5 ms·

Sorry, can you be specific about what's terrible about systemd? I really would like to know why it's the "worst piece of shit ever written".

by tombert 11mo ago

MangoToupe 11mo ago
I can't speak for others, but I find it poorly documented and only rarely improves on the systems it replaced, and it invalidates decades of high quality documentation that you can easily find on the internet. It's possible the transition will pay off one day with eg a usable graphic interfaces for system configuration that might compete with that of mac os, but as of yet, no such thing has materialized. This is especially true compared to how beautifully well and consistently the BSDs tend to document their init and configuration systems. Or Mac OS, again—launchd is still way easier to use and far more of a "fire and forget" system without adding complicated interfaces for unrelated stuff like network interfaces and logging. But that has always been true as well.
rootnod3 11mo ago
It is unnecessarily complex to begin with. On top of that, the maintainers are historically not the most open to criticism and try to aggressively push the adoption. So much so that Gnome for example now has very strong dependecies on systemd which makes it very difficult to adopt Gnome on non-systemd systems unless you wanna throw a bunch of patches at it. This hard coupling alone is something that I wouldn't want to rely on, ever.
- arthurfirst 11mo ago
  THIS. Also what problem does it solve that RC scripts can't accomplish? They are much more readable and less complex. What is the benefit of all that added complexity? Even more to the point the business case for it in a professional setting? I've been wondering that for a long time.
  - rootnod3 11mo ago
    It autodiscovers the dependency chain or shit like that? If you got 500+ services that need to be orchestrated you honestly have a very different problem. I love the simplicity of RC scripts. Easy to understand, easy to debug, it just fucking works. Simplicity is king, because it's understandable. A behemoth like systemd feels like it requires a PhD. Systemd also runs 100% against the Unix/Linux philosophy of composability and single purpose.
    - arthurfirst 11mo ago
      THIS ---- Systemd also runs 100% against the Unix/Linux philosophy of composability and single purpose.
    - tombert 11mo ago
      If you need to make sure that the network stack starts after the usb stack and that starts after the pcie stack and that starts after the … then systemd is considerably easier than SysV init. You’re handwaving away something that is pretty important. You can say that having 500 services is its own problem but it’s also a reality, even on desktop operating systems.
      - rootnod3 11mo ago
        Count how many services you have that are not already defined by the system itself in its order? So, remove core system services. System itself should already make sure that USB starts after PCIE and all that. So go and count all the services that are not base install and tell me how many you have.
    - pezezin 11mo ago
      In which bizarre world is an RC script easier to understand than a systemd service file? There is nothing simple about RC scripts.
  - rootnod3 11mo ago
    Addendum to my other reply: it comes down to the "not invented here" problem which always invites weirdly complex solutions to problems that don't exist. Linux is "just" the kernel and every distro invites new solutions to perceived core problems whereas the BSDs have a whole base system that comes from one source, reducing the chance of a systemd popping up there. Both approaches have their ups and downs.
  - shakow 11mo ago
    Barging in as a Linux guy interested to learn more about the BSDs, so please bear with me. Something I love with systemd is how I can get very useful stats about a running process, e.g. uptime, cumulated disk & network IOs, current & peak mem usage, etc. Also the process management (e.g. restart rules & dependency chain) is pretty nice as well. Is that doable with RC (or other BSD-specific tooling) as well?
    - rootnod3 11mo ago
      It's up to you to say check in your init script if you need to start another service before you. In terms of uptime or IO and stuff, those metrics are already available. Be that via SNMP or other means. Say you start an nginx in systems, which network and disk usage does it report? Just the main process or all its forks? Same problem in RC. But that is part of the point. Why in the ever-loving existence should an INIT system provide stats like disk usage? That is NOT what an init system is for. If you need memory usage or IO usage or uptime, there are so many other tools already integrated into the system that the init system doesn't need to bother. Init systems should only care about starting, stopping and restarting services. Period. The moment they do more than that, they failed at their core job. This might came across stronger than meant to, but still holds true. BSDs are about "keep it simple, keep it single purpose" to a "I can live with that degree". What you get though is outstanding documentation and every component is easily understandable. Prime examples are OpenBSD/FreeBSD PF. That firewall config is just easy to grok, easy to read up on and does 99.999% of what you ever need out of a firewall.
      - shakow 11mo ago
        > which network and disk usage does it report? Just the main process or all its forks? Same problem in RC. Well, the main process and its whole hierarchy, that's what you would expect of an init system monitoring its services, right? And what's nice with systemd is that I can get that from a simple `systemctl status my-service` – of course I could deploy a whole observability stack, but better if I can avoid it. But there is no need to be defensive, it RC can that's nice, if it can't, then well, too bad. > there are so many other tools already integrated into the system that the init system doesn't need to bother. That's what I'd love to hear about, what are the equivalent in the BSDs world.
vrighter 11mo ago
Because "it's one program doing too many things and that goes against the unix philosophy" In reality systemd is 69 different binaries (only one of which runs as pid 1), all developed under the same project, designed to work together.
- arthurfirst 11mo ago
  YES -- Because "it's one program doing too many things and that goes against the unix philosophy"
- tombert 11mo ago
  I don’t see how they can be considered “one program to so many things” when it’s 69 different binaries. Yes they’re under the same project, but the same can be said about FreeBSD itself. They’re designed to work together but as far as I am aware there’s no reason you couldn’t replace individual binaries with different ones, though admittedly I have never done that.
  - vrighter 11mo ago
    I completely agree with you. It is very baffling to me too. But that is literally the reason parroted the most. Linux is a monolith that includes a bunch of drivers for things you will never need (on a typical distro, not when you compile your own kernel). It does way more than I need it to, and it most definitely does more than one thing. But of course that's ok in that case
sellmesoap 11mo ago
The systemd privacy issue of DNS fallback to cloudflare is something that comes to mind. No shade on cloudflare, I love them despite the privacy implications their business entails.

Sorry, can you be specific about what's terrible about systemd? I really would like to know why it's the "worst piece of shit ever written".

by tombert 11mo ago

Sorry, can you be specific about what's terrible about systemd? I really would like to know why it's the "worst piece of shit ever written".

MangoToupe 11mo ago

I can't speak for others, but I find it poorly documented and only rarely improves on the systems it replaced, and it invalidates decades of high quality documentation that you can easily find on the internet. It's possible the transition will pay off one day with eg a usable graphic interfaces for system configuration that might compete with that of mac os, but as of yet, no such thing has materialized. This is especially true compared to how beautifully well and consistently the BSDs tend to document their init and configuration systems. Or Mac OS, again—launchd is still way easier to use and far more of a "fire and forget" system without adding complicated interfaces for unrelated stuff like network interfaces and logging. But that has always been true as well.

rootnod3 11mo ago

It is unnecessarily complex to begin with. On top of that, the maintainers are historically not the most open to criticism and try to aggressively push the adoption. So much so that Gnome for example now has very strong dependecies on systemd which makes it very difficult to adopt Gnome on non-systemd systems unless you wanna throw a bunch of patches at it. This hard coupling alone is something that I wouldn't want to rely on, ever.

arthurfirst 11mo ago
THIS. Also what problem does it solve that RC scripts can't accomplish? They are much more readable and less complex. What is the benefit of all that added complexity? Even more to the point the business case for it in a professional setting? I've been wondering that for a long time.
- rootnod3 11mo ago
  It autodiscovers the dependency chain or shit like that? If you got 500+ services that need to be orchestrated you honestly have a very different problem. I love the simplicity of RC scripts. Easy to understand, easy to debug, it just fucking works. Simplicity is king, because it's understandable. A behemoth like systemd feels like it requires a PhD. Systemd also runs 100% against the Unix/Linux philosophy of composability and single purpose.
  - arthurfirst 11mo ago
    THIS ---- Systemd also runs 100% against the Unix/Linux philosophy of composability and single purpose.
  - tombert 11mo ago
    If you need to make sure that the network stack starts after the usb stack and that starts after the pcie stack and that starts after the … then systemd is considerably easier than SysV init. You’re handwaving away something that is pretty important. You can say that having 500 services is its own problem but it’s also a reality, even on desktop operating systems.
    - rootnod3 11mo ago
      Count how many services you have that are not already defined by the system itself in its order? So, remove core system services. System itself should already make sure that USB starts after PCIE and all that. So go and count all the services that are not base install and tell me how many you have.
  - pezezin 11mo ago
    In which bizarre world is an RC script easier to understand than a systemd service file? There is nothing simple about RC scripts.
- rootnod3 11mo ago
  Addendum to my other reply: it comes down to the "not invented here" problem which always invites weirdly complex solutions to problems that don't exist. Linux is "just" the kernel and every distro invites new solutions to perceived core problems whereas the BSDs have a whole base system that comes from one source, reducing the chance of a systemd popping up there. Both approaches have their ups and downs.
- shakow 11mo ago
  Barging in as a Linux guy interested to learn more about the BSDs, so please bear with me. Something I love with systemd is how I can get very useful stats about a running process, e.g. uptime, cumulated disk & network IOs, current & peak mem usage, etc. Also the process management (e.g. restart rules & dependency chain) is pretty nice as well. Is that doable with RC (or other BSD-specific tooling) as well?
  - rootnod3 11mo ago
    It's up to you to say check in your init script if you need to start another service before you. In terms of uptime or IO and stuff, those metrics are already available. Be that via SNMP or other means. Say you start an nginx in systems, which network and disk usage does it report? Just the main process or all its forks? Same problem in RC. But that is part of the point. Why in the ever-loving existence should an INIT system provide stats like disk usage? That is NOT what an init system is for. If you need memory usage or IO usage or uptime, there are so many other tools already integrated into the system that the init system doesn't need to bother. Init systems should only care about starting, stopping and restarting services. Period. The moment they do more than that, they failed at their core job. This might came across stronger than meant to, but still holds true. BSDs are about "keep it simple, keep it single purpose" to a "I can live with that degree". What you get though is outstanding documentation and every component is easily understandable. Prime examples are OpenBSD/FreeBSD PF. That firewall config is just easy to grok, easy to read up on and does 99.999% of what you ever need out of a firewall.
    - shakow 11mo ago
      > which network and disk usage does it report? Just the main process or all its forks? Same problem in RC. Well, the main process and its whole hierarchy, that's what you would expect of an init system monitoring its services, right? And what's nice with systemd is that I can get that from a simple `systemctl status my-service` – of course I could deploy a whole observability stack, but better if I can avoid it. But there is no need to be defensive, it RC can that's nice, if it can't, then well, too bad. > there are so many other tools already integrated into the system that the init system doesn't need to bother. That's what I'd love to hear about, what are the equivalent in the BSDs world.

vrighter 11mo ago

Because "it's one program doing too many things and that goes against the unix philosophy" In reality systemd is 69 different binaries (only one of which runs as pid 1), all developed under the same project, designed to work together.

arthurfirst 11mo ago
YES -- Because "it's one program doing too many things and that goes against the unix philosophy"
tombert 11mo ago
I don’t see how they can be considered “one program to so many things” when it’s 69 different binaries. Yes they’re under the same project, but the same can be said about FreeBSD itself. They’re designed to work together but as far as I am aware there’s no reason you couldn’t replace individual binaries with different ones, though admittedly I have never done that.
- vrighter 11mo ago
  I completely agree with you. It is very baffling to me too. But that is literally the reason parroted the most. Linux is a monolith that includes a bunch of drivers for things you will never need (on a typical distro, not when you compile your own kernel). It does way more than I need it to, and it most definitely does more than one thing. But of course that's ok in that case

sellmesoap 11mo ago

The systemd privacy issue of DNS fallback to cloudflare is something that comes to mind. No shade on cloudflare, I love them despite the privacy implications their business entails.