5 ms·

Systemd is a somewhat successful non-unix operating system, marketed to people who want a unix-like operating system using force. This isn't what anyone wants

by VLM 4y ago

Systemd is a somewhat successful non-unix operating system, marketed to people who want a unix-like operating system using force. This isn't what anyone wants but you'll go along or they'll unleash a hell of sophistry about how this is "really" what everyone wants even if its the opposite, made up stories about the opponents, or only bad people don't want what we want and you don't want to be tagged as one of the bad people so you're gonna say you officially love systemd, correct? It would be like going to the EV car dealership and being told the best modern EV they sell is a diesel pickup truck and they will unleash sophistry hell on anyone who doesn't go along with their meme that the best modern EV is obviously a diesel pickup truck but pointing that out in public is doubleplus ungood badthink. Ironically, for a non-unix-like operating system, its not that bad and works some of the time, although not as well as a unix-like OS would work for someone who's engineering criteria is a unix-like OS. Most people would be technically better off with a unix-like OS than a systemd based OS, but thats not what the corporate marketing department is selling, so we all love systemd, uh huh.

traverseda 4y ago
> and you don't want to be tagged as one of the bad people so you're gonna say you officially love systemd, correct? That does seem to be like weirdly a thing with redhat projects. I once saw someone say that being anti-systemd was correlated with supporting trump on hackernews, and of course if you don't like gnome you hate accessibility and poor people (who apparently don't know how to use less hobbled/phone-like user interfaces).
esarbe 4y ago
Rubbish. Linux+GNU is either a Unix operating system or it is not. Having systemd on board changes exactly nothing, since there never was a system services interface anyway. Files in a directory you say? That's not an interface, it's a recipe for failure. Or why do you think that every distribution used to ship their own init scripts? You EV car dealership is awfully flawed, especially with Linux+GNU you can even build you own car. So why are you complaining? Nobody is forcing you to use a distro with systemd. Nobody can force you. You're not a victim, you're privileged. systemd is for the first time providing Linux+GNU with a sane system services management and finally gets it ahead of OSX or windows in terms of capability. Instead of unconstrained bash scripts (that require ridiculous template magic or fail for the first edge case) you need only a ten line service description that does things that an init script would not been able to deliver. Like the most basic thing ever; reliable restart. The amount of hacks that were necessary to get an init script to only semi-reliably restart are atrocious - and deamontools are just the beginning. I've come to understand that the dislike of systemd has less to do with the technology at hand but more with human nature.
- effie 4y ago
  Why are we complaining? You're right that systemd provides useful things that sysvinit was not strong about. That is not enough to make systemd as distributed a good init system. It is a bloated C codebase with no definition of goals, instead it suffers never-ending mission creep. In mainstream distros, while it does init, it also meddles in too many things it should not, like spawning zillions of needless user session processes hogging the system, mutilated system and service logging and others. It hangs randomly nondeterministically on boot too often, disrespects the user by ignoring keyboard input, etc. The major point of critique of systemd push is to make people know that many don't like the offered product for its mediocre results as an init system, and uncalled for meddling in other business such as system logging. And we welcome new leaner init systems, such as s6.
  - esarbe 4y ago
    systemd ist not an init system and it never was intended to be "just" an init system; from the very start was conceived a system services management layer. https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html If there's an expansion of scope in the systemd project, that's because these use-cases were not sufficiently covered in the past. And while I wish you good luck with s6; how do you intend to replace all the functionality that systemd already delivers? Let's pick an example; KDE and Gnome used to write their own session management software, to make sure certain applications and services that the desktop needs (like; e.g. accessibility tools). This is nowadays handled by systemd, since it - as a system services management layer - already implements all the required functionality. So instead of three half-backed systems (one by KDE, one by Gnome, one for the system, all incompatible and unable to talk to each other) we have one good implementation. User session are also now handled in systemd - one less component to be developed by the "Desktops" - yay! Where you see feature creep I see consolidation. A consolidation that - in my opinion - is painfully necessary.
    - effie 4y ago
      > these use-cases were not sufficiently covered in the past. Many systems do not have those use cases. Everybody needs an init system, so that's where systemd could have been the fix to the deficiencies of sysvinit (as marketed). Instead, it merely kind of works as init, sometimes with random errors and disrespecting the keyboard input when things go wrong. And then instead of fixing and polishing that experience, developers expanded into million other directions, including DNS, container management and what not. Systemd is becoming a bad OS like Windows is. > User session are also now handled in systemd - one less component to be developed by the "Desktops" - yay! But systemd is used on servers too, and the user sessions and broken behaviour it introduces are a needless pain best to be disabled there. User sessions and related is really something Desktops should be handling, since it only makes sense on Desktops.

by VLM 4y ago

traverseda 4y ago

> and you don't want to be tagged as one of the bad people so you're gonna say you officially love systemd, correct? That does seem to be like weirdly a thing with redhat projects. I once saw someone say that being anti-systemd was correlated with supporting trump on hackernews, and of course if you don't like gnome you hate accessibility and poor people (who apparently don't know how to use less hobbled/phone-like user interfaces).

esarbe 4y ago

Rubbish. Linux+GNU is either a Unix operating system or it is not. Having systemd on board changes exactly nothing, since there never was a system services interface anyway. Files in a directory you say? That's not an interface, it's a recipe for failure. Or why do you think that every distribution used to ship their own init scripts? You EV car dealership is awfully flawed, especially with Linux+GNU you can even build you own car. So why are you complaining? Nobody is forcing you to use a distro with systemd. Nobody can force you. You're not a victim, you're privileged. systemd is for the first time providing Linux+GNU with a sane system services management and finally gets it ahead of OSX or windows in terms of capability. Instead of unconstrained bash scripts (that require ridiculous template magic or fail for the first edge case) you need only a ten line service description that does things that an init script would not been able to deliver. Like the most basic thing ever; reliable restart. The amount of hacks that were necessary to get an init script to only semi-reliably restart are atrocious - and deamontools are just the beginning. I've come to understand that the dislike of systemd has less to do with the technology at hand but more with human nature.

effie 4y ago
Why are we complaining? You're right that systemd provides useful things that sysvinit was not strong about. That is not enough to make systemd as distributed a good init system. It is a bloated C codebase with no definition of goals, instead it suffers never-ending mission creep. In mainstream distros, while it does init, it also meddles in too many things it should not, like spawning zillions of needless user session processes hogging the system, mutilated system and service logging and others. It hangs randomly nondeterministically on boot too often, disrespects the user by ignoring keyboard input, etc. The major point of critique of systemd push is to make people know that many don't like the offered product for its mediocre results as an init system, and uncalled for meddling in other business such as system logging. And we welcome new leaner init systems, such as s6.
- esarbe 4y ago
  systemd ist not an init system and it never was intended to be "just" an init system; from the very start was conceived a system services management layer. https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html If there's an expansion of scope in the systemd project, that's because these use-cases were not sufficiently covered in the past. And while I wish you good luck with s6; how do you intend to replace all the functionality that systemd already delivers? Let's pick an example; KDE and Gnome used to write their own session management software, to make sure certain applications and services that the desktop needs (like; e.g. accessibility tools). This is nowadays handled by systemd, since it - as a system services management layer - already implements all the required functionality. So instead of three half-backed systems (one by KDE, one by Gnome, one for the system, all incompatible and unable to talk to each other) we have one good implementation. User session are also now handled in systemd - one less component to be developed by the "Desktops" - yay! Where you see feature creep I see consolidation. A consolidation that - in my opinion - is painfully necessary.
  - effie 4y ago
    > these use-cases were not sufficiently covered in the past. Many systems do not have those use cases. Everybody needs an init system, so that's where systemd could have been the fix to the deficiencies of sysvinit (as marketed). Instead, it merely kind of works as init, sometimes with random errors and disrespecting the keyboard input when things go wrong. And then instead of fixing and polishing that experience, developers expanded into million other directions, including DNS, container management and what not. Systemd is becoming a bad OS like Windows is. > User session are also now handled in systemd - one less component to be developed by the "Desktops" - yay! But systemd is used on servers too, and the user sessions and broken behaviour it introduces are a needless pain best to be disabled there. User sessions and related is really something Desktops should be handling, since it only makes sense on Desktops.