10 ms·
it's kind of like locked bootloaders and pentalobe screwdrivers for organizing a unix system where most users were used to easy to inspect and modify scripts an
by a-dub 5y ago
it's kind of like locked bootloaders and pentalobe screwdrivers for organizing a unix system where most users were used to easy to inspect and modify scripts and single purpose programs .
yes, it's still open source, but modifications and inspection are far more complicated creating a much higher barrier to entry.
in the earlier days when it was still buggy, even linus himself was screaming about not being able to easily take the case off of pid 1 when it misbehaved.
- wrycoder 5y agoRight. I have a simple rule: don’t use a GNU/Linux system that uses systemd. It doesn’t respect the Unix philosophy. It’s trying to turn it into Windows. I’m waiting for Microsoft to buy Red Hat. Failing that, IBM.
- gtirloni 5y agoUh? https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-closes-landmark-acquisition-red-hat-34-billion-defines-open-hybrid-cloud-future https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-releases/ibm-closes-la...
- cfors 5y agoIBM already purchased red hat for $34b 3 years ago, so no need to wait any longer :)
- GekkePrutser 5y agoI think he means that MS would buy IBM and RedHat with it. I doubt they will though. Like others have said MS buying Canonical would make a lot more sense. And there have already been a lot of overtures.
- wrycoder 5y agoWhat I meant is that MS could buy Red Hat from. IBM. Failing that, buy IBM.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- zkldi 5y agoI mean, emacs doesn't respect the UNIX philosophy either, but that's one of the most praised pieces of software to come out of the UNIX space. The UNIX philosophy isn't meant to be taken as gospel - hell, it's very hard to define what "doing one thing" even means.
- elcritch 5y agoDidn’t emacs get developed on ITS or Multics? Seems Unix just imported it, but your point still holds.
- lizknope 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs#History Yes. Emacs development began during the 1970s at the MIT AI Lab, whose PDP-6 and PDP-10 computers used the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS) operating system that featured a default line editor known as Tape Editor and Corrector (TECO)
- Breazy 5y agoEarly versions of Emacs didn't have lisp extension languages, which is kind of strange to think about considering the role elisp plays in GNU Emacs as we know it today. GNU Emacs with elisp is something that developed in the context of the MIT lisp machine scene. Sure it runs and was developed on unix-like operating systems, but lisp extensible emacs were never really some sort of embodiment of the 'unix principles'.
- lispm 5y agoThe first four Emacs editors, which had something like an extension language: Emacs (1976), EINE (1977), SINE and Multics Emacs (1978). EINE and Multics Emacs were written & extended in Lisp. SINE was using a 'lisp-like' language. A bunch of further Emacs-like editors appeared then. GNU Emacs later (1984) was based on Gosling Emacs (1981), which was written in C and extended with Mocklisp. Mocklisp was a rather uncomplete Lisp, which was replaced with Emacs Lisp by Richard Stallman.
- jcelerier 5y agothat's great because the unix philosophy is pretty much a PITA as soon as you get out of grep | cut | tail | tee. I definitely don't want "unix philosophy" for operating system management, that is the wrong tool for the job.
- hulitu 5y agoThen you should not use UNIX then. There is another mainstream OS besides UNIX. Some people like to be able to know what their system does and like to use tools on which they can rely on even when things go wrong.
- awrmc 5y agoI think it's fair to say that Linux isn't Unix and goes well beyond the design constraints of Unix that were imposed when it was originally started in 1969. That's the era you stick to when you insist on only doing things the Unix way, but there are a lot of other ways to know what your system does and have reliable tools. In current times the most common usage of Linux is Android, which is ostensibly not Unix-like at all regarding its userspace. If you're talking about GNU, that quite literally means "GNU is not Unix".
- jcelerier 5y agoyes, I don't use UNIX, I use ArchLinux which is a much better operating system for my computer needs. The "proper" UNIX I've used (macOS) really sucked in comparison.
- wrycoder 5y agoI've used Arch, it's really excellent. But, not now that it's systemd. I use Devuan for my servers, and Alpine for my desktop. I use MacOS and iOS for internet viewing and A/V. I have no interest in how they are implemented - superficial observation indicates they are a mess. I do ssh into my servers from MacOS - it's comfortable with my laptop actually in my lap.
- rnd0 5y agoI hate the feature and mission creep of systemd and try to use other unixes where I am able; but what you wrote is downright insane. There were several init replacements in the mainstream before systemd. OSX and Solaris both had their own, and they were as UNIX (officially certified) as you can get. Also, as long as we're doing non-sequitors; Microsoft is more likely to buy Canonical than they are to buy RedHat or IBM.
- wrycoder 5y agoLennart Poettering, the fellow who is turning GNU/Linux into a version of Windows, works for Red Hat.
- morelisp 5y ago> turning GNU/Linux into a version of Windows The piece of software systemd is most like is launchctl, which doesn't come from Windows. On the other hand, the biggest "Windows-ism" to reach Linux lately is io_uring. But it's both too technical and too useful to have some populist uprising against it.
- wrycoder 5y agosystemd user sessions, socket activation, sysusers, dynamic users, systemd-homed, temporary directory setup, transient units, anything talking to the slice or control group APIs, containerization, firstboot, systemd’s whole “preset” system-wide configuration and policy mechanism for admins to say “what services do I want launched when installed and what services do I want to leave stopped until I configure them”, “stateless system” capabilities, and I’m probably forgetting another dozen. I don't care about the init system - I reboot a Linux system once in a blue moon, for kernel updates. It's the rest of the complication and changes to a system that I had already made the effort to master. I understand that the New Linux is better for Enterprise, so that's what is going to happen. That doesn't mean I have to like Poettering gradually re-writing the entire base of userland. I just want to run simple servers, not a major enterprise.
- bigbillheck 5y agoI've been using various unices for thirty years this year. I have no respect for the 'unix philosophy'.
- hulitu 5y agoI am married since 30 years. I have no respect for my wife /s
- int_19h 5y agoIf you want the Unix philosophy, why not use an actual Unix? The BSDs not only all have traditional init systems, but are also more in line with how old-school Unix worked in general (e.g. base system segregation).
- wrycoder 5y agoI have. OpenBSD is great! The biggest problem I had was that it was difficult to keep upgraded. In those days, it was basically a re-install every six months, plus a merge of any local changes. I understand things are much better now, and I may give it another try.
- kaba0 5y agoLinux the kernel doesn’t respect the Unix philosophy either by a huge margin. Also, Unix philosophy is not even the Saint script — it can be good for some problems but terrible for others. In certain cases a distributed between 34 small programs is just a worse approach that will be bug prone and hard to test.
- VTimofeenko 5y agoAnecdata: as someone not engaged in systemd development and one that likes tinkering with hardware tokens and luks, I found that at least the fido2/cryptsetup part of systemd was fairly easy and logical to follow and debug. I would argue that locked and pentalobe metaphor is not very accurate - systemd is no more locked than most other open source software.
- kzrdude 5y agosystemd made it possible for me to write new service scripts - system and user kind - in a way I couldn't do before. It seems to have empowered me, because it's actually quite easy to use.
- eslaught 5y agoI have to hard disagree on this one. As someone who had half a foot in sysvinit, half in upstart, and half in systemd (don't try to do math with those numbers), sysvinit was always the hardest to use by wide margin. It was ridiculously complicated to get anything nontrivial to work. It was error prone, and the number of corner cases you had to think about was extreme. And the worst part was I kept having to relearn it each time because I did it infrequently enough to forget what I'd learned the last time. Personally, I was more of a fan of upstart then systemd, but both were a massive improvement over sysvinit in terms of offering an actual interface with abstractions for the things you wanted to do. This is again from the perspective of a user, but that's where (in my opinion) most of the cost/benefit was anyway.
- pengaru 5y agoIt's not like systemd is written in deliberately obfuscated C or something inscrutable altogether like Brainfuck. A monorepo containing well-organized boring C, developed on github of all places, is the polar opposite of raising the barrier to contributing vs. what was replaced. Full-disclosure: I contribute to systemd.
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoThere is a difference between the best C, and scripts that you can modify in-place. But, like some other comments have said, I was young enough to dodge the drama. I basically grew up with systemd and I don't feel like I'm missing anything. The biggest problem I have is that Ubuntu Server defaults (or used to default) to having the system wait on network interfaces, which is annoying when I want to build a desktop off of it. And sometimes on shutdown it waits for some daemon I don't care about to quit. Which is probably just a bug in the daemon.
- eternityforest 5y agoThe transition period of any new tech is usually horrid. But now that things aren't buggy, being unable to modify them in place is a good thing. It sets a clear boundary that this is not how you do things on a modern system, so you can always expect systemd to be the same, consistent, non customized thing it always is.
- a-dub 5y agojust like pentalobe screws! i'm not going to argue it's a bad thing, i actually really like macs and think they hide a lot of details making time and space for other pursuits, although since you cede user serviceability it's important to purchase a service plan and that you don't try anything that wasn't provided for in the design. maybe simple composable parts are past their prime. i always loved the simplicity of inetd. it was both self describing and inclusive. you could write an internet service without any knowledge at all of sockets and learn about the system by simply looking at it. but i suppose that's given way to large monolithic daemons these days. personally though, i always thought the simplicity and the composability of unix philosophy was what bred systems that outperformed their competition in terms of security and extensibility. so many commercial systems reflected apparent power grabs within the corporate structures that produced them... i suppose that when you see foss monoliths like this, it's the same game playing out on a different field.
- kaba0 5y agoSystem boot is a hard problem with dependency resolution, service management, etc. Scripts didn’t properly solve the problem — they were like the easy solution for small ns. But that approach simply could not scale at all. Systemd may indeed be somewhat more complex, but I don’t think that it would employ many accidental complexity— it is complex due to the problem domain. But imo that is a worthwhile thing to spend complexity budget on.