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Here's why this matters: some systems require you to edit text files in order to work at all. But at the same time, they are extremely sensitive to the content
by hsn915 5y ago
Here's why this matters: some systems require you to edit text files in order to work at all. But at the same time, they are extremely sensitive to the content of the text file.
Editing text file to make advanced configuration may be acceptable if the casual end user never needs to do it. When I say never, I mean never ever ever. If you need to edit it once every few months, you better have really really good "linting" facilities to tell the user right away whether their edits are going to be accepted or going to cause the system to break.
Now granted, systemd is a system utility, not an end user application.
If the system overall is built such that the end user never ever ever needs to know about systemd, then it's sort of ok.
Now, when it comes to self-hosted, the line between "system utility" vs "end user application" may be blurred.
If you think a web server is a system utility, then by all means, go ahead and make it fragile and complicated. That's how everyone is doing it.
But if you think - and at least I do - that it's important for casual users to be able to self-host their own websites with ease and reliability and without having any system level expertise, then the points I mentioned about the system not imploding due to the content of text files is extremely important.
- klodolph 5y agoAh, I thought you had a complaint about systemd & text files. It sounds like you are okay with it, unless I misunderstand your comment.
- hsn915 5y agoI don't know anything about systemd, nor do I want to. I absolutely have problems with configuration via text files. A lot of things on linux desktops that a typical user wants to do require editing text files to work. For example, try searching for information about how to enable Japanese input in Gnome or XFCE desktops. Invariably, the steps involve installing and configuring some specific packages, and editing several text files to let the system know about the fact that you want to use an IME for text input. This is unacceptable.
- klodolph 5y ago> I don't know anything about systemd, nor do I want to. Well, that’s fine. We’re mostly talking about self-hosting web servers, and you don’t need to know anything about systemd in order to run a web server on Linux, any more than you need to know about fuel injection computers because you drive a car. The reason I’m familiar with systemd is for other reasons besides hosting a web site. I don’t know how problems with IMEs or desktop Linux got brought up, I’m not sure I’m following the conversation.