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> 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 t

> 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
  That isn't "political power" it's called knowing your audience and knowing what they want. The audience here is Linux distribution upstreams who also participate in Freedesktop. The other alternatives had ample time to talk to these people and copy the features of systemd and improve on them but they refuse to do it. They seem more interested in building for their own niche use cases and ignoring everyone else. That's a fine decision, but it's their decision. They can't say it's anyone else's fault. Edit: If those other developers were really serious about trying to replace systemd they would be going around to every distro maintainer they can possibly find and asking them what systemd is doing badly and what they'd like to see in a better project. Then they'd have to think really hard about whether it's easier to fix those issues just by contributing to systemd, or whether a full replacement is warranted. Every now and then I see comments about writing replacements in Golang or Rust or some other memory safe language but there's no other interesting ideas there to warrant a rewrite. Maybe you do all this and conclude there are no major complaints from the big systemd users, and that's just how it is.
Shorel 4y ago
Ubuntu had the alternative software called Upstart. It was killed because of the Red Had power behind Systemd. Technically, I don't know which one is better, but politically, Systemd was a power move by Red Hat.
- rainbow29822 4y ago
  >It was killed because of the Red Had power behind Systemd. That is an absurd, untrue conspiracy theory. Whoever told you that should be ashamed. The author of Upstart said that it died because of a restrictive CLA. Read the thread linked here for an explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27176807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27176807 To quote the relevant parts: >I entirely agree with Kay and +Greg Kroah-Hartman that it was the CLA that caused systemd to be written instead of Upstart. >But I don't need that self-affirmation anyway :) I wrote Upstart, I got paid for it, I moved on to do other things, something else came along and replaced it. If Upstart hadn't been under the CLA, and systemd hadn't've happened, all my code would have long since been rewritten by now anyway.

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
That isn't "political power" it's called knowing your audience and knowing what they want. The audience here is Linux distribution upstreams who also participate in Freedesktop. The other alternatives had ample time to talk to these people and copy the features of systemd and improve on them but they refuse to do it. They seem more interested in building for their own niche use cases and ignoring everyone else. That's a fine decision, but it's their decision. They can't say it's anyone else's fault. Edit: If those other developers were really serious about trying to replace systemd they would be going around to every distro maintainer they can possibly find and asking them what systemd is doing badly and what they'd like to see in a better project. Then they'd have to think really hard about whether it's easier to fix those issues just by contributing to systemd, or whether a full replacement is warranted. Every now and then I see comments about writing replacements in Golang or Rust or some other memory safe language but there's no other interesting ideas there to warrant a rewrite. Maybe you do all this and conclude there are no major complaints from the big systemd users, and that's just how it is.

Shorel 4y ago

Ubuntu had the alternative software called Upstart. It was killed because of the Red Had power behind Systemd. Technically, I don't know which one is better, but politically, Systemd was a power move by Red Hat.

rainbow29822 4y ago
>It was killed because of the Red Had power behind Systemd. That is an absurd, untrue conspiracy theory. Whoever told you that should be ashamed. The author of Upstart said that it died because of a restrictive CLA. Read the thread linked here for an explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27176807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27176807 To quote the relevant parts: >I entirely agree with Kay and +Greg Kroah-Hartman that it was the CLA that caused systemd to be written instead of Upstart. >But I don't need that self-affirmation anyway :) I wrote Upstart, I got paid for it, I moved on to do other things, something else came along and replaced it. If Upstart hadn't been under the CLA, and systemd hadn't've happened, all my code would have long since been rewritten by now anyway.