5 ms·

I've seen this discussion come by many times, and every time I had to get my eyebrows back from the back of my head when reading the responses. I get what the

by DCKing 12y ago

I've seen this discussion come by many times, and every time I had to get my eyebrows back from the back of my head when reading the responses. I get what the technical differences are between systemd and alternative solutions. That is not the problem. What I don't get is how the init system of anything can evoke such emotions. It all goes way beyond expressing preference. The flamewars and vitriol that have been spread are disgraceful, and people are seriously considering switching to different operating systems because of whatever package runs their daemons and their startup scripts. It's embarrassing. As a frequent user of Linux, it completely mystifies me how changes in this can cause such emotions. I mean, I'm the kind of guy who did not prefer Fedora for such details as font rendering and certain package policies, so I'm not insensitive to distro differences in general. But I guess I'm ignorant about why so many people seem to cherish such very strong opinions about an init system. What is it about init systems that causes this outrage? I really want to know!

chimeracoder 12y ago
> What is it about init systems that causes this outrage? I really want to know! There are some technical concerns, but a disproportionate amount of criticism is because the lead developer[0] of systemd also developed PulseAudio, which was adopted by distros too early and therefore caused a lot of problems for people. People remember PulseAudio without much fondness, so they are bitter and take it out on systemd. It doesn't help that he has a somewhat direct manner of communicating, which some people find off-putting. So, to answer your question, a lot of it is personal, not technical. That's why you see much more vitriol than you'd otherwise expect for a somewhat technically controversial, low-level piece of software. [0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Not as much as you'd think, actually. A large part of concerns are technical, sometimes abstract though still quite valid (Rob Landley's take on it was good). That said, Poettering's character is so distinctive that it's nearly impossible not to do a little jab against him.
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    Just so you know, what you are saying doesn't contradict what I am saying. You're saying that there are technical concerns, and that those are a large number of the concerns expressed. I'm saying that his personality and previous history with PulseAudio are a reason that those technical concerns are expressed far more often (and with more vitriol) than they otherwise would be.
  - ausjke 12y ago
    I happened to work in parallel with Rob a while ago and could not agree more with him on his systemd opinions. I just wish that Debian did not take systemd, that _really_ saddens me.
- epdtry 12y ago
  Another part of the problem is that people feel that systemd is being forced on them (more so than the usual "my distro switched to X, so I'm stuck using X"). The major issue right now is systemd-logind, a replacement for the unmaintained ConsoleKit daemon which is used to manage login sessions. logind provides functionality that is necessary for modern desktop environments, but it's designed to work only with the systemd init daemon. GNOME in particular has been talking about adding a hard dependency on logind, and once that happens the only choice of init system for people running GNOME will be systemd.
DanBC 12y ago
> What I don't get is how the init system of anything can evoke such emotions. It all goes way beyond expressing preference. The flamewars and vitriol that have been spread are disgraceful, and people are seriously considering switching to different operating systems because of whatever package runs their daemons and their startup scripts. It's embarrassing. It's partly a hang-over from toxic communities and people ignoring all the evanglist advice. Linux had a lot of early discussion on Usenet. One feature of Usenet was robust discussion (often under people's real names) which could devolve into hateful flame wars. This was not limited to Linux discussion, but includes Vi vs Emacs, the pronunciation of gif, BSD vs GPL licences, microkernals, etc etc etc. There are also people involved in this current argument who are difficult to talk to. These people have help create a totally toxic environment. It's not limited to linux. There are several megabytes (doesn't sound much but don't forget it's just text) of arguing on Wikipedia over m-dash, n-dash, hypens and etc. and that place has rules to supposedly encourage collaborative behaviour.
lake99 12y ago
> What is it about init systems that causes this outrage? I like systemd. It has shaven quite a few seconds off my boot time. I get that its modularity simplifies things for the developer. However, I understand some of that outrage. Linux systems have typically been mix-and-match. However, when systemd started gaining popularity, some packages have been written to depend on it, and it seems to be becoming difficult for people to choose not to have systemd. Given that systemd is built to make good use of Linux-specific features, it's also annoying for *BSD developers to get many software packages to build and run on their systems. Look at the output from my own setup: Required By : accountsservice bluez-utils chromium colord crda device-mapper lib32-systemd libgusb libpulse libusb lightdm lvm2 media-player-info mesa mkinitcpio netctl packagekit pcmciautils polkit procps-ng python2-pyudev qt5-base qtwebkit rtkit spotify subversion systemd-sysvcompat udisks2 upower xf86-input-evdev I don't understand why many of these packages need systemd.
- keithpeter 12y ago
  "I don't understand why many of these packages need systemd." Exactly the issue I think. I'm wondering (not trolling) how many desktop people actually reboot the kernel (fresh boot or resume from hibernate) as opposed to using suspend to ram? Given the outrage the Gnome devs caused by hiding the power down function on early versions of Gnome 3 quite a few. I generally just suspend, but I've recently started using hibernate on one laptop with whole disk encryption just in case of petty theft/leaving it on a bus. Do any sysadmins use automatic spinning up of instances of a small Linux to cope with traffic spikes? Is that something that is actually done? Boot time could matter then.
e7620 12y ago
In general, this is not about the merits of systemd as a program. GNU/Linux represents choice and freedom. The abundance of distros is proof of that. You can choose your preferred init system, system logger, cron daemon, desktop environment, browser, etc. Now, systemd is being forcefully pushed to all distros. For instance, by merging udev (a part of the Linux kernel) with systemd. We can't even build a distro anymore without downloading systemd. User choice is under threat. In this situation, some people align with the forceful approach of systemd. Some prefer to choose what goes into their computers. This is similar to the inclusion of DRM in Firefox, there's no middle ground. So the debate is really about competitition vs a walled garden provided by systemd.
- icebraining 12y ago
  udev (a part of the Linux kernel) I thought one of the advantages of udev (vs devfs) was that it was completely in userspace?
  - e7620 12y ago
    You're correct, but that's not the point. Some device drivers run in userspace, even the Linux kernel itself can run in userspace!
    - icebraining 12y ago
      How is it not the point? You said "we can't even build a distro anymore without downloading systemd," due to the implication that udev was embedded in the kernel, but that's not true. You can build a distro - just don't use udev.
      - e7620 12y ago
        udev is a necessary component of Linux. You could say just use a fork like eudev. Fine (for the time being). But the thing is, you can't remove udev from the Linux kernel if you want to keep it calling Linux, as it'd be a fork.
btone 12y ago
Well, part of the emotions are probably caused by feelings of helplessness. How would you feel when someone says they won't fix a bug? https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64116 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64116
- kbar13 12y ago
  WONTFIX is a common enough response that many bug trackers have it in their default list of responses. WONTFIX is very much a valid response.
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  That's a terrible response to corruption of a key system utility. "Oh, corruption happens, deal with it." System logs are much too important of a subsystem to have such a blaise attitude when things break.
rwmj 12y ago
If systemd was just an init system, there wouldn't any problem. It's the fact is now includes about 30 other very non-init features that's the problem. Things like an NTP client, a network config tool, a boot firmware management tool, a login system, and a lot more.
keithpeter 12y ago
Not just init systems. Try version numbers[1] or choice of default desktop for a release [2]. The default mark you, not removing any of the many alternatives. [1] http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2014-June/010444.html http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2014-June/010... [and the many many subsequent replies] [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/08/msg00129.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/08/msg00129.html [and the rest of the thread, and the other threads about the same issue] I suspect this one has a lot to do with issues around the structure of the operating system and the way major components depend on each other.

by DCKing 12y ago

chimeracoder 12y ago

> What is it about init systems that causes this outrage? I really want to know! There are some technical concerns, but a disproportionate amount of criticism is because the lead developer[0] of systemd also developed PulseAudio, which was adopted by distros too early and therefore caused a lot of problems for people. People remember PulseAudio without much fondness, so they are bitter and take it out on systemd. It doesn't help that he has a somewhat direct manner of communicating, which some people find off-putting. So, to answer your question, a lot of it is personal, not technical. That's why you see much more vitriol than you'd otherwise expect for a somewhat technically controversial, low-level piece of software. [0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Not as much as you'd think, actually. A large part of concerns are technical, sometimes abstract though still quite valid (Rob Landley's take on it was good). That said, Poettering's character is so distinctive that it's nearly impossible not to do a little jab against him.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  Just so you know, what you are saying doesn't contradict what I am saying. You're saying that there are technical concerns, and that those are a large number of the concerns expressed. I'm saying that his personality and previous history with PulseAudio are a reason that those technical concerns are expressed far more often (and with more vitriol) than they otherwise would be.
- ausjke 12y ago
  I happened to work in parallel with Rob a while ago and could not agree more with him on his systemd opinions. I just wish that Debian did not take systemd, that _really_ saddens me.
epdtry 12y ago
Another part of the problem is that people feel that systemd is being forced on them (more so than the usual "my distro switched to X, so I'm stuck using X"). The major issue right now is systemd-logind, a replacement for the unmaintained ConsoleKit daemon which is used to manage login sessions. logind provides functionality that is necessary for modern desktop environments, but it's designed to work only with the systemd init daemon. GNOME in particular has been talking about adding a hard dependency on logind, and once that happens the only choice of init system for people running GNOME will be systemd.

DanBC 12y ago

> What I don't get is how the init system of anything can evoke such emotions. It all goes way beyond expressing preference. The flamewars and vitriol that have been spread are disgraceful, and people are seriously considering switching to different operating systems because of whatever package runs their daemons and their startup scripts. It's embarrassing. It's partly a hang-over from toxic communities and people ignoring all the evanglist advice. Linux had a lot of early discussion on Usenet. One feature of Usenet was robust discussion (often under people's real names) which could devolve into hateful flame wars. This was not limited to Linux discussion, but includes Vi vs Emacs, the pronunciation of gif, BSD vs GPL licences, microkernals, etc etc etc. There are also people involved in this current argument who are difficult to talk to. These people have help create a totally toxic environment. It's not limited to linux. There are several megabytes (doesn't sound much but don't forget it's just text) of arguing on Wikipedia over m-dash, n-dash, hypens and etc. and that place has rules to supposedly encourage collaborative behaviour.

lake99 12y ago

> What is it about init systems that causes this outrage? I like systemd. It has shaven quite a few seconds off my boot time. I get that its modularity simplifies things for the developer. However, I understand some of that outrage. Linux systems have typically been mix-and-match. However, when systemd started gaining popularity, some packages have been written to depend on it, and it seems to be becoming difficult for people to choose not to have systemd. Given that systemd is built to make good use of Linux-specific features, it's also annoying for *BSD developers to get many software packages to build and run on their systems. Look at the output from my own setup: Required By : accountsservice bluez-utils chromium colord crda device-mapper lib32-systemd libgusb libpulse libusb lightdm lvm2 media-player-info mesa mkinitcpio netctl packagekit pcmciautils polkit procps-ng python2-pyudev qt5-base qtwebkit rtkit spotify subversion systemd-sysvcompat udisks2 upower xf86-input-evdev I don't understand why many of these packages need systemd.

keithpeter 12y ago
"I don't understand why many of these packages need systemd." Exactly the issue I think. I'm wondering (not trolling) how many desktop people actually reboot the kernel (fresh boot or resume from hibernate) as opposed to using suspend to ram? Given the outrage the Gnome devs caused by hiding the power down function on early versions of Gnome 3 quite a few. I generally just suspend, but I've recently started using hibernate on one laptop with whole disk encryption just in case of petty theft/leaving it on a bus. Do any sysadmins use automatic spinning up of instances of a small Linux to cope with traffic spikes? Is that something that is actually done? Boot time could matter then.

e7620 12y ago

In general, this is not about the merits of systemd as a program. GNU/Linux represents choice and freedom. The abundance of distros is proof of that. You can choose your preferred init system, system logger, cron daemon, desktop environment, browser, etc. Now, systemd is being forcefully pushed to all distros. For instance, by merging udev (a part of the Linux kernel) with systemd. We can't even build a distro anymore without downloading systemd. User choice is under threat. In this situation, some people align with the forceful approach of systemd. Some prefer to choose what goes into their computers. This is similar to the inclusion of DRM in Firefox, there's no middle ground. So the debate is really about competitition vs a walled garden provided by systemd.

icebraining 12y ago
udev (a part of the Linux kernel) I thought one of the advantages of udev (vs devfs) was that it was completely in userspace?
- e7620 12y ago
  You're correct, but that's not the point. Some device drivers run in userspace, even the Linux kernel itself can run in userspace!
  - icebraining 12y ago
    How is it not the point? You said "we can't even build a distro anymore without downloading systemd," due to the implication that udev was embedded in the kernel, but that's not true. You can build a distro - just don't use udev.
    - e7620 12y ago
      udev is a necessary component of Linux. You could say just use a fork like eudev. Fine (for the time being). But the thing is, you can't remove udev from the Linux kernel if you want to keep it calling Linux, as it'd be a fork.

btone 12y ago

Well, part of the emotions are probably caused by feelings of helplessness. How would you feel when someone says they won't fix a bug? https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64116 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64116

kbar13 12y ago
WONTFIX is a common enough response that many bug trackers have it in their default list of responses. WONTFIX is very much a valid response.
Sanddancer 12y ago
That's a terrible response to corruption of a key system utility. "Oh, corruption happens, deal with it." System logs are much too important of a subsystem to have such a blaise attitude when things break.

rwmj 12y ago

If systemd was just an init system, there wouldn't any problem. It's the fact is now includes about 30 other very non-init features that's the problem. Things like an NTP client, a network config tool, a boot firmware management tool, a login system, and a lot more.

keithpeter 12y ago

Not just init systems. Try version numbers[1] or choice of default desktop for a release [2]. The default mark you, not removing any of the many alternatives. [1] http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2014-June/010444.html http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2014-June/010... [and the many many subsequent replies] [2] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/08/msg00129.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2014/08/msg00129.html [and the rest of the thread, and the other threads about the same issue] I suspect this one has a lot to do with issues around the structure of the operating system and the way major components depend on each other.