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It feels like the time is ripe for something simpler and more modern to replace* systemd. The timing of this release coincides with me being bitten with yet an

It feels like the time is ripe for something simpler and more modern to replace* systemd. The timing of this release coincides with me being bitten with yet another bug** on the weekend. How long until “Systemd: The Good Parts”? *The most trivial new name would be système which would at least be in keeping with the French naming. **In Debian stable if you create a new user, ssh in as that user, logout, then delete the user, you can’t because systemd is still running a detached housekeeping process as that user. If you wait a bit then the systemd process goes away but that, to me, makes it a worse bug not a better one.

HeckFeck 4y ago
It happened for PulseAudio, perhaps something compatible but leaner can emerge for systemd.
- phoronixrly 4y ago
  It happened to Pulse after the project stopped being a moving target. Just look at the changelog of this systemd release.
  - McDyver 4y ago
    Just because the project is moving, doesn't mean it's moving in the right direction. What I like about linux in general, is that there are lots of small tools, with a reduced and specific scope, that do their job well. Systemd seems to want to do and control everything.
    - rainbow29822 4y ago
      I don't understand this comment. Systemd is a lot of small tools with a specific scope that do their job well.
ciupicri 4y ago
From the logind.conf man page [1]: > KillUserProcesses= > Takes a boolean argument. Configures whether the processes of a user should be killed when the user logs out. If true, the scope unit corresponding to the session and all processes inside that scope will be terminated. If false, the scope is "abandoned", see systemd.scope(5), and processes are not killed. Defaults to "no", but see the options KillOnlyUsers= and KillExcludeUsers= below. > In addition to session processes, user process may run under the user manager unit user@.service. Depending on the linger settings, this may allow users to run processes independent of their login sessions. See the description of enable-linger in loginctl(1). > Note that setting KillUserProcesses=yes will break tools like screen(1) and tmux(1), unless they are moved out of the session scope. See example in systemd-run(1). [1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/logind.conf.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/logind.conf...
- gorgoiler 4y ago
  Ahhh, thanks. Now you mention it, wasn’t there some major scandal about this when it first shipped?
  - Nursie 4y ago
    There were a lot of noises made about it, yes, because people had been "nohup"ing things for decades, and using stuff like screen and tmux to keep sessions going over poor connections. All of a sudden, without much warning, someone made the decision to kill all user processes on logout. It broke a lot of folks workflow.
    - Shorel 4y ago
      One would be tempted to say that deleting a user and logging out are definitely different operations with expected different outcomes.
      - Nursie 4y ago
        It’s part of the same session-management feature that had unexpected (and undesirable) effects.
dark-star 4y ago
Wait, what French naming?
- seszett 4y ago
  I don't know if it was intended, but "système D" in French means hacking together something with whatever you have available. D meaning "démerde" (literally getting out of shit or a shitty situation) or "débrouille" depending on the language registry you want. It's a rather common expression.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    Funny tidbit, sure. Basically "[made] from shit and sticks".
  - dark-star 4y ago
    ah, that makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
- mekoka 4y ago
  "e" following "d" in the alphabet, the successor to systemd would be called "systeme", which is the french translation (système) for "system".
  - dark-star 4y ago
    Thanks, but I was refering to the "...in keeping with the French naming" part, as if systemd previously had a french name or something
    - gorgoiler 4y ago
      “[The] name is suitably reminiscent of the French term "système D", an expression that relates to thinking on your feet and describes high-speed technical problem-solving abilities such as those displayed by TV action hero MacGyver.” — Poettering, Sievers and Leemhuis, the Systemd authors, in http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Control-Centre-The-systemd-Linux-init-system-1565543.html http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Control-Centre-The-sys...
lotharcable 4y ago
> It feels like the time is ripe for something simpler and more modern to replace* systemd. Well then do what Poettering did and write it. It's threads like this why I am eternally grateful that Linux kernel uses a merit driven approach and not concessus driven one.
- traverseda 4y ago
  Yeah, but Redhat has been slowly getting control of more of the infrastructure. Want to make your own? Well even if you make something backwards compatible with Gnome or udev, get popular and they will probably find some way to break your compatibility. You end up needing to fork all the projects that Redhat has gotten their tentacles around.
  - rainbow29822 4y ago
    That's a pretty negative way to make an innocuous statement: that it's expensive to make an OS. You can't expect Red Hat (or any other Linux company) to maintain backwards compatibility forever for every single possible project they've ever had an employee contribute to. They'll maintain some as long as their customers pay to support it for that long, but even that ends after a while. Yes, if you don't want to pay them for it, then you get to spend the immense amount of time and money needed to fork it; because shipping a full commercial operating system with millions of lines of code is a complex task with a lot of interlocking parts and no one wants to do it for free. It makes no sense to single out complaints towards random projects for this.
- kasabali 4y ago
  > Well then do what Poettering did and write it. This is such a superficial and ignorant take I'm having hard time forcing myself to believe it was written in good faith. Dozens of alternatives already exist. The problem isn't writing, problem is having politicial power Poettering had. (ie. He was employed by Red Hat and had close connections with other Freedesktop developers.)
  - rainbow29822 4y ago
cies 4y ago
I expect there will be a system that is not necessarily less complex (as what systemd does IS quite complex); but is more: * safe (uses Rust with unsafe) * modular (systemd is pretty all-or-nothing) * open access (less RedHat dominated) Probably it will be using some of the same standards as systemd or at lease be BW compatible to some extend. Once Debian picks it up, it's game over systemd.
PetitSasquatch 4y ago
Don't we already have multiple, alternate systems that are significantly simpler? The primary reason why I don't use systemd at all, on any desktop or server I manage, is not that I think it isn't powerful or reliable but, I cannot fit it into my head. The scope and complexity of it goes beyond what I'm personally willing to invest into any one subsystem designed to regulate my operating system. I find that because I can't easily integrate day to day systemd operations into my general knowledge of the Unix / Linux shell environment, it essentially creates a cognitive switching cost that I'm not willing to pay given the efficiency and utility I get from my existing knowledge and skills. Systemd seems to work well for a lot of people, but doesn't sell itself to me given my objective, and capacity, to internalize simpler tools for high levels of mastery. That's why I don't use systemd but do use other, more simpler systems, that are readily available.
- rainbow29822 4y ago
  You don't have to fit anything in your head. I often find myself consulting the index at `man systemd.directives` to remember things: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.directives.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.dir... In lot of cases I've found systemd units much to actually be simpler and easier to maintain due to everything being in a simple declarative format. The old alternative is to have a lot of shell scripts that can get very complex, and to consult another few hundred man pages for various shell utilities...
  - PetitSasquatch 4y ago
    True. However, my objective is to internalise the tooling that routinely use, the scope of systemd is beyond what I need. Also, I find constantly looking up unique directives fatiguing and would rather use that energy elsewhere. I find working with the same general tooling results in faster & easier mental recall across a broader range problems that I tackle. Just my experience, no doubt different for others.

HeckFeck 4y ago

It happened for PulseAudio, perhaps something compatible but leaner can emerge for systemd.

phoronixrly 4y ago
It happened to Pulse after the project stopped being a moving target. Just look at the changelog of this systemd release.
- McDyver 4y ago
  Just because the project is moving, doesn't mean it's moving in the right direction. What I like about linux in general, is that there are lots of small tools, with a reduced and specific scope, that do their job well. Systemd seems to want to do and control everything.
  - rainbow29822 4y ago
    I don't understand this comment. Systemd is a lot of small tools with a specific scope that do their job well.

ciupicri 4y ago

From the logind.conf man page [1]: > KillUserProcesses= > Takes a boolean argument. Configures whether the processes of a user should be killed when the user logs out. If true, the scope unit corresponding to the session and all processes inside that scope will be terminated. If false, the scope is "abandoned", see systemd.scope(5), and processes are not killed. Defaults to "no", but see the options KillOnlyUsers= and KillExcludeUsers= below. > In addition to session processes, user process may run under the user manager unit user@.service. Depending on the linger settings, this may allow users to run processes independent of their login sessions. See the description of enable-linger in loginctl(1). > Note that setting KillUserProcesses=yes will break tools like screen(1) and tmux(1), unless they are moved out of the session scope. See example in systemd-run(1). [1]: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/logind.conf.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/logind.conf...

gorgoiler 4y ago
Ahhh, thanks. Now you mention it, wasn’t there some major scandal about this when it first shipped?
- Nursie 4y ago
  There were a lot of noises made about it, yes, because people had been "nohup"ing things for decades, and using stuff like screen and tmux to keep sessions going over poor connections. All of a sudden, without much warning, someone made the decision to kill all user processes on logout. It broke a lot of folks workflow.
  - Shorel 4y ago
    One would be tempted to say that deleting a user and logging out are definitely different operations with expected different outcomes.
    - Nursie 4y ago
      It’s part of the same session-management feature that had unexpected (and undesirable) effects.

dark-star 4y ago

Wait, what French naming?

seszett 4y ago
I don't know if it was intended, but "système D" in French means hacking together something with whatever you have available. D meaning "démerde" (literally getting out of shit or a shitty situation) or "débrouille" depending on the language registry you want. It's a rather common expression.
- justsomehnguy 4y ago
  Funny tidbit, sure. Basically "[made] from shit and sticks".
- dark-star 4y ago
  ah, that makes sense, thanks for the explanation.
mekoka 4y ago
"e" following "d" in the alphabet, the successor to systemd would be called "systeme", which is the french translation (système) for "system".
- dark-star 4y ago
  Thanks, but I was refering to the "...in keeping with the French naming" part, as if systemd previously had a french name or something
  - gorgoiler 4y ago
    “[The] name is suitably reminiscent of the French term "système D", an expression that relates to thinking on your feet and describes high-speed technical problem-solving abilities such as those displayed by TV action hero MacGyver.” — Poettering, Sievers and Leemhuis, the Systemd authors, in http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Control-Centre-The-systemd-Linux-init-system-1565543.html http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Control-Centre-The-sys...

lotharcable 4y ago

> It feels like the time is ripe for something simpler and more modern to replace* systemd. Well then do what Poettering did and write it. It's threads like this why I am eternally grateful that Linux kernel uses a merit driven approach and not concessus driven one.

traverseda 4y ago
Yeah, but Redhat has been slowly getting control of more of the infrastructure. Want to make your own? Well even if you make something backwards compatible with Gnome or udev, get popular and they will probably find some way to break your compatibility. You end up needing to fork all the projects that Redhat has gotten their tentacles around.
- rainbow29822 4y ago
  That's a pretty negative way to make an innocuous statement: that it's expensive to make an OS. You can't expect Red Hat (or any other Linux company) to maintain backwards compatibility forever for every single possible project they've ever had an employee contribute to. They'll maintain some as long as their customers pay to support it for that long, but even that ends after a while. Yes, if you don't want to pay them for it, then you get to spend the immense amount of time and money needed to fork it; because shipping a full commercial operating system with millions of lines of code is a complex task with a lot of interlocking parts and no one wants to do it for free. It makes no sense to single out complaints towards random projects for this.
kasabali 4y ago
> Well then do what Poettering did and write it. This is such a superficial and ignorant take I'm having hard time forcing myself to believe it was written in good faith. Dozens of alternatives already exist. The problem isn't writing, problem is having politicial power Poettering had. (ie. He was employed by Red Hat and had close connections with other Freedesktop developers.)
- rainbow29822 4y ago

cies 4y ago

I expect there will be a system that is not necessarily less complex (as what systemd does IS quite complex); but is more: * safe (uses Rust with unsafe) * modular (systemd is pretty all-or-nothing) * open access (less RedHat dominated) Probably it will be using some of the same standards as systemd or at lease be BW compatible to some extend. Once Debian picks it up, it's game over systemd.

PetitSasquatch 4y ago

Don't we already have multiple, alternate systems that are significantly simpler? The primary reason why I don't use systemd at all, on any desktop or server I manage, is not that I think it isn't powerful or reliable but, I cannot fit it into my head. The scope and complexity of it goes beyond what I'm personally willing to invest into any one subsystem designed to regulate my operating system. I find that because I can't easily integrate day to day systemd operations into my general knowledge of the Unix / Linux shell environment, it essentially creates a cognitive switching cost that I'm not willing to pay given the efficiency and utility I get from my existing knowledge and skills. Systemd seems to work well for a lot of people, but doesn't sell itself to me given my objective, and capacity, to internalize simpler tools for high levels of mastery. That's why I don't use systemd but do use other, more simpler systems, that are readily available.

rainbow29822 4y ago
You don't have to fit anything in your head. I often find myself consulting the index at `man systemd.directives` to remember things: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.directives.html https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.dir... In lot of cases I've found systemd units much to actually be simpler and easier to maintain due to everything being in a simple declarative format. The old alternative is to have a lot of shell scripts that can get very complex, and to consult another few hundred man pages for various shell utilities...
- PetitSasquatch 4y ago
  True. However, my objective is to internalise the tooling that routinely use, the scope of systemd is beyond what I need. Also, I find constantly looking up unique directives fatiguing and would rather use that energy elsewhere. I find working with the same general tooling results in faster & easier mental recall across a broader range problems that I tackle. Just my experience, no doubt different for others.