4 ms·

A lot of people hate systemd. However as a user who came into Linux after systemd was established. I m pretty happy with it. The more I learn about it and use i

by Iolaum 5y ago

A lot of people hate systemd. However as a user who came into Linux after systemd was established. I m pretty happy with it. The more I learn about it and use it the more I appreciate it. This may be wrong but it feels like people were stuck in a local maximum and don't realize that if they move more than a little from where they were, then they'd actually be in a better place. On the other hand, solving again a problem you 've already solved, is not the most enticing part of the linux experience ;)

alexjplant 5y ago
I started using Linux professionally on the cusp of the change (RHEL 6 to 7). I've never had any trouble with the init system but journald isn't really my jam, nor is any of the other creeping overcomplexity brought about by systemd's component interdependencies. In other words: I'm not a fan on ideological grounds but from a practical standpoint it seems to work just fine.
matmatmatmat 5y ago
Just like any other complex, tightly-integrated system, systemd had its share of bugs, quirks, and new ways of doing things that forced people to change. It's not hard to imagine why it faced some resistance. Eh, it's been a while now, though, and I guess most of that has gotten worked out.
dsr_ 5y ago
On the contrary: most people who had an opinion were interested in something other than sysvinit. It's just that we all have different ideas about what that is. daemontools-style supervisors are what I prefer, myself. I also acknowledge that there isn't a clear winner in that space. What I object to are people enforcing systemd by making it a requirement for other projects.
- specialist 5y ago
  > ...It's just that we all have different ideas about what that is. This in a nutshell is why all progress is always a god awful painful mess. No matter how modest. I used to be self-proclaimed advocate for change. Technological, organizational, political, all of it. Everyone marching arm-in-arm towards our glorious future. Now I'm happy when any one manages to change anything at all. I no longer even care how good or bad an idea is. Better to try and then learn from failure than never try at all.
  - pjz 5y ago
    Exactly: Any _individual_ change may or may not be good - but change _in general_ is good, because without it there's no chance of getting better. And any hope of improvement is infinitely better than no hope of improvement.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
One of my major objections to systemd is precisely that it sticks us forever at a local maximum, since it ate a bunch of other low-level components, so now if you come up with a superior service manager... good luck; nobody will ever use it since 1. everyone's just decided to support systemd and will never consider an alternative, and 2. you will have to provide replacements for all the other stuff that systemd does. And the continued EEE ensures that it will only get worse.
- rektide 5y ago
  hard disagree. usually arguments are the other way, that systemd pid1 implies that there's not going to be competition for systemd-timesync or systemd-networkd or systemd-bootd. but none of these fears have panned out: it's easy to drop in other modules in these spots, and there are many offerings still. and to address this new concern, i dont think replacing systemd would be so hard. and i dont think it would be so difficult to replace systemd init/pid1 while still using other systemd services. systemd is more a mono-repo; there's very little notable hard runtime coupling between the different pieces. i expressed elsewhere in the comments a sadness that upstarts death has lead us to monoculturism. i do want to see us exploring & trying. but i dont think systemd init/pid1 is deeply rooted, i dont think it's a particularly difficult thing to replace. some not-very-big translation layers will get through 99.9% of what distos actually use, to address point 1. and i simply disagree on point 2..there already are competing offerings and what systemd kffers does not often insist on being run under systemd.
npsimons 5y ago
> A lot of people hate systemd. I did. I'm still not happy with the way it was forced in, and how the predictions of teething pains of a from scratch init system being developed by inexperienced developers came true. I still remember the growing pains from PulseAudio, the previous project by the same developers. But SystemD was a response to the definite problems of past init systems. It might not be the optimal UNIX philosophy architecture, but it's grown into something stable and powerful. At the end of the day, as a working IT or SWEng professional, you just want to get shit done, so you learn a new abstraction for the zillionth time, put it to practice, and get on with the problem you were trying to solve. Having moved from MS-DOS, to OS/2, to Slackware, to RedHat, then Debian (and staying on Debian for decades, for desktop and server), I trust the Debian devs to put out the most stable and reliable OS I've ever seen.

by Iolaum 5y ago

alexjplant 5y ago

I started using Linux professionally on the cusp of the change (RHEL 6 to 7). I've never had any trouble with the init system but journald isn't really my jam, nor is any of the other creeping overcomplexity brought about by systemd's component interdependencies. In other words: I'm not a fan on ideological grounds but from a practical standpoint it seems to work just fine.

matmatmatmat 5y ago

Just like any other complex, tightly-integrated system, systemd had its share of bugs, quirks, and new ways of doing things that forced people to change. It's not hard to imagine why it faced some resistance. Eh, it's been a while now, though, and I guess most of that has gotten worked out.

dsr_ 5y ago

On the contrary: most people who had an opinion were interested in something other than sysvinit. It's just that we all have different ideas about what that is. daemontools-style supervisors are what I prefer, myself. I also acknowledge that there isn't a clear winner in that space. What I object to are people enforcing systemd by making it a requirement for other projects.

specialist 5y ago
> ...It's just that we all have different ideas about what that is. This in a nutshell is why all progress is always a god awful painful mess. No matter how modest. I used to be self-proclaimed advocate for change. Technological, organizational, political, all of it. Everyone marching arm-in-arm towards our glorious future. Now I'm happy when any one manages to change anything at all. I no longer even care how good or bad an idea is. Better to try and then learn from failure than never try at all.
- pjz 5y ago
  Exactly: Any _individual_ change may or may not be good - but change _in general_ is good, because without it there's no chance of getting better. And any hope of improvement is infinitely better than no hope of improvement.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

One of my major objections to systemd is precisely that it sticks us forever at a local maximum, since it ate a bunch of other low-level components, so now if you come up with a superior service manager... good luck; nobody will ever use it since 1. everyone's just decided to support systemd and will never consider an alternative, and 2. you will have to provide replacements for all the other stuff that systemd does. And the continued EEE ensures that it will only get worse.

rektide 5y ago
hard disagree. usually arguments are the other way, that systemd pid1 implies that there's not going to be competition for systemd-timesync or systemd-networkd or systemd-bootd. but none of these fears have panned out: it's easy to drop in other modules in these spots, and there are many offerings still. and to address this new concern, i dont think replacing systemd would be so hard. and i dont think it would be so difficult to replace systemd init/pid1 while still using other systemd services. systemd is more a mono-repo; there's very little notable hard runtime coupling between the different pieces. i expressed elsewhere in the comments a sadness that upstarts death has lead us to monoculturism. i do want to see us exploring & trying. but i dont think systemd init/pid1 is deeply rooted, i dont think it's a particularly difficult thing to replace. some not-very-big translation layers will get through 99.9% of what distos actually use, to address point 1. and i simply disagree on point 2..there already are competing offerings and what systemd kffers does not often insist on being run under systemd.

npsimons 5y ago

> A lot of people hate systemd. I did. I'm still not happy with the way it was forced in, and how the predictions of teething pains of a from scratch init system being developed by inexperienced developers came true. I still remember the growing pains from PulseAudio, the previous project by the same developers. But SystemD was a response to the definite problems of past init systems. It might not be the optimal UNIX philosophy architecture, but it's grown into something stable and powerful. At the end of the day, as a working IT or SWEng professional, you just want to get shit done, so you learn a new abstraction for the zillionth time, put it to practice, and get on with the problem you were trying to solve. Having moved from MS-DOS, to OS/2, to Slackware, to RedHat, then Debian (and staying on Debian for decades, for desktop and server), I trust the Debian devs to put out the most stable and reliable OS I've ever seen.