7 ms·

Work hard and solve a big, complex set of problems. Solve them well. Offer the solution as free open source. Work some more to offer extra functionality and fix

Work hard and solve a big, complex set of problems. Solve them well. Offer the solution as free open source. Work some more to offer extra functionality and fix the bugs. Become the internet's villain. Come up with a commercial solution to a simple problem. Ex: file sharing or password management. Make it slow, insecure, privacy violating, lose people's data. Make millions, become a hero.

aww_dang 5y ago
You make a valid observation. However I doubt that most Systemd haters are champions of commercial bloat. If I had to generalize, I'd assume that they dislike both.
- xpressvideoz 5y ago
  Yeah, it's about whom to target. Open source overlords are hard to satisfy, to be honest.
- 0x0nyandesu 5y ago
  Personally I use Gentoo with OpenRC. It's basically the opposite of bloat.
- bayindirh 5y ago
  Half of systemd's problems are coming from human aspects rather than technical. I'm too tired to write them all over again, but here's a rundown, from me. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25611149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25611149 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27651567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27651567
theteapot 5y ago
systemd is a cuckoo bird that found the perfect nest, init. Not-a-hero.
bayindirh 5y ago
> Become the internet's villain. This is not about the problems systemd solves, but how they solve them and how they act while solving them.
- davydm 5y ago
  not to mention the new problems it introduces
  - 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
    The most important of them being flamewars for the past ten years stirred up by those who have nothing better to do.
  - sgaduuw 5y ago
    could you please elaborate on the new problems?
    - gorgoiler 5y ago
      Take the best coder you know, take their bugs-per-line-of-code rate, and multiply it by 713,364 (systemd *.h *.c)
      - sgaduuw 5y ago
        Since all software has bugs, that doesn't make it a new problem now does it?
        bayindirh 5y ago
        systemd had way more bugs and crinkles for an init system when it first started, and an init system is critical software.
        1_player 5y ago
        Everything is buggy the newer it is, your point being? Linux itself was mostly unusable when it first started. And a kernel is even more important.
42jd 5y ago
As someone who has learned Linux/Unix just the past few months using a systemd based distro, I find it a breeze to use. Great documentation, FOSS, and really easy to pick up. I just don’t understand why there is so much dislike thrown around when that energy can be focused elsewhere on truly bad behavior/software. And from my understanding, there are distros out there that don’t use systemd for those who dislike it that much. It’s really perplexing to me as someone newer to the community.
- voidfunc 5y ago
  Disclaimer: I _still_ like systemd. My only real big pet peeve with Systemd is the documentation is somewhat lacking..., like it's all there in the manual, but its laid out poorly and makes it hard to understand. The interaction between unit files and dependencies is also quite convoluted when you start digging into how things are ordered. There's a ton of unit file options that enable weird conditional behavior. The moment you need to start comprehending the difference between Wants vs. Requires and not hooking into running when multi-user.target is reached (the most common situation) you are in for a world of trial-by-error testing. Systemd is great for starting simple background services on simple desktop and server environments. It becomes a real pain in the ass once you get beyond that.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - sofixa 5y ago
    > The moment you need to start comprehending the difference between Wants vs. Requires and not hooking into running when multi-user.target is reached (the most common situation) you are in for a world of trial-by-error testing. And the worst is that the tooling to test is very limited ( non-existent). I had a problem with conflicting/circular ndependencies ( my service had to be launched before networking but after dbus, which is just impossible because dbus needs networking itself), which worked 9 times out of 10. It was nearly impossible to debug, i had to use the graph tool that shows you visually how much time each service took to start, and completely by chance i noticed that dbus started after networking, which led me to look into it.
sjansen 5y ago
There is so much truth to what you say. I used Linux exclusively from January 2000 until April 2012. A lot has changed in that time, but out of all the changes the three I'm most thankful for are: (1) Xorg replacing XFree86 and making video "just work" (2) Pulse Audio replacing OSS and making audio "just work" (3) systemd replacing the dog's breakfast of scripting madness each distro built from scratch instead of collaborating It amazes me that the same person was responsible for leading 2 of the 3 changes. I for one welcome an increasingly unified operating system core, instead of the random competing and overlapping components we used to have. Sure they worked 97% of the time, but the other 3% when they didn't could be a royal PITA. Especially when two waring components wasted time pointing blame at each other instead of focusing on solving end user issues.
- dschuetz 5y ago
  > (3) systemd replacing the dog's breakfast of scripting madness each distro built from scratch instead of collaborating Which goes completely against what Linux stands for - collaboration. The "scripting madness" as you call it was actually completely transparent - if the scripting was bad, you were free to fix it. But now you have to issue a bug report when systemd does something stupid and it's not even your fault to Lennart and his gang only to get it dismissed with "no a bug, won't fix". Also, Pulse Audio only "just works" because the distribution maintainers do that for you. It's still a stinking pile of "don't no how, but it just works". Keep telling yourself that Lennart does a great job. Stockholm syndrom much?
  - trabant00 5y ago
    Administering hundreds of linux servers is my job and has been for the past 20 years. Fixing bash scripts left and right was a nightmare. I love bash, but not for this. The right tool for the job and all that. Systemd made my job la lot easier. So yes, I do think Lennart does a great job.
  - sjansen 5y ago
    > Stockholm syndrom much? Yes, but not how you'd imagine. I spent years as a hard core Linux fanboy. Advocating for Linux. Declaring Linux the future when many thought Windows would obviously eliminate all competition. Volunteering for install fests and wrestling various distros onto unwilling hardware. I also spent 9 years teaching and writing training materials for RHEL, SUSE, & Ubuntu. As a result I dug deeper into core system details than most. (How many remember SUSE's attempt to achieve faster boot times by introducing an optional alternative to normal init that dynamically generated a makefile to execute init scripts in parallel? That was one of many strange rabbit holes I got to explore.) Thankfully, I've gotten over it. I still prefer to keep Linux near the center of my career, but I've been able to adapt as "the cloud" has rendered my old school sysadmin skills less relevant. Occasionally I call on them to rescue a pet, but today I find "herding cattle" and going "serverless" much more enjoyable. And you?
dschuetz 5y ago
Just you wait until Lennart and his gang changes LGPL to MIT.
- 3np 5y ago
  That’d result in a fork for the major distros.
  - Xylakant 5y ago
    Care to explain why? Pretty much every distro I know is perfectly happy to include MIT licensed code.
gorgoiler 5y ago
“Offering some extra functionality” is a novel way of describing how systemd has expanded since being anointed as everyone’s init-replacement. Systemd broke my ability to login, once. That was fun.
raverbashing 5y ago
More like replace a working system with a more unreliable one with stability problems (and prioritize more features instead of fixing it) and more resource usage, then push for its adoption, then complain when you get hate. Now yes, it gives you more functionality, but it was a pain until it got there. Systemd was just Pulseaudio all over again (except now in init, so if it breaks your whole system can't boot). Now, yes. initd is jurassic. Systemd got stable eventually and has gone beyond it. And this is more complicated than it seems. But still, it's the attitude that made things hard.
- pverghese 5y ago
  There is no reason to be so dramatic. In the end you are free to use any init system you want.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    > In the end you are free to use any init system you want. Not really https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd
    - majewsky 5y ago
      Honestly this list is way shorter than I would have expected before clicking, and most of it is very niche stuff (not on the scale of "the entirety of GNOME", for example). Also, some of the entries have notes like "likely usable without systemd if someone puts in the work".
      - raverbashing 5y ago
        Good catch, for reference I'm surprised they fixed this (which was my main worry): > For versions 3.28 and earlier, the GNOME desktop environment contained components that required systemd-logind[5] (among them, notably, its display manager, GDM). However, as of version 3.30, Gentoo's packaging of GNOME allows it to work once again with sysvinit + OpenRC as the init system
foodbag 5y ago
Is Lennart/Red Hat meant to be the internet's villain? Perhaps that's the view of a small minority. I for one am very grateful for Lennart/Red Hat's vast contributions. Leading modern Linux.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Be aware that "modern" has a very negative connotation for a lot of people now.

aww_dang 5y ago

You make a valid observation. However I doubt that most Systemd haters are champions of commercial bloat. If I had to generalize, I'd assume that they dislike both.

xpressvideoz 5y ago
Yeah, it's about whom to target. Open source overlords are hard to satisfy, to be honest.
0x0nyandesu 5y ago
Personally I use Gentoo with OpenRC. It's basically the opposite of bloat.
bayindirh 5y ago
Half of systemd's problems are coming from human aspects rather than technical. I'm too tired to write them all over again, but here's a rundown, from me. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25611149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25611149 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27651567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27651567

theteapot 5y ago

systemd is a cuckoo bird that found the perfect nest, init. Not-a-hero.

bayindirh 5y ago

> Become the internet's villain. This is not about the problems systemd solves, but how they solve them and how they act while solving them.

davydm 5y ago
not to mention the new problems it introduces
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  The most important of them being flamewars for the past ten years stirred up by those who have nothing better to do.
- sgaduuw 5y ago
  could you please elaborate on the new problems?
  - gorgoiler 5y ago
    Take the best coder you know, take their bugs-per-line-of-code rate, and multiply it by 713,364 (systemd *.h *.c)
    - sgaduuw 5y ago
      Since all software has bugs, that doesn't make it a new problem now does it?
      - bayindirh 5y ago
        systemd had way more bugs and crinkles for an init system when it first started, and an init system is critical software.
        1_player 5y ago
        Everything is buggy the newer it is, your point being? Linux itself was mostly unusable when it first started. And a kernel is even more important.

42jd 5y ago

As someone who has learned Linux/Unix just the past few months using a systemd based distro, I find it a breeze to use. Great documentation, FOSS, and really easy to pick up. I just don’t understand why there is so much dislike thrown around when that energy can be focused elsewhere on truly bad behavior/software. And from my understanding, there are distros out there that don’t use systemd for those who dislike it that much. It’s really perplexing to me as someone newer to the community.

voidfunc 5y ago
Disclaimer: I _still_ like systemd. My only real big pet peeve with Systemd is the documentation is somewhat lacking..., like it's all there in the manual, but its laid out poorly and makes it hard to understand. The interaction between unit files and dependencies is also quite convoluted when you start digging into how things are ordered. There's a ton of unit file options that enable weird conditional behavior. The moment you need to start comprehending the difference between Wants vs. Requires and not hooking into running when multi-user.target is reached (the most common situation) you are in for a world of trial-by-error testing. Systemd is great for starting simple background services on simple desktop and server environments. It becomes a real pain in the ass once you get beyond that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sofixa 5y ago
  > The moment you need to start comprehending the difference between Wants vs. Requires and not hooking into running when multi-user.target is reached (the most common situation) you are in for a world of trial-by-error testing. And the worst is that the tooling to test is very limited ( non-existent). I had a problem with conflicting/circular ndependencies ( my service had to be launched before networking but after dbus, which is just impossible because dbus needs networking itself), which worked 9 times out of 10. It was nearly impossible to debug, i had to use the graph tool that shows you visually how much time each service took to start, and completely by chance i noticed that dbus started after networking, which led me to look into it.

sjansen 5y ago

There is so much truth to what you say. I used Linux exclusively from January 2000 until April 2012. A lot has changed in that time, but out of all the changes the three I'm most thankful for are: (1) Xorg replacing XFree86 and making video "just work" (2) Pulse Audio replacing OSS and making audio "just work" (3) systemd replacing the dog's breakfast of scripting madness each distro built from scratch instead of collaborating It amazes me that the same person was responsible for leading 2 of the 3 changes. I for one welcome an increasingly unified operating system core, instead of the random competing and overlapping components we used to have. Sure they worked 97% of the time, but the other 3% when they didn't could be a royal PITA. Especially when two waring components wasted time pointing blame at each other instead of focusing on solving end user issues.

dschuetz 5y ago
> (3) systemd replacing the dog's breakfast of scripting madness each distro built from scratch instead of collaborating Which goes completely against what Linux stands for - collaboration. The "scripting madness" as you call it was actually completely transparent - if the scripting was bad, you were free to fix it. But now you have to issue a bug report when systemd does something stupid and it's not even your fault to Lennart and his gang only to get it dismissed with "no a bug, won't fix". Also, Pulse Audio only "just works" because the distribution maintainers do that for you. It's still a stinking pile of "don't no how, but it just works". Keep telling yourself that Lennart does a great job. Stockholm syndrom much?
- trabant00 5y ago
  Administering hundreds of linux servers is my job and has been for the past 20 years. Fixing bash scripts left and right was a nightmare. I love bash, but not for this. The right tool for the job and all that. Systemd made my job la lot easier. So yes, I do think Lennart does a great job.
- sjansen 5y ago
  > Stockholm syndrom much? Yes, but not how you'd imagine. I spent years as a hard core Linux fanboy. Advocating for Linux. Declaring Linux the future when many thought Windows would obviously eliminate all competition. Volunteering for install fests and wrestling various distros onto unwilling hardware. I also spent 9 years teaching and writing training materials for RHEL, SUSE, & Ubuntu. As a result I dug deeper into core system details than most. (How many remember SUSE's attempt to achieve faster boot times by introducing an optional alternative to normal init that dynamically generated a makefile to execute init scripts in parallel? That was one of many strange rabbit holes I got to explore.) Thankfully, I've gotten over it. I still prefer to keep Linux near the center of my career, but I've been able to adapt as "the cloud" has rendered my old school sysadmin skills less relevant. Occasionally I call on them to rescue a pet, but today I find "herding cattle" and going "serverless" much more enjoyable. And you?

dschuetz 5y ago

Just you wait until Lennart and his gang changes LGPL to MIT.

3np 5y ago
That’d result in a fork for the major distros.
- Xylakant 5y ago
  Care to explain why? Pretty much every distro I know is perfectly happy to include MIT licensed code.

gorgoiler 5y ago

“Offering some extra functionality” is a novel way of describing how systemd has expanded since being anointed as everyone’s init-replacement. Systemd broke my ability to login, once. That was fun.

raverbashing 5y ago

More like replace a working system with a more unreliable one with stability problems (and prioritize more features instead of fixing it) and more resource usage, then push for its adoption, then complain when you get hate. Now yes, it gives you more functionality, but it was a pain until it got there. Systemd was just Pulseaudio all over again (except now in init, so if it breaks your whole system can't boot). Now, yes. initd is jurassic. Systemd got stable eventually and has gone beyond it. And this is more complicated than it seems. But still, it's the attitude that made things hard.

pverghese 5y ago
There is no reason to be so dramatic. In the end you are free to use any init system you want.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  > In the end you are free to use any init system you want. Not really https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd
  - majewsky 5y ago
    Honestly this list is way shorter than I would have expected before clicking, and most of it is very niche stuff (not on the scale of "the entirety of GNOME", for example). Also, some of the entries have notes like "likely usable without systemd if someone puts in the work".
    - raverbashing 5y ago
      Good catch, for reference I'm surprised they fixed this (which was my main worry): > For versions 3.28 and earlier, the GNOME desktop environment contained components that required systemd-logind[5] (among them, notably, its display manager, GDM). However, as of version 3.30, Gentoo's packaging of GNOME allows it to work once again with sysvinit + OpenRC as the init system

foodbag 5y ago

Is Lennart/Red Hat meant to be the internet's villain? Perhaps that's the view of a small minority. I for one am very grateful for Lennart/Red Hat's vast contributions. Leading modern Linux.

userbinator 5y ago
Be aware that "modern" has a very negative connotation for a lot of people now.