2 ms·

Do they need to? As an outsider, my view is that they already "won".

jauntywundrkind 8d ago
Is your Civilization victory a Science, Military or Cultural one? I think that depends on how and if the technology is socialized and spoken of. If people feel like it's an oppressor, something they don't understand that has rolled in, and now defacto is (is shipped in every distribution of note): it feels like a Military victory. Over them. It sparks no joy. Appealing to the nerds can be a strong science victory. Preach all your amazingness. I personally can go on and on and on about how awesome it is that systemd offers workload isolation, least privileges, cgroups for juggling priorities. I love that mdns kind of just works for me, and integrates well with my resolver. There's little science-y reasons. But there lurk Two Cultures problems everywhere. And figuring out how to bridge the technical to the world, how to sing praises, how to get the world to be interested in relating to, engaging in, giving it the ability to share in some of your wonder and awe: that is what turns Science Victory into a Cultural Victory. And it's what good worthy interesting projects deserve. And it should be an act we do, and help build. We should make appeals to the world, try to get them interested in relating to the upsides, and the downsides to, to give them something worth engaging. I feel like the negative creeps have absolutely slammed their way to Two Cultures wins, to appealing to the world with negativity, and I think some more deliberate, caring, thoughtful work and blogging would make a huge difference in building cultural momentum, in sealing in what ought be a Cultural Victory. That those who know systemd reasonably well largley agree with already, but that many people do not see or understand. (Am I missing other victory types?)
- dTal 7d ago
  > I personally can go on and on and on about how awesome it is that systemd offers workload isolation, least privileges, cgroups for juggling priorities. I love that mdns kind of just works for me, and integrates well with my resolver. So.... mDNS works out of the box on any glibc system with libnss-mdns and a running avahi-daemon - not "kind of" works, just Works. cgroups are a kernel feature that is quite straightforward to use without systemd. "Workload isolation" and "least privileges" are vague but seem to me to just be describing cgroups again, or just general permissions. I realize that this was an off the cuff remark, not a blog post in defense of systemd, but you must know that every time a systemd skeptic reads a list like this, full of "features" that work fine without it, the impression is only further reinforced that what systemd really provides is marketing.
  - jauntywundrkind 7d ago
    That you don't know what I'm talking about when I say least least privileges isn't stunning. Because almost no one took any precautions with how processes ran and only some people realize you should! Even though systemd makes it so so easy, and integrates many many different mechanisms and systems for locking down what procesess can do and what they have access to. SuSe has an ok page, but this is barely the tip of the iceberg they are covering. There are temporary users, sandboxed filesystems, all sorts of stuff more! https://documentation.suse.com/smart/security/html/systemd-securing/index.html https://documentation.suse.com/smart/security/html/systemd-s... "cgroups are a kernel feature that is quite straightforward to use without systemd". Oh, you've used cgconfigparser? You run your services via cgexec? You found cgrulesengd to be pleasant and productionally operizationable? Or did you have a bash /etc/init.d/set-my-cgroups with 30 hardcoded lines of things twiddling /sys/fs/cgroups files? C'mon my man. No one did either of these! Or at least very very few! Today Cgroups work incredibly well, out of the box, with no thought, and have a very sensible coherent pattern of use, that benefit all Linux users. And which is incredibly tweakable. Since systemd. Because of systemd. You're not being remotely intellectually honest & your suggestion that this was "straightforward" maybe comes from you being a master sysop with decades of experience for who this came second nature, and if that's so I think you have no idea how most code ran. But I think you are just blowing smoke, making up nonsense. I too ran years of libnss-mdns and avahi-daemon (another Lennart project btw). It worked for a decade, was fine. I'm glad systemd-networkd (advertising) and systemd-resolved (finding) just integrate these concerns for me, alongside everything else they just integrate amazingly, a drop-in file like everything else if I want. It's easier to scope & keep on top of which networks I do what mdns on. This is the weakest win of these three but it's still to me a sigificant win. To reframe: I realize that this was an off the cuff take-down, not a blog post in aggression of systemd, but you must know that every time a systemd hater tries to throw salt like this, full of "do we really win" that no one ever did before, the impression is only further reinforced that what the haters really got is nothing. Systemd composes incredibly well, with the way etc drop in files work. With the consistency of how it has different unit types that work together. With how units can BindsTo= and have After= and other patterns. There's a pretty amazing toolkit here that relates multiple parts together to form a very cohesive explorable and regular system, that many people know and understand. It helps you make really good use of all sorts of kernel capabilities like cgroups, like their namespaces, to help you juggle/constrain annoying system-hogs, to maintain better responsiveness, to lock down access to daemons. This is still just the tip, of a mono-repo of many projects all of which have common operational patterns and nice tooling, almost all (except to much hew & cry & perhaps rightfully so: journald) of which be disabled. "Just marketing" is a statement professing profound disconnect & ignorance.
nomel 8d ago
As someone that tried systemd init early on, without bias (I have no emotional attachment to how things start on my computer), it was incredibly clear that they would win.

Is your Civilization victory a Science, Military or Cultural one? I think that depends on how and if the technology is socialized and spoken of. If people feel like it's an oppressor, something they don't understand that has rolled in, and now defacto is (is shipped in every distribution of note): it feels like a Military victory. Over them. It sparks no joy. Appealing to the nerds can be a strong science victory. Preach all your amazingness. I personally can go on and on and on about how awesome it is that systemd offers workload isolation, least privileges, cgroups for juggling priorities. I love that mdns kind of just works for me, and integrates well with my resolver. There's little science-y reasons. But there lurk Two Cultures problems everywhere. And figuring out how to bridge the technical to the world, how to sing praises, how to get the world to be interested in relating to, engaging in, giving it the ability to share in some of your wonder and awe: that is what turns Science Victory into a Cultural Victory. And it's what good worthy interesting projects deserve. And it should be an act we do, and help build. We should make appeals to the world, try to get them interested in relating to the upsides, and the downsides to, to give them something worth engaging. I feel like the negative creeps have absolutely slammed their way to Two Cultures wins, to appealing to the world with negativity, and I think some more deliberate, caring, thoughtful work and blogging would make a huge difference in building cultural momentum, in sealing in what ought be a Cultural Victory. That those who know systemd reasonably well largley agree with already, but that many people do not see or understand. (Am I missing other victory types?)

dTal 7d ago
> I personally can go on and on and on about how awesome it is that systemd offers workload isolation, least privileges, cgroups for juggling priorities. I love that mdns kind of just works for me, and integrates well with my resolver. So.... mDNS works out of the box on any glibc system with libnss-mdns and a running avahi-daemon - not "kind of" works, just Works. cgroups are a kernel feature that is quite straightforward to use without systemd. "Workload isolation" and "least privileges" are vague but seem to me to just be describing cgroups again, or just general permissions. I realize that this was an off the cuff remark, not a blog post in defense of systemd, but you must know that every time a systemd skeptic reads a list like this, full of "features" that work fine without it, the impression is only further reinforced that what systemd really provides is marketing.
- jauntywundrkind 7d ago
  That you don't know what I'm talking about when I say least least privileges isn't stunning. Because almost no one took any precautions with how processes ran and only some people realize you should! Even though systemd makes it so so easy, and integrates many many different mechanisms and systems for locking down what procesess can do and what they have access to. SuSe has an ok page, but this is barely the tip of the iceberg they are covering. There are temporary users, sandboxed filesystems, all sorts of stuff more! https://documentation.suse.com/smart/security/html/systemd-securing/index.html https://documentation.suse.com/smart/security/html/systemd-s... "cgroups are a kernel feature that is quite straightforward to use without systemd". Oh, you've used cgconfigparser? You run your services via cgexec? You found cgrulesengd to be pleasant and productionally operizationable? Or did you have a bash /etc/init.d/set-my-cgroups with 30 hardcoded lines of things twiddling /sys/fs/cgroups files? C'mon my man. No one did either of these! Or at least very very few! Today Cgroups work incredibly well, out of the box, with no thought, and have a very sensible coherent pattern of use, that benefit all Linux users. And which is incredibly tweakable. Since systemd. Because of systemd. You're not being remotely intellectually honest & your suggestion that this was "straightforward" maybe comes from you being a master sysop with decades of experience for who this came second nature, and if that's so I think you have no idea how most code ran. But I think you are just blowing smoke, making up nonsense. I too ran years of libnss-mdns and avahi-daemon (another Lennart project btw). It worked for a decade, was fine. I'm glad systemd-networkd (advertising) and systemd-resolved (finding) just integrate these concerns for me, alongside everything else they just integrate amazingly, a drop-in file like everything else if I want. It's easier to scope & keep on top of which networks I do what mdns on. This is the weakest win of these three but it's still to me a sigificant win. To reframe: I realize that this was an off the cuff take-down, not a blog post in aggression of systemd, but you must know that every time a systemd hater tries to throw salt like this, full of "do we really win" that no one ever did before, the impression is only further reinforced that what the haters really got is nothing. Systemd composes incredibly well, with the way etc drop in files work. With the consistency of how it has different unit types that work together. With how units can BindsTo= and have After= and other patterns. There's a pretty amazing toolkit here that relates multiple parts together to form a very cohesive explorable and regular system, that many people know and understand. It helps you make really good use of all sorts of kernel capabilities like cgroups, like their namespaces, to help you juggle/constrain annoying system-hogs, to maintain better responsiveness, to lock down access to daemons. This is still just the tip, of a mono-repo of many projects all of which have common operational patterns and nice tooling, almost all (except to much hew & cry & perhaps rightfully so: journald) of which be disabled. "Just marketing" is a statement professing profound disconnect & ignorance.

nomel 8d ago

As someone that tried systemd init early on, without bias (I have no emotional attachment to how things start on my computer), it was incredibly clear that they would win.