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Yes, I much prefer this more nuanced take of "here's some things I like about systemd and here's some things I don't" then the blanket "everything about systemd

Yes, I much prefer this more nuanced take of "here's some things I like about systemd and here's some things I don't" then the blanket "everything about systemd sucks" feedback. I wish this project well. I hope it improves compatibility with BSDs for more projects.

skyyler 2y ago
"everything about systemd sucks" people generally don't understand the problems that systemd is attempting to remediate, in my experience. Just repeating dogma that they heard someone they consider cool say.
- toast0 2y ago
  Or perhaps, we don't have the problems that systemd is trying to solve. Or systemd creates new problems that we didn't need or want. Kind of like pulseaudio.
  - FeepingCreature 2y ago
    Yeah pulseaudio was like "you need this so you can have two apps playing music at the same time" entirely ignoring the existence of sound cards with mixers or the alsa soft mixer. Similarly, systemd was hyped at the time for, among others, allowing parallel service start entirely ignoring the several init systems that were already managing parallel start quite happily.
    - GauntletWizard 2y ago
      This turned out to be entirely the right approach, though, and it was probably pretty obvious even at the time. Sound Cards with built in mixers have all but died out. Everything they did has been eaten by software, Even at the time, few games used an API where they managed multiple channels directly; Software mixing was commonplace from the 90s. Any game that wanted to play battle sounds was not relying on the mere 6-8 channels that cards from that time could handle. Our modern Pipewire based workflow is remarkably simple and remarkably effective, and it's significantly an evolution of PA.
      - skyyler 2y ago
        I find it indicative of the quality of these complaints that sound cards with mixers were brought up at all. As if that's a good reason to hate PA.
        GauntletWizard 2y ago
        I'm always happy to discuss sound cards with mixers, though! As a supporter of the Bloop Museum[1], I think that the "What might have been" if we had dedicated hardware for playing dozens or hundreds of sound files at a time is an interesting question. There's a lot of experimentation in the audio space that has kind of died out, because audio is so cheap - While over in in graphics, we're still seeing interesting advancements and dead ends. [1] https://oldbytes.space/@bloopmuseum https://oldbytes.space/@bloopmuseum
        FeepingCreature 2y ago
        No, I hate PA cause it didn't work properly to the end. (Pipewire was better day 1 than PA ever was.) I just think that "you absolutely need PA to have multiple apps playing sound" was always nonsense, and the same sort of nonsense that was used to push systemd.
        toast0 2y ago
        Yeah, that was total nonsense. Good cards existed. And if you didn't have a good card, alsa had a soft mixer. FreeBSD added a softmixer to OSS, too, so you didn't even need alsa. Worst case, you could run the Enlightenment sound daemon without Enlightenment and it was compact and just worked (as long as you had a simple sound setup)
  - jeroenhd 2y ago
    I do. systemd solves a lot of my problems, actually. Of course all of systemd could be cobbled together by combining a dozen or so independent projects, but that mess is exactly why normal people (even normal computer people) shy away from Linux. And I don't recall a lot of software working well when Pulse isn't available, so I don't know why people still bring it up. Perhaps it's because I wasn't there at the time, but I've only seen ALSA as "that audio system you use when you have nothing else available". I still need the PulseAudio-wrapper for Pipewire to be useful for my systems, so clearly the Linux world has moved to Pulse-first.
wkat4242 2y ago
> I wish this project well. I hope it improves compatibility with BSDs for more projects. I don't think BSD compatibility is held back by its init system. It's more drivers that are the issue.
- markstos 2y ago
  I was referring to apps packaged for Linux which don’t work seamlessly on FreeBSD because they depend on some Linux-specific part of the systemd ecosystem.
  - wkat4242 2y ago
    dbus is a big player there, but that is available for FreeBSD for the packages that need it (desktop environments etc). Systemd isn't really that important in that sense. After all there are many Linux distros that don't use it and things work fine there too. But yeah, BSD is not Linux. So obviously things are going to be different. For example for plug & play it has its own devd for USB devices, and it can be configured easily. If you'd port over all the Linuxisms like dbus, systemd, cgroups etc, then you basically end up with... Linux. What is the point in running BSD then? It's a bit akin to people saying that every Linux should be more standardised (e.g. standard package manager, standard desktop), otherwise "the year of linux on the desktop" will never happen. But all these quirky desktops and distros are there because people have different needs and they don't want those to be watered down. The ecosystem as a whole doesn't matter to them. The same thing goes for BSD. I'm not using an OS with a desktop marketshare of literally 0.01% because I care about it becoming a mainstream desktop :) I also super duper hate the ideology behind GNOME so I would never use that, if it were the only option then I would just have to leave. PS: I have no issue with things like dbus being available in ports but definitely not in the core system.

skyyler 2y ago

"everything about systemd sucks" people generally don't understand the problems that systemd is attempting to remediate, in my experience. Just repeating dogma that they heard someone they consider cool say.

toast0 2y ago
Or perhaps, we don't have the problems that systemd is trying to solve. Or systemd creates new problems that we didn't need or want. Kind of like pulseaudio.
- FeepingCreature 2y ago
  Yeah pulseaudio was like "you need this so you can have two apps playing music at the same time" entirely ignoring the existence of sound cards with mixers or the alsa soft mixer. Similarly, systemd was hyped at the time for, among others, allowing parallel service start entirely ignoring the several init systems that were already managing parallel start quite happily.
  - GauntletWizard 2y ago
    This turned out to be entirely the right approach, though, and it was probably pretty obvious even at the time. Sound Cards with built in mixers have all but died out. Everything they did has been eaten by software, Even at the time, few games used an API where they managed multiple channels directly; Software mixing was commonplace from the 90s. Any game that wanted to play battle sounds was not relying on the mere 6-8 channels that cards from that time could handle. Our modern Pipewire based workflow is remarkably simple and remarkably effective, and it's significantly an evolution of PA.
    - skyyler 2y ago
      I find it indicative of the quality of these complaints that sound cards with mixers were brought up at all. As if that's a good reason to hate PA.
      - GauntletWizard 2y ago
        I'm always happy to discuss sound cards with mixers, though! As a supporter of the Bloop Museum[1], I think that the "What might have been" if we had dedicated hardware for playing dozens or hundreds of sound files at a time is an interesting question. There's a lot of experimentation in the audio space that has kind of died out, because audio is so cheap - While over in in graphics, we're still seeing interesting advancements and dead ends. [1] https://oldbytes.space/@bloopmuseum https://oldbytes.space/@bloopmuseum
      - FeepingCreature 2y ago
        No, I hate PA cause it didn't work properly to the end. (Pipewire was better day 1 than PA ever was.) I just think that "you absolutely need PA to have multiple apps playing sound" was always nonsense, and the same sort of nonsense that was used to push systemd.
        toast0 2y ago
        Yeah, that was total nonsense. Good cards existed. And if you didn't have a good card, alsa had a soft mixer. FreeBSD added a softmixer to OSS, too, so you didn't even need alsa. Worst case, you could run the Enlightenment sound daemon without Enlightenment and it was compact and just worked (as long as you had a simple sound setup)
- jeroenhd 2y ago
  I do. systemd solves a lot of my problems, actually. Of course all of systemd could be cobbled together by combining a dozen or so independent projects, but that mess is exactly why normal people (even normal computer people) shy away from Linux. And I don't recall a lot of software working well when Pulse isn't available, so I don't know why people still bring it up. Perhaps it's because I wasn't there at the time, but I've only seen ALSA as "that audio system you use when you have nothing else available". I still need the PulseAudio-wrapper for Pipewire to be useful for my systems, so clearly the Linux world has moved to Pulse-first.

wkat4242 2y ago

> I wish this project well. I hope it improves compatibility with BSDs for more projects. I don't think BSD compatibility is held back by its init system. It's more drivers that are the issue.

markstos 2y ago
I was referring to apps packaged for Linux which don’t work seamlessly on FreeBSD because they depend on some Linux-specific part of the systemd ecosystem.
- wkat4242 2y ago
  dbus is a big player there, but that is available for FreeBSD for the packages that need it (desktop environments etc). Systemd isn't really that important in that sense. After all there are many Linux distros that don't use it and things work fine there too. But yeah, BSD is not Linux. So obviously things are going to be different. For example for plug & play it has its own devd for USB devices, and it can be configured easily. If you'd port over all the Linuxisms like dbus, systemd, cgroups etc, then you basically end up with... Linux. What is the point in running BSD then? It's a bit akin to people saying that every Linux should be more standardised (e.g. standard package manager, standard desktop), otherwise "the year of linux on the desktop" will never happen. But all these quirky desktops and distros are there because people have different needs and they don't want those to be watered down. The ecosystem as a whole doesn't matter to them. The same thing goes for BSD. I'm not using an OS with a desktop marketshare of literally 0.01% because I care about it becoming a mainstream desktop :) I also super duper hate the ideology behind GNOME so I would never use that, if it were the only option then I would just have to leave. PS: I have no issue with things like dbus being available in ports but definitely not in the core system.