6 ms·

For people trying to run desktop BSD, I think systemd has caused some real pain. For most Linux users and sysadmins, systemd has been helpful in the way it has

by pxc 4y ago

For people trying to run desktop BSD, I think systemd has caused some real pain. For most Linux users and sysadmins, systemd has been helpful in the way it has standardized service management. The freedesktop standards just seem to be offensive to BSD people as a matter of taste, though. At its worst, PulseAudio was basically fine but pushed on some users by their distros before it was mature. And even then, Red Hat has also driven the development of its replacement, PipeWire, which has been widely recognized as kickass pretty much from the get-go.

account42 4y ago
> For people trying to run desktop BSD, I think systemd has caused some real pain. For most Linux users and sysadmins, systemd has been helpful in the way it has standardized service management. It only standardized anything if you deny anything else exists.
- ilyt 4y ago
  The alternatives were frankly shit in comparison and we used at least 2 different ones on sysv systems (monit and daemontools)
  - account42 4y ago
    The alternatives still work just fine, or at least OpenRC does.
ilyt 4y ago
systemd is dual edged sword really. Yes, ops wise we removed thousands of lines of fixes for "simple" (BSD people lie to you when they say sysv is simple) init scripts and also get rid of stuff like monit (auto restart of failed services) because builtin features of systemd replaced it better. But on flipside for example journald introduced utterly misdesigned binary log format that needs to traverse every file it has on disk just to tell you "sorry, I don't have logs for this app". If it was just an SQLite file(s) I'd be utterly thrilled, ability to just throw an SQL to get logs I want ? Sign me in! But currently it's just.... bad. Overall it is a positive change but I definitely do not blame people for disliking it, there are many parts of it to complain about. > At its worst, PulseAudio was basically fine but pushed on some users by their distros before it was mature. And even then, Red Hat has also driven the development of its replacement, PipeWire, which has been widely recognized as kickass pretty much from the get-go. It took 5+ years for it to be "fine", and the design was shit from the beginning. Like completely ignoring needs of real time audio, meaning anyone that wanted to do any serious audio stuff needed to either go to JACK or directly to ALSA and making JACK/ALSA and Pulseaudio play together wasn't for the faint of heart. I still have some dumb udev scripts to apply a bunch of pulseaudio commands because apparently "remembering config of a device" isn't in scope of pulseaudio. Even putting stuff in actual pulseaudio config is not enough as it will only apply it if device is present before pulseaudio started. So if say you have USB audio card (that can be say just an digital output of a synthesizer or other instrument) that you plug after you have to manually apply any configuration, every time you connect it. Sure, if you were lucky it might've worked for you but I for years heard "sec, I gotta restart pulseaudio" any time someone needed to run a skype or some other voice chat... and also had it just start screeching sounds once or twice a year, or "just" randomly starting to stutter till I kill it.
- generalizations 4y ago
  > BSD people lie to you when they say sysv is simple Probably better to compare to the modern alternatives. runit and openrc are pretty great.
- jmclnx 4y ago
  >(BSD people lie to you when they say sysv is simple) Ah, *BSD do not use sysv init but BSD init, a totally different startup. And if you are old enough, you may remember the BSD init vs SYSV init wars, I think they made the systemd conflict look like a tea party with one mildly obnoxious person in attendance. The current BSD init is by far the easiest. IIRC, most BSDs moved to something similar to this: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_papers/mewburn/mewburn_html/ https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_...
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
To make desktop Linux a reality we need more standardization in the Linux world, not less. If some GNU/Stallman types get offended, so be it. It's a worthy tradeoff.
- account42 4y ago
  Desktop Linux is a reality. "Standardizing" won't make it any more mainstream and will destroy what makes it special: That you get the OS that YOU want.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    ~2% market share is far away from a reality. Everywhere mainstream I go I only see either Mac or Windows.
    - lproven 4y ago
      > Everywhere mainstream I go Do you visit people's homes much, or to schools and universities, or anywhere in China? Because various vendors have shipped something like ¼-⅓ billion ChromeBooks over the last 3-4 years. That's a lot. That's more than Apple has shipped Macs. You don't see them in offices much, it's true, but that's because they're in homes and educational institutions. China has been following an aggressive program to dispense with foreign computers, called 3-5-2: https://www.ft.com/content/b55fc6ee-1787-11ea-8d73-6303645ac406 https://www.ft.com/content/b55fc6ee-1787-11ea-8d73-6303645ac... The plan is that by 2025, everything will be Made In China: https://cybershack.com.au/opinion/made-in-china-2025-a-policy-with-intended-consequences-opinion/ https://cybershack.com.au/opinion/made-in-china-2025-a-polic... I reckon there is a lot of desktop Linux out there, but we don't see it. Like it or not, ChromeOS is Linux. (Somewhere way down there, it's Gentoo.) Unity OS and openKylin are, basically, Ubuntu. Deepin is its own thing but at least until last year it's Debian underneath. You don't see much of Kylin or UOS or Deepin, but for nearly 20% of the human race, those are the dominant Linux distros.
      - pxc 4y ago
alxlaz 4y ago
> The freedesktop standards just seem to be offensive to BSD people as a matter of taste, though. The freedesktop standards should be offensive to everyone as a matter of taste :-D. They are the ACPI of the desktop world. (Note: if anyone wishes the freedesktop standards gone because they're the ACPI of the desktop world, they have probably not experienced the pre-ACPI world :-D)
- pxc 4y ago
  My entry into Linux was actually a trip backwards into the pre-ACPI world, although that world was before my time. As a kid, I was gifted a junker laptop that was otherwise destined for the trash heap after some hardware damage caused it to reboot whenever the AC adapter was plugged in or removed. Due to some wobble in the charging port, this meant the thing would reboot constantly— on Windows, anyway. But when Linux booted on it, it could tell that something was not normal in what it heard via ACPI. So it disabled ACPI support, reverted to APM, and ran more or less normally. I still remember seeing those messages about APM being printed on every boot! That was the first computer that was ever my own, and the reason I learned that Linux existed. Something mysterious going very wrong with ACPI was the start of a lifelong love for me. :)
b112 4y ago
systemd has been helpful in the way it has standardized service management From where I sit, absolutely not. And it's brought over-complexity, and monolith design, and far far far more bugs than other options, as a result. My point is, the only reason systemd is less 'contentious' these days, is because fewer and fewer know how stable, streamlined, and more functional systems were before it. Systemd won by Redhat (via Gnome hard requirements) forcing it into all distros, and now, by the fact that it is now a Linux standard. NOTE: I had to counter the assume statement here. I can get people may have differing opinions, and that people may view systemd differently, but cannot sit by when someone just says "this has been helpful!". It's been more harmful than helpful.
- ungamedplayer 4y ago
  The amount of privesc I used to get with initscripts is insane. Systemd took away all that. For that price alone, it's worth the price of admission .
  - b112 4y ago
    Systemd took away all that. And granted an endless litany of exploits itself, due to its overt complexity, including such absurds as null password assumptions. Systemd has been a far less secure option.
    - ungamedplayer 4y ago
      That's a common misconception. Systemd has absorbed many disconnected projects, all of which were having their own issues well before systemd. It's a net security win once you have done the math. I did it 2 years ago but I would think the logic still holds true.
- emmelaich 4y ago
  > know how stable, streamlined, and more functional systems were before it That is so far from my own experience that it's foreign to me. I've been using various Unices for over three decades, mostly a sysadmin / SRE. I profoundly hated and distrusted most of the old init systems.

by pxc 4y ago

account42 4y ago

> For people trying to run desktop BSD, I think systemd has caused some real pain. For most Linux users and sysadmins, systemd has been helpful in the way it has standardized service management. It only standardized anything if you deny anything else exists.

ilyt 4y ago
The alternatives were frankly shit in comparison and we used at least 2 different ones on sysv systems (monit and daemontools)
- account42 4y ago
  The alternatives still work just fine, or at least OpenRC does.

ilyt 4y ago

systemd is dual edged sword really. Yes, ops wise we removed thousands of lines of fixes for "simple" (BSD people lie to you when they say sysv is simple) init scripts and also get rid of stuff like monit (auto restart of failed services) because builtin features of systemd replaced it better. But on flipside for example journald introduced utterly misdesigned binary log format that needs to traverse every file it has on disk just to tell you "sorry, I don't have logs for this app". If it was just an SQLite file(s) I'd be utterly thrilled, ability to just throw an SQL to get logs I want ? Sign me in! But currently it's just.... bad. Overall it is a positive change but I definitely do not blame people for disliking it, there are many parts of it to complain about. > At its worst, PulseAudio was basically fine but pushed on some users by their distros before it was mature. And even then, Red Hat has also driven the development of its replacement, PipeWire, which has been widely recognized as kickass pretty much from the get-go. It took 5+ years for it to be "fine", and the design was shit from the beginning. Like completely ignoring needs of real time audio, meaning anyone that wanted to do any serious audio stuff needed to either go to JACK or directly to ALSA and making JACK/ALSA and Pulseaudio play together wasn't for the faint of heart. I still have some dumb udev scripts to apply a bunch of pulseaudio commands because apparently "remembering config of a device" isn't in scope of pulseaudio. Even putting stuff in actual pulseaudio config is not enough as it will only apply it if device is present before pulseaudio started. So if say you have USB audio card (that can be say just an digital output of a synthesizer or other instrument) that you plug after you have to manually apply any configuration, every time you connect it. Sure, if you were lucky it might've worked for you but I for years heard "sec, I gotta restart pulseaudio" any time someone needed to run a skype or some other voice chat... and also had it just start screeching sounds once or twice a year, or "just" randomly starting to stutter till I kill it.

generalizations 4y ago
> BSD people lie to you when they say sysv is simple Probably better to compare to the modern alternatives. runit and openrc are pretty great.
jmclnx 4y ago
>(BSD people lie to you when they say sysv is simple) Ah, *BSD do not use sysv init but BSD init, a totally different startup. And if you are old enough, you may remember the BSD init vs SYSV init wars, I think they made the systemd conflict look like a tea party with one mildly obnoxious person in attendance. The current BSD init is by far the easiest. IIRC, most BSDs moved to something similar to this: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_papers/mewburn/mewburn_html/ https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_...

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

To make desktop Linux a reality we need more standardization in the Linux world, not less. If some GNU/Stallman types get offended, so be it. It's a worthy tradeoff.

account42 4y ago
Desktop Linux is a reality. "Standardizing" won't make it any more mainstream and will destroy what makes it special: That you get the OS that YOU want.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  ~2% market share is far away from a reality. Everywhere mainstream I go I only see either Mac or Windows.
  - lproven 4y ago
    > Everywhere mainstream I go Do you visit people's homes much, or to schools and universities, or anywhere in China? Because various vendors have shipped something like ¼-⅓ billion ChromeBooks over the last 3-4 years. That's a lot. That's more than Apple has shipped Macs. You don't see them in offices much, it's true, but that's because they're in homes and educational institutions. China has been following an aggressive program to dispense with foreign computers, called 3-5-2: https://www.ft.com/content/b55fc6ee-1787-11ea-8d73-6303645ac406 https://www.ft.com/content/b55fc6ee-1787-11ea-8d73-6303645ac... The plan is that by 2025, everything will be Made In China: https://cybershack.com.au/opinion/made-in-china-2025-a-policy-with-intended-consequences-opinion/ https://cybershack.com.au/opinion/made-in-china-2025-a-polic... I reckon there is a lot of desktop Linux out there, but we don't see it. Like it or not, ChromeOS is Linux. (Somewhere way down there, it's Gentoo.) Unity OS and openKylin are, basically, Ubuntu. Deepin is its own thing but at least until last year it's Debian underneath. You don't see much of Kylin or UOS or Deepin, but for nearly 20% of the human race, those are the dominant Linux distros.
    - pxc 4y ago

alxlaz 4y ago

> The freedesktop standards just seem to be offensive to BSD people as a matter of taste, though. The freedesktop standards should be offensive to everyone as a matter of taste :-D. They are the ACPI of the desktop world. (Note: if anyone wishes the freedesktop standards gone because they're the ACPI of the desktop world, they have probably not experienced the pre-ACPI world :-D)

pxc 4y ago
My entry into Linux was actually a trip backwards into the pre-ACPI world, although that world was before my time. As a kid, I was gifted a junker laptop that was otherwise destined for the trash heap after some hardware damage caused it to reboot whenever the AC adapter was plugged in or removed. Due to some wobble in the charging port, this meant the thing would reboot constantly— on Windows, anyway. But when Linux booted on it, it could tell that something was not normal in what it heard via ACPI. So it disabled ACPI support, reverted to APM, and ran more or less normally. I still remember seeing those messages about APM being printed on every boot! That was the first computer that was ever my own, and the reason I learned that Linux existed. Something mysterious going very wrong with ACPI was the start of a lifelong love for me. :)

b112 4y ago

systemd has been helpful in the way it has standardized service management From where I sit, absolutely not. And it's brought over-complexity, and monolith design, and far far far more bugs than other options, as a result. My point is, the only reason systemd is less 'contentious' these days, is because fewer and fewer know how stable, streamlined, and more functional systems were before it. Systemd won by Redhat (via Gnome hard requirements) forcing it into all distros, and now, by the fact that it is now a Linux standard. NOTE: I had to counter the assume statement here. I can get people may have differing opinions, and that people may view systemd differently, but cannot sit by when someone just says "this has been helpful!". It's been more harmful than helpful.

ungamedplayer 4y ago
The amount of privesc I used to get with initscripts is insane. Systemd took away all that. For that price alone, it's worth the price of admission .
- b112 4y ago
  Systemd took away all that. And granted an endless litany of exploits itself, due to its overt complexity, including such absurds as null password assumptions. Systemd has been a far less secure option.
  - ungamedplayer 4y ago
    That's a common misconception. Systemd has absorbed many disconnected projects, all of which were having their own issues well before systemd. It's a net security win once you have done the math. I did it 2 years ago but I would think the logic still holds true.
emmelaich 4y ago
> know how stable, streamlined, and more functional systems were before it That is so far from my own experience that it's foreign to me. I've been using various Unices for over three decades, mostly a sysadmin / SRE. I profoundly hated and distrusted most of the old init systems.