start" which I have to guess or look up and which gives me no clue about what it does.
- eythian 7y ago
  That's just saying "I want things to be the way I first learnt them and don't want them to change." This is fine, but you do have to accept that things are going to move on without you.
  - doiwin 7y ago
    By that logic, no mistakes can ever be criticized. I explained, why systemd is a step in the wrong direction in mutiple ways. That has nothing to do with habbits.
    - Shish2k 7y ago
      > I explained, why systemd is a step in the wrong direction I see a bunch of "I want X", but I don't see any "why"
      - madez 7y ago
        But there have been reasons given. They want to use standard tools to deal with the log. They want to see the scripts that manage the system and poke around in it, which has the implicit reason to learn about the system and being able to easily modify it.
tony 7y ago
Has anyone here used knoppix (or any other dedicated Live CD) recently? In the early 2000's, distros didn't have live environments bundled. All debian used to have was a TUI installer and that's it. Ubuntu 4.10+ introduced a live sessions. From 2004-now driver support and hardware detection has gotten much better. There are live session CD's that include "nonfree" drivers that further improve hardware support. You can pop in most popular distros and easily connect to WiFi and mount drives, often just as easily as knoppix did. This complaint about systemd isn't a user-related, but the perspective of the live cd creator. Maybe it's true systemd doesn't help that case, but would systemd get in the way of a live cd user though? They're likely not going to be adding/removing/starting/stopping services, setting up users/groups, or anything else that'd be done in a permanent environment.
reacharavindh 7y ago
I wish voidlinux gained more attention from the community and got adapted to serious production stuff. It has all the good elements on paper except the maturity and user base.
- AndrewDavis 7y ago
  What are the benefits of void in production compared to Alpine?
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    Void is rolling release; I would prefer Alpine for production environments. Void is an amazing desktop, though.
  - duncaen 7y ago
    If production is servers, then alpine is the better choice as it provides stable releases. Void Linux is a nice desktop system and you can run it on single servers you personally take care of. But I would rather not use it at scale for servers as updating rolling release can always lead to issues and not updating will leave security issues unfixed. The one benefit would probably providing a glibc version if you require it. (I'm a Void Linux contributor.)
  - reacharavindh 7y ago
    I always considered Alpine to be that slim OS image that is used as Docker containers. I have never considered it as a serious bare-metal host. May be it is indeed better than void for that purpose. I wrote about void because it “felt” like the philosophy of BSDs in the Linux land. Which is quite a draw for me. Binary packages, up-to-date kernel, and a sane init system felt fresh and in KiSS realm.
tejohnso 7y ago
> If you want to start your own services at startup, you do not need to create any systemd units, but simply enter them in the text file /etc/rc.local, which contains explanatory examples. Okay, but doesn't that remove a lot of functionality that is available with systemd units? In this whole systemd debate, I've never seen a really clear outline of how much complexity systemd covers, and whether the older alternatives were actually simpler or not. Granted, I haven't looked very hard. I use systemd with Arch and have no known issues with it.
afranchuk 7y ago
I am a bit surprised that they (seemingly? not clear in the article) went back to sysv init rather than exploring other options. I assume they just wanted to go back to something with which they were very familiar (and for which they probably already had scripts). But after going to void linux, I've found runit [1] to be an excellent init system. I was able to sit down and read the documentation in under an hour and understand exactly how it works and how to add my own services (which is fairly trivial). The programs also seem very thoughtfully developed, taking into account specific circumstances and signals. I encourage others to take a look if you're interested; I believe a number of modern distros have support for using it rather than systemd (I know at least Arch does). [1]: http://smarden.org/runit/ http://smarden.org/runit/
- sverige 7y ago
  Knopper wrote his own init system called "knoppix-autoconfig" according to DistroWatch. [0] That information is not included in the release notes, though. [0] https://distrowatch.com/index-mobile.php?distribution=knoppix&release=all&month=all&year=2019 https://distrowatch.com/index-mobile.php?distribution=knoppi...
  - duncaen 7y ago
    Not really. From this German article[0]: > Knoppix' Startvorgang läuft nach wie vor per Sys-V-Init mit wenigen Bash-Skripten, welche die Systemdienste effizient sequenziell oder parallel starten. > Knoppix' boot sequence still uses Sys-V-Ini, with some bash scripts which start the system services efficiently sequential or in parallel. So it has still all the downsides of sysvinit, except that might start sevices in a more efficient order or some in parallel. [0]: https://www.golem.de/news/live-linux-knoppix-8-0-bringt-moderne-technik-fuer-neue-hardware-1703-126811-3.html https://www.golem.de/news/live-linux-knoppix-8-0-bringt-mode...
didip 7y ago
I have grown accustomed to systemd by now, however... is journalctl really needed?
- tdewitt 7y ago
  It's needed as an argument to justify additional scope creep.
cik 7y ago
I wish systemd would just die a fiery death. Every two years I replace my environment - by design, to force growth. I've been doing this on Linux since 1993. In my most recent go-around, I hunted for a Unix distribution that could meet my needs, and played with: Void, Solus, Manjaro, Fedora, Tumbleweed, TridentBSD, and GhostBSD. Heck were there docker support on *BSD I'd be back there happily for the first time since 2001. SystemD needs to die because it violates Unix principles, not because of it's new key combinations. Unix is built on the notion that everything is a file, and that purpose built binaries make sense. SystemD breaks the latter - meaning it's now significantly more work to do the same things when it comes to log investigation, service analysis, and related events. Perhaps the worst part is the extension of a subsystem for service initialization to everything other than that. The folks at suckless (https://suckless.org/sucks/systemd/ https://suckless.org/sucks/systemd/) did the argument significantly more justice than I ever could.

160 points by mepian 7y ago

As a write once read many system, the abandonment of systemd isn't a big deal I suspect. You don't write to the system area and expect it to persist, and so making modifications to the init system basically isn't going to happen. The modularity doesn't really make as much of an impact then. So any backlash from unhappy users who can't install xyz with one click and have init work properly, not a big deal. Anyone who uses something more complex like an overlay system with it likely has more of an interest in the internals anyway, particularly given the nicheness and age of the distribution.

znpy 7y ago

I see a lot of hate about systems and I used to loathe it too. Then I took a course on systemd specifically and it opened my eyes, and now I'm quite fond about it. Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. It has quirks and bugs like all software, but I think it works very well, all things considered. To those who say that it's complex and does a lot of things: it's complex because it does a complex work.

znpy 7y ago
Regarding knoppix abandoning it... Meh. Knoppix is a live system, so all of the things systemd was designed for don't apply. I guess it can make sense for their knoppix's use case.
- craigsmansion 7y ago
  Knoppix is very installable and usable as a main operating system. Knoppix claim to fame is automatic configuration. If your Xorg or sound was giving you grief after a fresh install, you'd live boot Knoppix and copy the configuration files back to your installation. From this p.o.v. it makes sense for Knoppix' use case, because, as stated by Klaus Knopper: "This bypasses systemd's interference with many system components and reduces the complexity of the overall system."
  - Kwpolska 7y ago
    > Knoppix claim to fame is automatic configuration. If your Xorg or sound was giving you grief after a fresh install, you'd live boot Knoppix and copy the configuration files back to your installation. Is it really so? I would expect all distributions to have stolen that feature by now. Xorg works out of the box basically everywhere. I've had a glitch with a microphone on a 3-pin jack on a Ubuntu system, and I doubt Knoppix would have known that a modprobe config change was needed.
rwmj 7y ago
systemd is a perfectly fine init system. The problem is that it comes bundled with a whole bunch of other tools for handling networks, cron, ntp, etc which really ought to be separate projects. By bundling them with the successful init system they're not exposed to the usual Darwinian selection processes that shake out the best free software.
- nickserv 7y ago
  They're separate binaries, and can be easily unbundled. That they're part of the same project is actually a win for me, it helps to make the various components work well together. Also there is a common thread or philosophy in how things are built, making learning easier. In fact "the system is a single project" approach reminds me of the BSDs, which is arguably better than Linux as far as usability and security is concerned.
  - pdkl95 7y ago
    > They're separate binaries https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024256
    - nickik 7y ago
      When you design a library you have to design a way to interact with it. Complaining about systemd because of that is basically saying 'I don't like the api you provide'. People who hate systemd want traditional C API, systemd wants message passing. If you don't like some of binaries, you can remove them and make your own package. If you don't like a particular implementation you can write your own subsystem that uses the same API (as many projects have done). Basically its just people complaining that it does work exactly as they want, when in reality message passing is the exact right way to make system like that.
  - labawi 7y ago
    Unification wouldn't be a such an issue, if it was done with forethought, design and consistency, like BSDs tend to have.
qubex 7y ago
I concur with your characterisation of systemd as “doing one thing, and doing it well”. Those who seem to malign it most are those who are, for historical reasons, profoundly conversant with the myriad daemons, configurations, and init systems (generally) of “old UNIX/Linux”. They have a point and a genuine axe to grind, I’ll concede, but systemd is an enormous simplifier for those who are recent to the scene: learn systemd, and you’ve learnt how to manage (most) of your system at a very low level.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  Systemd is Red Hat’s version of the old “embrace, extend, extinguish” playbook.
  - qubex 7y ago
    No it isn’t. Firstly: they weren’t the originators of systemd, they simply hired the guy who first developed it to continue developing it. Secondly: it: being open source and GPL, anybody can use it or fork it and not be due anything to Red Hat. Thirdly, it isn’t extinguishing anything as a business strategy; it’s just out-competing alternatives in the “mindshare” arena.
    - elygre 7y ago
      Without having much opinion on systemd, hiring the developer sounds very much like “embrace”. Continuing developing sounds like “extend”.
      - majewsky 7y ago
        By that logic, every company that funds open source development is eeeeeevil.
      - robin_reala 7y ago
        Embrace in the EEE metaphor specifically refers to an existing standard or pseudostandard.
    - 7y ago
hyperman1 7y ago
I think you are missing the point: Something like systemd has a good reason to exist. But the devil is in the creating team. We've seen pulseaudio, a good system in theory, but an untrustworthy unstable system in practice. And if it wont work, it is so complicated and non-transparent that you need a specialist. Taking a step backward from Alsa is hard, and they managed to do it. Now that same team is messing with system critical stuff. We know from the kernel command line debug debacle they rather see the world burn down than admit they did something wrong. They are again creating a super-complicated incomprehensible half- documented mess, that puts it tentacles everywhere. But the stakes are a lot higher. I am not saying they are incompetent. At a low level, the code works. But at a high level, something is very wrong. Bugs can be fixed, but arrogant architecture astronauts not listening to their users, messing with core infrastructure, that's where systemd keeps failing.
- orf 7y ago
  > We know from the kernel command line debug debacle they rather see the world burn down than admit they did something wrong Can you expand? I've not heard of this.
  - Tomte 7y ago
    IIRC, they printed more messages to the console when booting Linux with a debug parameter than Linux could handle. Systemd developers were like "nobody can tell us how much detail to print", until the kernel developers made clear that the boot console belongs to them and if systemd doesn't back down immediately they would take away all console access. Systemd then backed down.
    - turbinerneiter 7y ago
      So you are saying two teams maintaining two systems which are working together tightly had a conflict about how those systems are supposed to work together and resolved it after some heated discussion? Sounds like Open Source to me.
  - hyperman1 7y ago
pdkl95 7y ago
> does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system "managing the system" is not "ONE [problem]". A big part of the problem with systemd is this presupposition that management of something as large and complex as a modern OS is a single monolithic[1] problem. > it's complex because it does a complex work. See, you agree that it's a complex problem! It's so complex with so many different use cases it isn't even possible to have one solution, because some of those use cases are mutually exclusive. Hench why a modular design is important, so it isn't too difficult to replace the management of different areas if needed. > It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. That "missing layer" isn't well defined. There certainly wasn't any "missing layer" on my old server, or the compute boxen we used at ${research_lab}. If you're talking about desktop system, I agree that there was a gap between traditional system management and the GUI, but that isn't really a new "layer" between kernal and user space (it might involve GUI userspace programs with perhaps some of them being SETUID or a privileged daemon). [1] Any objections trying to claim systemd isn't a tightly coupled, monolithic design will be ignored. If you think the number of binary program files is in any way useful as an objection, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024256
- ninkendo 7y ago
  > it isn't even possible to have one solution, because some of those use cases are mutually exclusive Could you elaborate? What of systemd’s use cases conflict with one another?
- AsyncAwait 7y ago
  You still have s6, openRC etc. as choices, but it's funny that nobody of the anti-systemd folk was willing to pick up the work needed to maintain consolekit, yet when logind came around, had lots of strong things to say. How about picking up the work as well? And none of the alternatives seem to really get away from the bash script paradigm & more towards the declarative side of things, which doesn't feel like much beyond keeping all that was terrible about sysvinit around in thin wrappers. Maybe GuixSD is the one exception to this.
  - pdkl95 7y ago
tannhaeuser 7y ago
> It's complex because it does a complex work Hence it's pointless because it doesn't make things any simpler. All it does is making things monolithic and wrapping concepts that are perfectly fine by themselves, forcing third-party software to write to systemd's APIs. > Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. "Managing systems" is not what is meant by "doing one thing, and doing it well". Systemd takes over init scripting, logging, host names, IP, time, locale, and login, plus tens of more services. Making development of this software a Lennart Poettering/RH-only business rather than community-driven. The trend to get rid of systemd and its metastasis into most of Linux is excellent news. Note that Slackware and Devuan are also systemd-free (and have been from the beginning).
- ses1984 7y ago
  As an end user, meaning a web app developer, I actually like systemd a lot. I perceive the software quality to be good enough. I've used it in production since 2014 and encountered zero bugs. It does seem to me to be vastly simpler compared to the old way of doing things. I don't really feel strongly either way. I'll be pretty sad if Debian and redhat diverge.
  - tannhaeuser 7y ago
    I don't know what you're doing to start your web/app server, but for eg. apache httpd it's a matter of sudo apachectl start (and likewise for all SysV-like startup scripts). For node, it's node <yourapp.js> (or rather using node-forever or node-cluster in prod). If you want to have it started on boot automatically, you put that line into your startup script. It doesn't get any more simple and transparent than that. Why would you be sad if Debian and RH diverge? Linux started as a one-man show and became a huge community effort because it could run a wealth of F/OSS software. If you want a single-vendor OS, there's Windows, Mac OS, the BSDs, and others. Or maybe IBM RHEL in the future.
    - ses1984 7y ago
      If you do `sudo apache start` in production, how do you do it? Log in to the server and type it in? What about log and metrics agents, how do you start and configure those? Also why are you so judgemental? I don't want Debian and rhel to diverge because I have clients who use both and I don't want to have to do more work to support both.
einpoklum 7y ago
> Systemd actually does ONE thing Yeah, except that the "one thing" it does is "everything".
devit 7y ago
The best way to see systemd is simply as the userspace part of the Linux kernel, with a similar monolithic but modular design.
tiew9Vii 7y ago
I'm an end user. As an end user I don't mind SystemD for writing / managing service unit files. I often find the restart policies and one time only jobs useful especially in cloud with automated deployments. My feelings on SystemD as end user are neutral, it does have some useful things but I understand some of peoples grievances with it. On the other side I have some OpenBSD systems and the simplicity of OpenBSD service management just being plain bash files is really pleasing to use if anything because of the simplicity and power/functionality it provides without actually doing much itself.
- tannhaeuser 7y ago
  Congrats on "getting" the Unix philosophy! Nit: OpenBSD uses ksh not bash
StreamBright 7y ago
No, systemd does many other things than just managing the system. It provides time, dns, dhcp and other services. None of which is required for achiving what it is suppsed to do: managing unix services.
crb 7y ago
Can you link to the course you did?
std_throwaway 7y ago
> it manages the system It manages the system in a way that not everybody needs or even likes. To the people who hate it, it solves problems that other people have but brings new problems that they now have. It's not so much about if it's good or bad but more about whom it was made for.
badrabbit 7y ago
It has it's place but it doesn't work for everyone. I mean,there's something called user-acceptance testing for software dev lifecycles right? (Not a pro dev myself) systemd obviously has an issue being accepted by a lot of users even after almost a decade now(?) Even before systemd there were other init systems used by different distros. The fact that systemd demands other things to adopt to it instead od smoothly integrating with existing systmes is one pain. A bigger pain is how it is expected to work well for everyone. I mean, dislike for "one size fits all" solutions is a major reason why most Linux users became Linux users.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
axaxs 7y ago
I used to be a sysadmin. I still hate systemd, and think a lot of who like it are suffering from Stockholm syndrome (joking, maybe :)). It's not that I don't understand it, or use it, because I've been forced to for years. It's that it made everything about my job harder, and abstracts or attempts to abstract everything. As an end user, I get liking it. It's fast, and mostly works. As a person who likes to poke and prod, it's a gross nightmare of inconveniences.
gabrielblack 7y ago
> it manages the system No, really. I, the system administrator, manage the system(s). Does Systemd make my life easy ? No, again. It's something I have to deal for. If I could, I would follow the example of Knoppix.

Svoka 7y ago

I did a small ask around the room in the office, no one heard about Knoppix. Good for them, I guess.

esotericn 7y ago
Logan's Run? :)
mepian 7y ago
It's okay to flaunt your ignorance if you can claim that your peers are ignorant as well, I guess. Knoppix was one of the first, if not the first, popular live CD distributions.
- nickserv 7y ago
  The other day at the office, I was the only one that had heard of, let alone used, Slackware. I am also the oldest in the team, this is probably no coincidence.
  - interfixus 7y ago
    I have worked at more than one place where I was the only one who had heard of Linux. I skip paraphrasing the 'let alone used' part, for of course everyone was using it in their routers and phones and proverbial toasters. It is my clear impression that many Windows users would be hard pressed to explain what 'Windows' is and does.
    - salawat 7y ago
      Oh God. I've embarked on a project to try to relearn how Windows works again, and I'm actually having a terrifying time of it. I"m starting to realize where so many holes in my understanding exist, and abhor how for so long I was just content to accept most things in Windows just happened. Then I started actually digging into log files and various software distro's and tried to connect all the dots. Long story short, nothing scares me more now than a computer program that I can't explain why it's doing what it's doing. SystemD falls into that trap for me. It may just be a case of sitting down and reverse engineering it until it clicks, but until then, I'd rather not trust anything important to it.

einpoklum 7y ago

Good - but I wish that change would have been coordinated with Devuan instead of duplicating the effort. And by the way - if you're doing something Debian-based - make it Devuan-based, it's pretty straightforward. http://www.devuan.org/ http://www.devuan.org/

johnr2 7y ago
>if you're doing something Debian-based - make it Devuan-based, it's pretty straightforward. It's also pretty straightforward to switch Debian systems back to sysvinit.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  No, actually it isn't straightforward. There a lot of artificial dependencies that you can't break. I mean, conceptually it's not difficult, but in practice it is. See also: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/433346/34868 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/433346/34868
  - johnr2 7y ago
    >There a lot of artificial dependencies that you can't break. You still need libsystemd0 which is a compatibility library. It's actually unfortunately named, as it isn't part of systemd itself. I've been using sysvinit on my Debian workstations since systemd became the default. It takes me about 5 minutes to switch a new system over (admittedly I don't use Gnome or KDE). The stackexchange thread you linked is out of date and switching is getting easier. I recommend following the debian-init-diversity mailing list for further info.

mobilio 7y ago

systemd is good for desktop and server systems. But i was seeing that in Embedding Linux or IoT distributions that doesn't make sense since they're run on limited resources.

einpoklum 7y ago
No, it's bad for desktop and server systems. It has a lot of bugs and mis-features, and ties too much functionality together.
- geofft 7y ago
  I've been professionally maintaining large deployments (thousands of machines) using systemd for years now, as well running systemd on my Linux desktop for as long as upstream has defaulted to it, and I can't recall a single bug or a single negative business impact from tying too many features together. I recall on multiple times wanting to upgrade but I'm pretty sure it was always because I wanted fancy new features, not for a bug. (That's not to say systemd has no bugs. I expect it does. We either just didn't run into them, or we tested whatever complex thing we wanted to do—far more than could be expressed in any other init system, process keeper, or systemd competitor—found it didn't work, and moved on. That would be indistinguishable from systemd intentionally not having some fancy feature, and it definitely didn't affect us in production.) Meanwhile, I can remember numerous concrete bugs in the Linux kernel, concrete misfeatures, and downsides from having a monolithic kernel where if one thing goes south everything does. But nobody warns me to avoid Linux....
SahAssar 7y ago
Well, systemd is great for responding to events (like devices and networks going up/down) so it seems like a good fit for embedded/IoT. If anything it'd be bad for servers since those are (usually) basically a couple of services and daemons brought up at boot and not changed during runtime, with a few interfaces that never change. Systemd is not that heavy to run when configured correctly (which is what the distro should do).
- 7y ago

tdewitt 7y ago

The fact that we're still having _this_ conversation, after after a decade since being released and years after mass adoption, should say a lot. I can't think of any other software I have to use on a daily basis that gets so much heat, every time it comes up. One can make all the arguments for it they want but the continued public comtempt means something.

aeyes 7y ago
The list in the Linux desktop world is honestly pretty long and could be extended at will. Some examples: Wayland, GNOME 3, KDE Plasma, Nvidia drivers, PulseAudio, DBus
- tdewitt 7y ago
  Wayland is nearly vaporware, gnome 3 is optional, kde plasma is optional, nvidia drivers are optional and have functional FOSS replacements, pulse I'll grant you (and hope you see the irony) and dbus I can't honestly comment on because the little direct interaction I've had with it was fine but mostly I don't think about it. The flaw with your list is that half of it is optional and anyone who doesn't like those things doesn't have to use them. My daily driver is xfce on xorg. Two of the three components in your list that are mearly mandatory came from the same engineer. Why we do we keep accepting his code? FWIW, the desktop world is less important and I run Linux as a desktop. The nightmares I get from systemd are all about my servers. If we could have left servers alone, people like me wouldn't even have cared. As it is, I have to get out the kid gloves when I'm dealing with my service platform because Bad Decisions are now system standard.
  - Xylakant 7y ago
    > Wayland is nearly vaporware Fedora has been defaulting to Wayland on fresh installs for at least two or three releases and generally it’s working okish. There’s still a lot of software lacking proper wayland support, though.
    - tdewitt 7y ago

iikoolpp 7y ago

Been using systemd since whenever it became the default on Arch. I love it. It just works and I've never had any problems with it. I'd rather use it over any arcane bash-based system any day.

gridlockd 7y ago

Has anyone used Knoppix lately? It has so much pointless junk in it, I do not see the argument against systemd.

narnianal 7y ago

Irrelevant distro abandons core element of all platforms. Next Lada abandons motors and goes to foot pedal acceleration or what? If you want to gain users again you should search for innovation, not abandon it.

doiwin 7y ago

Everything I know about systemd is bad. When I want to write a script that runs on startup, I expect that I can just put (or link) it in some directory where the scripts are that get started on startup. Or that there is one main script that calls all scripts that are intended to be startet on startup. I do not want to write a "service" that has some "only run once and then discard" flag or whatever. When I want to look at logs, I want to use the tools I like. less, grep, tail etc. I do not want to dabble with some binary format and its tooling. When I want to start or stop a service, I want to call a script that does that. A script which I can look at and see what it does. Like /etc/init.d/apache2. I do not want to execute some magic command like "service apache start" which I have to guess or look up and which gives me no clue about what it does.

eythian 7y ago
That's just saying "I want things to be the way I first learnt them and don't want them to change." This is fine, but you do have to accept that things are going to move on without you.
- doiwin 7y ago
  By that logic, no mistakes can ever be criticized. I explained, why systemd is a step in the wrong direction in mutiple ways. That has nothing to do with habbits.
  - Shish2k 7y ago
    > I explained, why systemd is a step in the wrong direction I see a bunch of "I want X", but I don't see any "why"
    - madez 7y ago
      But there have been reasons given. They want to use standard tools to deal with the log. They want to see the scripts that manage the system and poke around in it, which has the implicit reason to learn about the system and being able to easily modify it.

tony 7y ago

Has anyone here used knoppix (or any other dedicated Live CD) recently? In the early 2000's, distros didn't have live environments bundled. All debian used to have was a TUI installer and that's it. Ubuntu 4.10+ introduced a live sessions. From 2004-now driver support and hardware detection has gotten much better. There are live session CD's that include "nonfree" drivers that further improve hardware support. You can pop in most popular distros and easily connect to WiFi and mount drives, often just as easily as knoppix did. This complaint about systemd isn't a user-related, but the perspective of the live cd creator. Maybe it's true systemd doesn't help that case, but would systemd get in the way of a live cd user though? They're likely not going to be adding/removing/starting/stopping services, setting up users/groups, or anything else that'd be done in a permanent environment.

reacharavindh 7y ago

I wish voidlinux gained more attention from the community and got adapted to serious production stuff. It has all the good elements on paper except the maturity and user base.

AndrewDavis 7y ago
What are the benefits of void in production compared to Alpine?
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Void is rolling release; I would prefer Alpine for production environments. Void is an amazing desktop, though.
- duncaen 7y ago
  If production is servers, then alpine is the better choice as it provides stable releases. Void Linux is a nice desktop system and you can run it on single servers you personally take care of. But I would rather not use it at scale for servers as updating rolling release can always lead to issues and not updating will leave security issues unfixed. The one benefit would probably providing a glibc version if you require it. (I'm a Void Linux contributor.)
- reacharavindh 7y ago
  I always considered Alpine to be that slim OS image that is used as Docker containers. I have never considered it as a serious bare-metal host. May be it is indeed better than void for that purpose. I wrote about void because it “felt” like the philosophy of BSDs in the Linux land. Which is quite a draw for me. Binary packages, up-to-date kernel, and a sane init system felt fresh and in KiSS realm.

tejohnso 7y ago

> If you want to start your own services at startup, you do not need to create any systemd units, but simply enter them in the text file /etc/rc.local, which contains explanatory examples. Okay, but doesn't that remove a lot of functionality that is available with systemd units? In this whole systemd debate, I've never seen a really clear outline of how much complexity systemd covers, and whether the older alternatives were actually simpler or not. Granted, I haven't looked very hard. I use systemd with Arch and have no known issues with it.

afranchuk 7y ago

I am a bit surprised that they (seemingly? not clear in the article) went back to sysv init rather than exploring other options. I assume they just wanted to go back to something with which they were very familiar (and for which they probably already had scripts). But after going to void linux, I've found runit [1] to be an excellent init system. I was able to sit down and read the documentation in under an hour and understand exactly how it works and how to add my own services (which is fairly trivial). The programs also seem very thoughtfully developed, taking into account specific circumstances and signals. I encourage others to take a look if you're interested; I believe a number of modern distros have support for using it rather than systemd (I know at least Arch does). [1]: http://smarden.org/runit/ http://smarden.org/runit/

sverige 7y ago
Knopper wrote his own init system called "knoppix-autoconfig" according to DistroWatch. [0] That information is not included in the release notes, though. [0] https://distrowatch.com/index-mobile.php?distribution=knoppix&release=all&month=all&year=2019 https://distrowatch.com/index-mobile.php?distribution=knoppi...
- duncaen 7y ago
  Not really. From this German article[0]: > Knoppix' Startvorgang läuft nach wie vor per Sys-V-Init mit wenigen Bash-Skripten, welche die Systemdienste effizient sequenziell oder parallel starten. > Knoppix' boot sequence still uses Sys-V-Ini, with some bash scripts which start the system services efficiently sequential or in parallel. So it has still all the downsides of sysvinit, except that might start sevices in a more efficient order or some in parallel. [0]: https://www.golem.de/news/live-linux-knoppix-8-0-bringt-moderne-technik-fuer-neue-hardware-1703-126811-3.html https://www.golem.de/news/live-linux-knoppix-8-0-bringt-mode...

didip 7y ago

I have grown accustomed to systemd by now, however... is journalctl really needed?

tdewitt 7y ago
It's needed as an argument to justify additional scope creep.

cik 7y ago

I wish systemd would just die a fiery death. Every two years I replace my environment - by design, to force growth. I've been doing this on Linux since 1993. In my most recent go-around, I hunted for a Unix distribution that could meet my needs, and played with: Void, Solus, Manjaro, Fedora, Tumbleweed, TridentBSD, and GhostBSD. Heck were there docker support on *BSD I'd be back there happily for the first time since 2001. SystemD needs to die because it violates Unix principles, not because of it's new key combinations. Unix is built on the notion that everything is a file, and that purpose built binaries make sense. SystemD breaks the latter - meaning it's now significantly more work to do the same things when it comes to log investigation, service analysis, and related events. Perhaps the worst part is the extension of a subsystem for service initialization to everything other than that. The folks at suckless (https://suckless.org/sucks/systemd/ https://suckless.org/sucks/systemd/) did the argument significantly more justice than I ever could.