6 ms·

I like the tone of your comment, unlike many others here. But to your remark: "But it seems like his ambition is impeding his ability to consider those who do

I like the tone of your comment, unlike many others here. But to your remark: "But it seems like his ambition is impeding his ability to consider those who do not want to approach the fix his way. It's never a measured approach, it /feels/ like a "lets write it now and figure out all the problems down the line and fix them" which, for core pieces of software is a dangerous mindset." I'd like to say that he forces nobody and so we should not complain about his creative endeavors. The market will decide, and you, will decide.

dijit 7y ago
I disagree, you can argue the semantics of if it's him specifically or if it's another project that decides it will only target systemd/pulseaudio. But the fact that if I want a stable distro for server usage in 2019 I _must_ use a systemd distro speaks to the fact that I am indeed forced to use it. Maybe that's just adoption though, typically the sysadmin community considers the "safe" options to be CentOS/RHEL or Debian Stable. Both of which default to systemd. (and no sysadmin is going to change the init system on production servers unless it presents some abject nightmare, short of eating 30% CPU/Mem-- it's core software, it wont be touched). Projects like Devuan are simply not considered safe choices by the majority of the sysadmin community, and there's no alternative for RHEL-esque sites. So, semantically: it's not poetterings fault. But at the same time, I'm still forced.
- emmelaich 7y ago
  Sorry, but you'll need to find a word different from "forced"
  - dijit 7y ago
    What word would you recommend? If I must do something then I am forced? no? -- and I'm not being facetious I'm genuinely curious. If I wish to keep using production grade linux distributions (that my company has been using for 15+ years) then I must adopt systemd. I guess I could convince my 25,000+ person organisation to change everything to a Debian based OS and subsequently move them to Debian, but that's not likely.
    - westurner 7y ago
      Why do you think that is? Why have production grade Linux distributions all chosen to adopt systemd? With SysV init, how do you securely launch processes in cgroups, such that they'll consistently restart when the process happens to terminate, with stdout and stderr logged with consistent timestamps, with process dependency models that allow for faster boots due to parallelization? (edit) Journalctl is far better than `tail -f /var/log/starstar` and parsing all of those timestamps and inconsistently escaped logfile formats. There's no good way to modify everything in /etc/init.d in order to log to syslog-ng or rsyslog. Systemd and journalctl solve for that; for unified logging. IMO, there's no question that systemd is the better way and I have zero nostalgia for spawning everything from a probably a shell specified in an /etc/init.d shebang without process restarting (and logging thereof), cgroups, and consistent logging.
      - regularfry 7y ago
        > With SysV init Why is sysvinit presented as the only alternative to systemd-consume-the-world? It's not, and it never was.
      - dijit 7y ago
        This is a bit of a loaded question, but to directly answer the point: RHEL adopted systemd because it developed systemd. Specifically for its use-cases, it was initially deployed on Fedora, where I used it myself (because I was and am a fan of fedora). Debian adopted after having internal discussions[0] which are public record. To summarise their discussion (a little bit flippantly, I agree) would be to say that they adopted it because it was becoming the de-facto standard already and a lot of other projects wanted to use features only available in SystemD. [0]: https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd
      - throw0101a 7y ago
        > Why do you think that is? Why have production grade Linux distributions all chosen to adopt systemd? Because RH funds a lot of software development, and Poettering works for them. > Journalctl is far better than `tail -f /var/log/starstar` Except when journald shits the bed and corrupts its own log file. Or when you want ship logs off-machine, yet journald does not support any standards-compliant transport so you end up have to log a second logging daemon (e.g., rsyslog)—in which case what's the damn point of the first? Or when you do a "service mysql start" and it dies, but there is no output anywhere of what went wrong, and you have to guess that you have a typo in your "my.cnf". But other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? > ... in an /etc/init.d shebang without process restarting (and logging thereof), cgroups, and consistent logging. The problem is not systemd-as-init-replacement. The problem is systemd-as-kitchen-sink. udevd is an "essential" part of systemd? Really? It can't be it's own stand-alone project? Really?
- massysett 7y ago
  You can use a BSD or Slackware.
  - dijit 7y ago
    Lucky me! (although genuinely we did make the backends to one of our games FreeBSD, but its a lot more awkward to use than something like Debian on google cloud, and don't get me started on ZFS performance on Google Cloud, it's abysmal)
  - enriquto 7y ago
    also voidlinux
  - bscphil 7y ago
    Or Alpine Linux. I believe it's already one of the best-regarded distributions for the container space, and it uses OpenRC, not systemd.
    - hollerith 7y ago
      OK, but aren't most Alpine instances running in containers hosted by Linux instances using systemd?
      - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
        That doesn't mean it doesn't work fine as the base layer. I run Alpine on bare metal... actually, I really like Alpine as the thing that hosts KVM and/or Docker, too.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  You could argue that you are forced to use it, but you cannot really argue that Poettering was the one that's doing the forcing, I think.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
StreamBright 7y ago
The "market" is not actually a real market. There are no customers shopping on Amazon saying: "I only want to purchase things that were produced on a systemd free computer".
- icebraining 7y ago
  Markets are not only on Amazon. Supporting a distro with time or money is a market transaction too.
- dagw 7y ago
  But there are distro maintainers that can choose between maintaining a systemd free distro or not. Sysadmins that can decide between deploying a systemd free disto or not. Developers that can decide between supporting systemd or not etc. I have been out of that game since before systemd showed up on anybodies radar and thus have no horse in this race, but a lot of seemingly smart people appear to have independently decided that they prefer supporting systemd to any alternative.
  - StreamBright 7y ago
    >> But there are distro maintainers that can choose between maintaining a systemd free distro or not. The distro maintainers do not represent the market. >> Sysadmins that can decide between deploying a systemd free disto or not They cannot, it is usually corporate policy which system can be deployed. Even if they could, the users of those distros want softwares and features that only exist in systemd enabled ones. >> but a lot of seemingly smart people appear to have independently decided that they prefer supporting systemd to any alternative I am pretty sure you can say the same about NSDAP in 1933. It does not mean they are right, or the thing they chose is good.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    You forgot who funds these developers, most of the time, so no big projects are not free to choose. Even Debian desisted after longer time.
    - 7y ago
michaelmrose 7y ago
What about software demands that we not critique bad software the same as we would bad movies. Nobody makes me watch them but while many disagree with a particular opinion few would insist we not have them.
UserIsUnused 7y ago
Redhat's influence, his employer, does end up forcing other distros, as Redhat is the biggest influencer on linux land
- teekert 7y ago
  Influencer indeed, not forcer.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    No, it's not influence. Their devs essentially started removing support for other init systems in GNOME under the pretense of reducing maintenance load. It has to be pretty strongly changed to actually work with something else and then incompletely. (Read Gentoo patch list.) It's the same story with other sound servers than Pulseaudio, including pure ALSA.
    - BurningCycles 7y ago
      >Their devs essentially started removing support for other init systems in GNOME under the pretense of reducing maintenance load. I'm no fan of systemd, but this is nonsense. Of course it reduces maintenance load. And AFAIK GNOME relies on components in the systemd ecosystem, which can be implemented by a 3rd party in a compatible manner. And you are not forced to use GNOME, or KDE, or Xfce, or any of the wide range of window managers etc. Also Pulseaudio runs on TOP of ALSA, and what other sound servers are you referring to ? Bottom line is, beggars can't be choosers. If the maintainers of your preferred distro chooses a technology you do not like, you can vote with your feet, and if all distros opt for that same technology, you simply have to accept that. I have no doubt something better than systemd will come along in the next 4-8 years and start replacing it, and then we will have the same discussions with people who have grown accustomed to systemd arguing against this new PUSH of a 'new and shiny' thing.
      - AstralStorm 7y ago
        Yes, not maintaining currently working code is less maintenance load. Obviously. Replacing it with new code in some random new incomplete daemon. GNOME until some later v3 (check, likely 3.4) didn't rely on systemd, there were supported sane replacements for e.g. account management. The other sound servers have a long history, starting with ancient esound (eh) through Alsa dmix and devices (gnome 2 had a configuration app even), Arts for KDE, JACK and a few less notable. GNOME used to properly support everything gstreamer did, which is a lot. It's not about maintainers nor reduced load. It's about RedHat being the maintainers and GNOME being junk since. Hence all the GNOME 2 updates, like Cinnamon and MATE. Distro maintainers unfortunately have to support GNOME 3 too as it's not unpopular, and then they'd have to support two versions of udev and init system and potentially write dbus shims like Gentoo does. It's quite some work. Work RedHat (esp. Pottering) forced onto others. Like work they forced into ALSA devs to make compatibility shims for non-mmap cards because certain PulseAudio did not care to use full ALSA API and required rewinding, instead of handling it like say JACK or Arts. This also prevents it from running properly on top of dmix. It really wants direct hardware, making your "on ALSA" point moot. Even JACK can run on it but it's not good for latency. It's a pattern. Lazy RedHat devs integrating things because it's easier for them without any consideration of others. Because they can. Dropping GNOME 3 is an extremely tough decision for big distributions, mostly not possible.
throw0101a 7y ago
> The market will decide, and you, will decide. Given that Poettering works for Red Hat, and RH is one of the tent pole Linux distros, is that really true? RH throws around a lot of money and resources in the Linux space, so they have an out-sized amount of influence on where things go.
- dTal 7y ago
  Something I don't see mentioned often is that Red Hat has a conflict of interest: their money comes from selling support contracts. Ergo, it's not in their interest to make systems easy to understand. I think this coupled with their outsized influence goes a long way towards explaining why modern Linux is so opaque and hard to use - they seem to go out of their way to render obsolete the sysadmin heuristics that serve one well on any other Unix system.
dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
> I'd like to say that he forces nobody and so we should not complain about his creative endeavors. He doesn't do it explicitly but implicitly by designing Systemd in such a way that it can't be replaced by another init system. > The market will decide, and you, will decide. It used to be this way. Then at some point folks at Debian faced a difficult decision: we either don't include SysV Init, or we don't include Gnome since it depends on Systemd. From this point on things ran downhill and here we are fully trapped in Systemd, with rare exceptions confirming the rule. These days, if someone wants to break away from Systemd (like Knoppix did recently), you need an enormous effort.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  > by designing Systemd in such a way that it can't be replaced by another init system. This is actually one of the things that annoys me the most: If the things systemd replaced were set up like systemd is, then systemd never could have taken off. So we're closing off our ability to change our minds later, which feels really dangerous.

dijit 7y ago

I disagree, you can argue the semantics of if it's him specifically or if it's another project that decides it will only target systemd/pulseaudio. But the fact that if I want a stable distro for server usage in 2019 I _must_ use a systemd distro speaks to the fact that I am indeed forced to use it. Maybe that's just adoption though, typically the sysadmin community considers the "safe" options to be CentOS/RHEL or Debian Stable. Both of which default to systemd. (and no sysadmin is going to change the init system on production servers unless it presents some abject nightmare, short of eating 30% CPU/Mem-- it's core software, it wont be touched). Projects like Devuan are simply not considered safe choices by the majority of the sysadmin community, and there's no alternative for RHEL-esque sites. So, semantically: it's not poetterings fault. But at the same time, I'm still forced.

emmelaich 7y ago
Sorry, but you'll need to find a word different from "forced"
- dijit 7y ago
  What word would you recommend? If I must do something then I am forced? no? -- and I'm not being facetious I'm genuinely curious. If I wish to keep using production grade linux distributions (that my company has been using for 15+ years) then I must adopt systemd. I guess I could convince my 25,000+ person organisation to change everything to a Debian based OS and subsequently move them to Debian, but that's not likely.
  - westurner 7y ago
    Why do you think that is? Why have production grade Linux distributions all chosen to adopt systemd? With SysV init, how do you securely launch processes in cgroups, such that they'll consistently restart when the process happens to terminate, with stdout and stderr logged with consistent timestamps, with process dependency models that allow for faster boots due to parallelization? (edit) Journalctl is far better than `tail -f /var/log/starstar` and parsing all of those timestamps and inconsistently escaped logfile formats. There's no good way to modify everything in /etc/init.d in order to log to syslog-ng or rsyslog. Systemd and journalctl solve for that; for unified logging. IMO, there's no question that systemd is the better way and I have zero nostalgia for spawning everything from a probably a shell specified in an /etc/init.d shebang without process restarting (and logging thereof), cgroups, and consistent logging.
    - regularfry 7y ago
      > With SysV init Why is sysvinit presented as the only alternative to systemd-consume-the-world? It's not, and it never was.
    - dijit 7y ago
      This is a bit of a loaded question, but to directly answer the point: RHEL adopted systemd because it developed systemd. Specifically for its use-cases, it was initially deployed on Fedora, where I used it myself (because I was and am a fan of fedora). Debian adopted after having internal discussions[0] which are public record. To summarise their discussion (a little bit flippantly, I agree) would be to say that they adopted it because it was becoming the de-facto standard already and a lot of other projects wanted to use features only available in SystemD. [0]: https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd
    - throw0101a 7y ago
      > Why do you think that is? Why have production grade Linux distributions all chosen to adopt systemd? Because RH funds a lot of software development, and Poettering works for them. > Journalctl is far better than `tail -f /var/log/starstar` Except when journald shits the bed and corrupts its own log file. Or when you want ship logs off-machine, yet journald does not support any standards-compliant transport so you end up have to log a second logging daemon (e.g., rsyslog)—in which case what's the damn point of the first? Or when you do a "service mysql start" and it dies, but there is no output anywhere of what went wrong, and you have to guess that you have a typo in your "my.cnf". But other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? > ... in an /etc/init.d shebang without process restarting (and logging thereof), cgroups, and consistent logging. The problem is not systemd-as-init-replacement. The problem is systemd-as-kitchen-sink. udevd is an "essential" part of systemd? Really? It can't be it's own stand-alone project? Really?
massysett 7y ago
You can use a BSD or Slackware.
- dijit 7y ago
  Lucky me! (although genuinely we did make the backends to one of our games FreeBSD, but its a lot more awkward to use than something like Debian on google cloud, and don't get me started on ZFS performance on Google Cloud, it's abysmal)
- enriquto 7y ago
  also voidlinux
- bscphil 7y ago
  Or Alpine Linux. I believe it's already one of the best-regarded distributions for the container space, and it uses OpenRC, not systemd.
  - hollerith 7y ago
    OK, but aren't most Alpine instances running in containers hosted by Linux instances using systemd?
    - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
      That doesn't mean it doesn't work fine as the base layer. I run Alpine on bare metal... actually, I really like Alpine as the thing that hosts KVM and/or Docker, too.
Vinnl 7y ago
You could argue that you are forced to use it, but you cannot really argue that Poettering was the one that's doing the forcing, I think.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

StreamBright 7y ago

The "market" is not actually a real market. There are no customers shopping on Amazon saying: "I only want to purchase things that were produced on a systemd free computer".

icebraining 7y ago
Markets are not only on Amazon. Supporting a distro with time or money is a market transaction too.
dagw 7y ago
But there are distro maintainers that can choose between maintaining a systemd free distro or not. Sysadmins that can decide between deploying a systemd free disto or not. Developers that can decide between supporting systemd or not etc. I have been out of that game since before systemd showed up on anybodies radar and thus have no horse in this race, but a lot of seemingly smart people appear to have independently decided that they prefer supporting systemd to any alternative.
- StreamBright 7y ago
  >> But there are distro maintainers that can choose between maintaining a systemd free distro or not. The distro maintainers do not represent the market. >> Sysadmins that can decide between deploying a systemd free disto or not They cannot, it is usually corporate policy which system can be deployed. Even if they could, the users of those distros want softwares and features that only exist in systemd enabled ones. >> but a lot of seemingly smart people appear to have independently decided that they prefer supporting systemd to any alternative I am pretty sure you can say the same about NSDAP in 1933. It does not mean they are right, or the thing they chose is good.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  You forgot who funds these developers, most of the time, so no big projects are not free to choose. Even Debian desisted after longer time.
  - 7y ago

michaelmrose 7y ago

What about software demands that we not critique bad software the same as we would bad movies. Nobody makes me watch them but while many disagree with a particular opinion few would insist we not have them.

UserIsUnused 7y ago

Redhat's influence, his employer, does end up forcing other distros, as Redhat is the biggest influencer on linux land

teekert 7y ago
Influencer indeed, not forcer.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  No, it's not influence. Their devs essentially started removing support for other init systems in GNOME under the pretense of reducing maintenance load. It has to be pretty strongly changed to actually work with something else and then incompletely. (Read Gentoo patch list.) It's the same story with other sound servers than Pulseaudio, including pure ALSA.
  - BurningCycles 7y ago
    >Their devs essentially started removing support for other init systems in GNOME under the pretense of reducing maintenance load. I'm no fan of systemd, but this is nonsense. Of course it reduces maintenance load. And AFAIK GNOME relies on components in the systemd ecosystem, which can be implemented by a 3rd party in a compatible manner. And you are not forced to use GNOME, or KDE, or Xfce, or any of the wide range of window managers etc. Also Pulseaudio runs on TOP of ALSA, and what other sound servers are you referring to ? Bottom line is, beggars can't be choosers. If the maintainers of your preferred distro chooses a technology you do not like, you can vote with your feet, and if all distros opt for that same technology, you simply have to accept that. I have no doubt something better than systemd will come along in the next 4-8 years and start replacing it, and then we will have the same discussions with people who have grown accustomed to systemd arguing against this new PUSH of a 'new and shiny' thing.
    - AstralStorm 7y ago
      Yes, not maintaining currently working code is less maintenance load. Obviously. Replacing it with new code in some random new incomplete daemon. GNOME until some later v3 (check, likely 3.4) didn't rely on systemd, there were supported sane replacements for e.g. account management. The other sound servers have a long history, starting with ancient esound (eh) through Alsa dmix and devices (gnome 2 had a configuration app even), Arts for KDE, JACK and a few less notable. GNOME used to properly support everything gstreamer did, which is a lot. It's not about maintainers nor reduced load. It's about RedHat being the maintainers and GNOME being junk since. Hence all the GNOME 2 updates, like Cinnamon and MATE. Distro maintainers unfortunately have to support GNOME 3 too as it's not unpopular, and then they'd have to support two versions of udev and init system and potentially write dbus shims like Gentoo does. It's quite some work. Work RedHat (esp. Pottering) forced onto others. Like work they forced into ALSA devs to make compatibility shims for non-mmap cards because certain PulseAudio did not care to use full ALSA API and required rewinding, instead of handling it like say JACK or Arts. This also prevents it from running properly on top of dmix. It really wants direct hardware, making your "on ALSA" point moot. Even JACK can run on it but it's not good for latency. It's a pattern. Lazy RedHat devs integrating things because it's easier for them without any consideration of others. Because they can. Dropping GNOME 3 is an extremely tough decision for big distributions, mostly not possible.

throw0101a 7y ago

> The market will decide, and you, will decide. Given that Poettering works for Red Hat, and RH is one of the tent pole Linux distros, is that really true? RH throws around a lot of money and resources in the Linux space, so they have an out-sized amount of influence on where things go.

dTal 7y ago
Something I don't see mentioned often is that Red Hat has a conflict of interest: their money comes from selling support contracts. Ergo, it's not in their interest to make systems easy to understand. I think this coupled with their outsized influence goes a long way towards explaining why modern Linux is so opaque and hard to use - they seem to go out of their way to render obsolete the sysadmin heuristics that serve one well on any other Unix system.

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago

> I'd like to say that he forces nobody and so we should not complain about his creative endeavors. He doesn't do it explicitly but implicitly by designing Systemd in such a way that it can't be replaced by another init system. > The market will decide, and you, will decide. It used to be this way. Then at some point folks at Debian faced a difficult decision: we either don't include SysV Init, or we don't include Gnome since it depends on Systemd. From this point on things ran downhill and here we are fully trapped in Systemd, with rare exceptions confirming the rule. These days, if someone wants to break away from Systemd (like Knoppix did recently), you need an enormous effort.

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
> by designing Systemd in such a way that it can't be replaced by another init system. This is actually one of the things that annoys me the most: If the things systemd replaced were set up like systemd is, then systemd never could have taken off. So we're closing off our ability to change our minds later, which feels really dangerous.