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Of course we’ve written both. I don’t even care if it’s better. Large part of the value of Linux for me is stability and lack of churn. I’d just as soon lear

Of course we’ve written both. I don’t even care if it’s better. Large part of the value of Linux for me is stability and lack of churn. I’d just as soon learn another OS if I’m going to put in effort. And I’d way prefer plain text files in /var/log I don’t need weird tools to view. Don’t even know what prom tail or Loki are and I’ve used Linux daily for over 25 years. Blech. Was all part of red hats selfish move to where they are today. Hoping they go down hard.

ilyt 3y ago
I mostly like systemd but journalctl/journald unequivocally sucks arse with passion. /rant They made binary format THAT DON'T HAVE ANY FUCKING PROPER INDEXING. It might have actual indexing, who the fuck knows, but it don't have any useful one They could literally just drop in SQLite there and now your entire's system's logs have power of being queried via SQL which would be amazing and easy to use with countless tools that can be used with SQLite but NO, (probably) Lennart wanted to have some fun writing shitty binary format coz of his chronic NIH. strace systemctl status 2>&1 |grep /var/log/journal |wc -l 71 It opens SEVENTY ONE FILES TO GET LOGS ABOUT ONE APPLICATION systemctl status tinc FOR WHICH IT HAS NO LOGS IN THE FIRST PLACE journalctl -a -e -n10 -u tinc |cat -- No entries -- (it's the same for app with logs btw.) I can literally grep a bunch of text files faster than it can look thru it's "efficient" binary logs. But hey if you waste RAM to cache every journal file on your machine in RAM instead of, dunno, actually useful stuff, those commands are fast... It's an abomination and affront to good engineering. Which is shame coz I like many of the other parts. /endrant
loo 3y ago
https://github.com/awfulcooking/journalfs https://github.com/awfulcooking/journalfs
johnea 3y ago
I've been using it (including writing unit files etc) since archlinux adopted it, so over 10 years now. I still don't like it. The binary interface to logs is a good example, not only for the popular dislike for needing to run a binary to view the log, but also, central to my dislike, is the issue with the "init" system being in charge of logging at all. systemd if far far beyond an "init" system, it is striving to be the "kernel" of user space, in charge of all system functions that are not in the kernel. This isn't feature creep, it's by design. Is the "init" system in charge of network name resolution? What about making fundamental configuration setting to the OS? Another example of the binary required to access logs, is any change to a non-running root filesystem. If you've configured a rootfs for a machine other than the one you're doing this work on (maybe a different CPU architecture, or simply a rootfs for another machine) you're going to run into complications. Same situation when in a chroot. If the rootfs you're configuring, isn't the one currently active, those binary executables are going to havee trouble. As soon as we have systemd-packagemanagerd, there will be 0 difference between systemd based distributions. Everyone will simply put the kernel together w/ systemd for a complete operating system. This was Red Hat's intention, now IBM's intention. I use linux for my work, both in embedded targets and in my development workstation. For many years I've simply copied my home dir to new computers and moved on. The next time I configure a workstation from scratch, I'm going to voidlinux. runit, based on The DJB Way, is much closer to my ideal...
- loo 3y ago
  An OS has a lot of things to be done downstream of the kernel in userspace. Having one interface to them is useful. i respect the BSD hacker style, minimal init ethos. But man is it handy to have declarative sandboxing in service files. `loginctl` as a standard for listing, locking, killing user sessions. `machinectl` as a container / virtual machine manager. And --host / --machine to remote all of the above.
- kaba0 3y ago
  For the umpteenth time, systemd is not a single thing, it’s a group of related projects. The core is just big enough to fulfill the (quite hard) job of bringing up a system, doing dependency resolution and running services. Plenty other parts of the project are individual services only. Is KDE “longing for world domination” because they have multiple projects as well?
rektide 3y ago
> Large part of the value of Linux for me is stability and lack of churn Systemd is 13 years old. As far as I'm concerned, the complains against churn run out after the project is old enough to drink. Especially if it's not just well adopted, but by far the most popular option. In general, having open source but being afraid to change it sounds like hell to me. I personally believe in Linux & open source because it lets us keep improving & iterating & changing. Open source embodies the soft in software, and is the best vector computing society has for bringing light & clarity to a confusing but powerful man-made microverse.
- stcroixx 3y ago
  Linux is an IBM product at this point. Might as well use AIX. Makes me sad, but it’s done. With what they did to kill centos and rocky I’m switching our stuff to open BSD. Pushing these changes were strategic redhat business decisions masquerading as open source contributions.
  - rektide 3y ago
    As a Debian user, it doesn't affect me. Supposedly back ported sources are also available just no longer tagged for RHEL, and if that's true my sadness is somewhat limited for my fellow distros, even if they are so heavily corporate in origin. My world & the Linux world keeps getting incredibly better every year, in my view. This 254 release is amazing, just so much stuff. Utterly unreadably long but posted some favs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36516792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36516792 Chin up, man! Or best of luck over in openbsd land.
- JdeBP 3y ago
  What and where were you drinking at age 13? (-:
bananapub 3y ago
> Large part of the value of Linux for me is stability and lack of churn. over which part of linux's history do you feel this happened? during the years long libc migrations? during the thread wars? which linux-based OS have you used for a couple of decades that hasn't had large changes but has managed to continue to exist? slackware?

ilyt 3y ago

I mostly like systemd but journalctl/journald unequivocally sucks arse with passion. /rant They made binary format THAT DON'T HAVE ANY FUCKING PROPER INDEXING. It might have actual indexing, who the fuck knows, but it don't have any useful one They could literally just drop in SQLite there and now your entire's system's logs have power of being queried via SQL which would be amazing and easy to use with countless tools that can be used with SQLite but NO, (probably) Lennart wanted to have some fun writing shitty binary format coz of his chronic NIH. strace systemctl status 2>&1 |grep /var/log/journal |wc -l 71 It opens SEVENTY ONE FILES TO GET LOGS ABOUT ONE APPLICATION systemctl status tinc FOR WHICH IT HAS NO LOGS IN THE FIRST PLACE journalctl -a -e -n10 -u tinc |cat -- No entries -- (it's the same for app with logs btw.) I can literally grep a bunch of text files faster than it can look thru it's "efficient" binary logs. But hey if you waste RAM to cache every journal file on your machine in RAM instead of, dunno, actually useful stuff, those commands are fast... It's an abomination and affront to good engineering. Which is shame coz I like many of the other parts. /endrant

loo 3y ago

https://github.com/awfulcooking/journalfs https://github.com/awfulcooking/journalfs

johnea 3y ago

I've been using it (including writing unit files etc) since archlinux adopted it, so over 10 years now. I still don't like it. The binary interface to logs is a good example, not only for the popular dislike for needing to run a binary to view the log, but also, central to my dislike, is the issue with the "init" system being in charge of logging at all. systemd if far far beyond an "init" system, it is striving to be the "kernel" of user space, in charge of all system functions that are not in the kernel. This isn't feature creep, it's by design. Is the "init" system in charge of network name resolution? What about making fundamental configuration setting to the OS? Another example of the binary required to access logs, is any change to a non-running root filesystem. If you've configured a rootfs for a machine other than the one you're doing this work on (maybe a different CPU architecture, or simply a rootfs for another machine) you're going to run into complications. Same situation when in a chroot. If the rootfs you're configuring, isn't the one currently active, those binary executables are going to havee trouble. As soon as we have systemd-packagemanagerd, there will be 0 difference between systemd based distributions. Everyone will simply put the kernel together w/ systemd for a complete operating system. This was Red Hat's intention, now IBM's intention. I use linux for my work, both in embedded targets and in my development workstation. For many years I've simply copied my home dir to new computers and moved on. The next time I configure a workstation from scratch, I'm going to voidlinux. runit, based on The DJB Way, is much closer to my ideal...

loo 3y ago
An OS has a lot of things to be done downstream of the kernel in userspace. Having one interface to them is useful. i respect the BSD hacker style, minimal init ethos. But man is it handy to have declarative sandboxing in service files. `loginctl` as a standard for listing, locking, killing user sessions. `machinectl` as a container / virtual machine manager. And --host / --machine to remote all of the above.
kaba0 3y ago
For the umpteenth time, systemd is not a single thing, it’s a group of related projects. The core is just big enough to fulfill the (quite hard) job of bringing up a system, doing dependency resolution and running services. Plenty other parts of the project are individual services only. Is KDE “longing for world domination” because they have multiple projects as well?

rektide 3y ago

> Large part of the value of Linux for me is stability and lack of churn Systemd is 13 years old. As far as I'm concerned, the complains against churn run out after the project is old enough to drink. Especially if it's not just well adopted, but by far the most popular option. In general, having open source but being afraid to change it sounds like hell to me. I personally believe in Linux & open source because it lets us keep improving & iterating & changing. Open source embodies the soft in software, and is the best vector computing society has for bringing light & clarity to a confusing but powerful man-made microverse.

stcroixx 3y ago
Linux is an IBM product at this point. Might as well use AIX. Makes me sad, but it’s done. With what they did to kill centos and rocky I’m switching our stuff to open BSD. Pushing these changes were strategic redhat business decisions masquerading as open source contributions.
- rektide 3y ago
  As a Debian user, it doesn't affect me. Supposedly back ported sources are also available just no longer tagged for RHEL, and if that's true my sadness is somewhat limited for my fellow distros, even if they are so heavily corporate in origin. My world & the Linux world keeps getting incredibly better every year, in my view. This 254 release is amazing, just so much stuff. Utterly unreadably long but posted some favs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36516792 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36516792 Chin up, man! Or best of luck over in openbsd land.
JdeBP 3y ago
What and where were you drinking at age 13? (-:

bananapub 3y ago

> Large part of the value of Linux for me is stability and lack of churn. over which part of linux's history do you feel this happened? during the years long libc migrations? during the thread wars? which linux-based OS have you used for a couple of decades that hasn't had large changes but has managed to continue to exist? slackware?