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> pick things like "which of these cron daemons should I install". And we're back at it: systemd seemingly has plans to eliminate cron. I was not impressed whe

> pick things like "which of these cron daemons should I install". And we're back at it: systemd seemingly has plans to eliminate cron. I was not impressed when I have been pulling my hair out on why certain jobs in Ubuntu still run despite being removed from cron files. Turns out, systemd now has 'timers'. So, mark my words: a few Ubuntu releases down the line, cron will become an optional package and after a couple more it won't even be available. Up next: sudo.

akerl_ 2y ago
Yes. Systemd timers are an order of magnitude better for the average distro maintainer and the average user than the various ways of invoking and running cron.
- egorfine 2y ago
  cron worked just fine and seemingly was perfect for the job for decades and dozens of operating systems. What happened?
  - akerl_ 2y ago
    It didn’t and wasn’t.
  - vetinari 2y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41578676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41578676 See the last point.
    - egorfine 2y ago
      Got it. One man's Unix philosophy is another man's "rag-tag of tools".
      - vetinari 2y ago
        Well, a part of the unix philosophy is "doing it well". The "rag-tag of tools" are usually missing that part.
tmtvl 2y ago
Systemd has had timers since 2012: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/36697dc0199e25f09b78090fcf5f1cf8a3648ffd https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/36697dc0199e25f09b... So if timers were gonna replace cron I'd imagine it'd have happened already. That said, those Canonical folks are pretty crazy, so who knows. Sudo getting replaced by doas may not be the worst thing.
- egorfine 2y ago
  Many parts of systemd were available for long time but fortunately were not used in distros. And then out of the blue Canonical decided that socket activation for sshd is the way.