4 ms·

I tend to agree with most of the points you're making but I do want to point out that "If you don't like it, don't use it" isn't helpful advice for system admin

I tend to agree with most of the points you're making but I do want to point out that "If you don't like it, don't use it" isn't helpful advice for system administrators who weren't given a choice in the matter. It's fine if you're designing a system from the ground up, but most of the time, most of us have to work with what we're given. I think most of the resentment against systemd is that it felt like it was forced down our throats. Systemd may be an improvement over the mess of shell scripts we had before but it isn't perfect. It's one thing to choose to give up decades of experience so one can voluntarily switch to a new system. It feels very difference when the choice isn't one's own.

viraptor 5y ago
If you can't opt out of systemd-resolved due to job policies, that's really not systemd's fault and there's nothing they can do to solve that situation. Why complain about it in that context?
- josephcsible 5y ago
  What does this have to do with job policies? Systemd was forced down our throats by Red Hat adding hard dependencies on it to other software under their control, e.g., GNOME. Other distros then adopted systemd under duress, since many of the packages that Red Hat made depend on it are important to the Linux ecosystem, and the other distros didn't have the resources to fork them all.
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    The point is that the replacements being talked about, systemd-resolved for dns, systemd-timesyncd for ntp, and systemd-networkd for whatever else you would prefer to use for network config, are not a mandatory part of systemd. You can use systemd without using these other components and it will work perfectly well with whatever other services you want to use for dns, ntp, and ip networking. These other services are not dependencies of GNOME, either. People are conflating systemd itself with all the optional services it comes bundled with. I don't even believe resolved and networkd are enabled by default, at least not by the vendor. Whether a distro enables it depends on the distro.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      You have to be an expert on systemd to figure out how not to use systemd.
  - dylan-m 5y ago
    > Systemd was forced down our throats by Red Hat […] That's a very emotional take on the whole thing. As I saw it, systemd happened and the Ubuntu developers eventually concluded "well, that's better than upstart, let's use that." Plenty of other distros made the same rational decisions. Meanwhile, the GNOME developers thought "great, people are converging around a modern init system, we can actually integrate with it now," and so they did. Also, GNOME is not under Red Hat's control. They contribute a lot, but the leadership rarely has a majority of Red Hat employees. While a large number of contributors work there (of course they would - Red Hat is big!), the majority are - again - from elsewhere. I can think of plenty of recent features that people assume are Red Hat driven and I can assure you they definitely are not. What your take is doing is discounting a very large number of peoples' wisdom, time, and effort, by claiming their contributions are made as helpless victims of some conspiracy or as evil supporters of it. Both of these ideas are harmful.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      > Meanwhile, the GNOME developers thought "great, people are converging around a modern init system, we can actually integrate with it now," and so they did. > plenty of recent features that people assume are Red Hat driven and I can assure you they definitely are not. My claim is specifically that the people who added the hard dependency on systemd to GNOME were Red Hat employees. I'm not talking at all on who wrote or merged any other code in it.
      - cjaybo 5y ago
        Your claims went further than that and it feels very disengenuous for you to try and walk them back now.
        josephcsible 5y ago
        When was I ever talking about changes to GNOME other than the systemd dependency? What am I walking back?
  - bkor 5y ago
    > Systemd was forced down our throats by Red Hat adding hard dependencies on it to other software under their control, e.g., GNOME. Other distros then adopted systemd under duress What utter drivel. I've participated in the discussions around systemd in various distributions. There was a huge amount of discussion, then one by one distributions switched. Some quickly, some took various years. Again, some distributions took various years to switch. That you can only say things such as "forced down our throats" and "duress" says enough. Not capable to actually hold a discussion, let's be emotional and without any actual facts.
    - josephcsible 5y ago
      > That you can only say things such as "forced down our throats" and "duress" says enough. Not capable to actually hold a discussion, let's be emotional and without any actual facts. Does this sound any better? Red Hat used their influence over GNOME (and other programs) to add a hard dependency on systemd to it. This forced other distros to either switch to systemd or drop support for GNOME. I suspect that had Red Hat employees not added hard dependencies on systemd to any other software, that no distributions other than Fedora and RHEL and its clones would require it.
      - bkor 5y ago
        Nope, it's still entirely incorrect. Again, the release team misjudged things. I was part of the GNOME release team at that time. We were actually warned about it, then misjudged it ("it'll be fine"). Further, it wasn't even a hard dependency. You're really not understanding components and APIs. > This forced other distros to either switch to systemd or drop support for GNOME. No, again entirely incorrect. GNOME runs without systemd. A few distributions worked on ensuring GNOME runs without it. It took a while to make that happen, so for a bit some distributions needed to keep some components back. But still: you're talking about systemd while it was an interaction of a few components. Systemd consists of loads of bits. GNOME _runs_ on distributions without systemd! It took work to make that happen, we coordinated to ensure the problems would be solved. > I suspect that had Red Hat employees not added hard dependencies on systemd to any other software, that no distributions other than Fedora and RHEL and its clones would require it. Again, you're so incorrect it's not funny. Arch was really quick to switch to systemd. I help out with Mageia, they really wanted to switch as well, but it took (volunteer) time to make it happen. Opensuse took a while, but still, they would've switched. The only unique ones were Ubuntu (political crap) and Debian (partly due to political influence by Ubuntu). Systemd was selected on merit by loads of distributions, not this conspiracy thing you're pretending it to be.

viraptor 5y ago

If you can't opt out of systemd-resolved due to job policies, that's really not systemd's fault and there's nothing they can do to solve that situation. Why complain about it in that context?

josephcsible 5y ago
What does this have to do with job policies? Systemd was forced down our throats by Red Hat adding hard dependencies on it to other software under their control, e.g., GNOME. Other distros then adopted systemd under duress, since many of the packages that Red Hat made depend on it are important to the Linux ecosystem, and the other distros didn't have the resources to fork them all.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  The point is that the replacements being talked about, systemd-resolved for dns, systemd-timesyncd for ntp, and systemd-networkd for whatever else you would prefer to use for network config, are not a mandatory part of systemd. You can use systemd without using these other components and it will work perfectly well with whatever other services you want to use for dns, ntp, and ip networking. These other services are not dependencies of GNOME, either. People are conflating systemd itself with all the optional services it comes bundled with. I don't even believe resolved and networkd are enabled by default, at least not by the vendor. Whether a distro enables it depends on the distro.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    You have to be an expert on systemd to figure out how not to use systemd.
- dylan-m 5y ago
  > Systemd was forced down our throats by Red Hat […] That's a very emotional take on the whole thing. As I saw it, systemd happened and the Ubuntu developers eventually concluded "well, that's better than upstart, let's use that." Plenty of other distros made the same rational decisions. Meanwhile, the GNOME developers thought "great, people are converging around a modern init system, we can actually integrate with it now," and so they did. Also, GNOME is not under Red Hat's control. They contribute a lot, but the leadership rarely has a majority of Red Hat employees. While a large number of contributors work there (of course they would - Red Hat is big!), the majority are - again - from elsewhere. I can think of plenty of recent features that people assume are Red Hat driven and I can assure you they definitely are not. What your take is doing is discounting a very large number of peoples' wisdom, time, and effort, by claiming their contributions are made as helpless victims of some conspiracy or as evil supporters of it. Both of these ideas are harmful.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > Meanwhile, the GNOME developers thought "great, people are converging around a modern init system, we can actually integrate with it now," and so they did. > plenty of recent features that people assume are Red Hat driven and I can assure you they definitely are not. My claim is specifically that the people who added the hard dependency on systemd to GNOME were Red Hat employees. I'm not talking at all on who wrote or merged any other code in it.
    - cjaybo 5y ago
      Your claims went further than that and it feels very disengenuous for you to try and walk them back now.
      - josephcsible 5y ago
        When was I ever talking about changes to GNOME other than the systemd dependency? What am I walking back?
- bkor 5y ago
  > Systemd was forced down our throats by Red Hat adding hard dependencies on it to other software under their control, e.g., GNOME. Other distros then adopted systemd under duress What utter drivel. I've participated in the discussions around systemd in various distributions. There was a huge amount of discussion, then one by one distributions switched. Some quickly, some took various years. Again, some distributions took various years to switch. That you can only say things such as "forced down our throats" and "duress" says enough. Not capable to actually hold a discussion, let's be emotional and without any actual facts.
  - josephcsible 5y ago
    > That you can only say things such as "forced down our throats" and "duress" says enough. Not capable to actually hold a discussion, let's be emotional and without any actual facts. Does this sound any better? Red Hat used their influence over GNOME (and other programs) to add a hard dependency on systemd to it. This forced other distros to either switch to systemd or drop support for GNOME. I suspect that had Red Hat employees not added hard dependencies on systemd to any other software, that no distributions other than Fedora and RHEL and its clones would require it.
    - bkor 5y ago
      Nope, it's still entirely incorrect. Again, the release team misjudged things. I was part of the GNOME release team at that time. We were actually warned about it, then misjudged it ("it'll be fine"). Further, it wasn't even a hard dependency. You're really not understanding components and APIs. > This forced other distros to either switch to systemd or drop support for GNOME. No, again entirely incorrect. GNOME runs without systemd. A few distributions worked on ensuring GNOME runs without it. It took a while to make that happen, so for a bit some distributions needed to keep some components back. But still: you're talking about systemd while it was an interaction of a few components. Systemd consists of loads of bits. GNOME _runs_ on distributions without systemd! It took work to make that happen, we coordinated to ensure the problems would be solved. > I suspect that had Red Hat employees not added hard dependencies on systemd to any other software, that no distributions other than Fedora and RHEL and its clones would require it. Again, you're so incorrect it's not funny. Arch was really quick to switch to systemd. I help out with Mageia, they really wanted to switch as well, but it took (volunteer) time to make it happen. Opensuse took a while, but still, they would've switched. The only unique ones were Ubuntu (political crap) and Debian (partly due to political influence by Ubuntu). Systemd was selected on merit by loads of distributions, not this conspiracy thing you're pretending it to be.