4 ms·

I would be thrilled if Debian gave users the choice of init systems. I switched to systemd a couple months ago as well, and had nothing _but_ problems. My lapto

I would be thrilled if Debian gave users the choice of init systems. I switched to systemd a couple months ago as well, and had nothing _but_ problems. My laptop never turns off, so boot times are irrelevant to me, and I would like to have a linux system that actually allows me to listen to audio, obtain an IP address, etc. I would gladly switch back to Debian if I could swap systemd out for something else.

pantalaimon 12y ago
systemd in Debian is still in testing, it's expected to be buggy at this point. Have you tried a distribution which already comes with systemd preconfigured, such as Fedora, Suse or CentOS?
- untothebreach 12y ago
  Yea, I didn't actually try systemd on Debian because of the unstable-ness. I actually tried it on Fedora, and like I said, had nothing but trouble. Normally I would fight through it, file bug reports, etc, but the benefits of switching to systemd didn't seem to be worth it. When I see debates about systemd, I rarely see compelling technical reasons from _either_ side. The only technical reason I can see to move to systemd is improved boot times, which doesn't seem worth it when (like someone else in this thread mentioned) most of your systems are either always on, or suspended to disk. EDIT: I should probably also say, my desktop GUI setup is rather sparse. I usually run a debian server edition with SLiM & XMonad, which starts up ridiculously fast no matter which init system I am using. So, systemd seems a bit like overkill for my usecase.
  - pantalaimon 12y ago
    > The only technical reason I can see to move to systemd is improved boot time What about service isolation & monitoring and the unified journal? IMO those are huge improvements to the status quo.
    - untothebreach 12y ago
      Those very well might be better, in the technical sense, but none of them seem particularly compelling to me. None of those solve a problem I am having (or have had). Change is fine, I will happily learn a new init system when it provides solutions to my problems, but switching because "the current init system is old" doesn't seem worth it to me.
    - e12e 12y ago
      First, I think the work in Debian to support kfreebsd and hurd is pretty important. Fringe (for now), but important. But more importantly [ed:than what is good for just Debian], a Linux monoculture would be a bad thing. We need (open)solaris, openbsd, freebsd, netbsd and OS X - which means any Linux-only, not-very-portable solution to these things just should not be mainstream. Consider that jails on freebsd works with, but do not demand, zfs. Even if arguably zfs solved a lot more real nuisances and problems than systemd does. Last time systemd was mentioned, I addressed the issue of the journal, and how it being prone to corruption on bad crashes didn't really help its utility. There's room for improvement in init handling (see eg daemontools/runit) - and there may be a case to replace init. But so far I've yet to see any compelling arguments for systemd that have much to do with systemd. And their stance on portability, and complexity demonstrate to me an absolute ignorence of risk: portability, simplicity and small components are effective tools to mitigate risk. Probably the most compelling argument is that simple services can now have simple config files rather than complex redundant shell init scripts - but it must surely be possible to take a simple config and generate a correct script for most of those services that really benefit from simple configs (iow those that have pretty straightforward demands).
      - makomk 12y ago
        A Linux monoculture would be a bad thing for users, but it'd be very beneficial for big Linux-centric companies like Red Hat - if everything depends heavily on Linux-specific functionality, there's less risk of another Unix they can't offer like Solaris coming along and eating their lunch.
      - vertex-four 12y ago
- vezzy-fnord 12y ago
  Fedora is known to be horribly unoptimized: http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Optimizations/ http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Optimizations/ I've also noticed that the unit ordering and dependency chains can be quite flimsy and slow, occasionally freezing entirely before the display manager is started.
  - krakensden 12y ago
    IIRC, Fedora 20, out of the box, will block your login screen on setting up wireless.

pantalaimon 12y ago

systemd in Debian is still in testing, it's expected to be buggy at this point. Have you tried a distribution which already comes with systemd preconfigured, such as Fedora, Suse or CentOS?

untothebreach 12y ago
Yea, I didn't actually try systemd on Debian because of the unstable-ness. I actually tried it on Fedora, and like I said, had nothing but trouble. Normally I would fight through it, file bug reports, etc, but the benefits of switching to systemd didn't seem to be worth it. When I see debates about systemd, I rarely see compelling technical reasons from _either_ side. The only technical reason I can see to move to systemd is improved boot times, which doesn't seem worth it when (like someone else in this thread mentioned) most of your systems are either always on, or suspended to disk. EDIT: I should probably also say, my desktop GUI setup is rather sparse. I usually run a debian server edition with SLiM & XMonad, which starts up ridiculously fast no matter which init system I am using. So, systemd seems a bit like overkill for my usecase.
- pantalaimon 12y ago
  > The only technical reason I can see to move to systemd is improved boot time What about service isolation & monitoring and the unified journal? IMO those are huge improvements to the status quo.
  - untothebreach 12y ago
    Those very well might be better, in the technical sense, but none of them seem particularly compelling to me. None of those solve a problem I am having (or have had). Change is fine, I will happily learn a new init system when it provides solutions to my problems, but switching because "the current init system is old" doesn't seem worth it to me.
  - e12e 12y ago
    First, I think the work in Debian to support kfreebsd and hurd is pretty important. Fringe (for now), but important. But more importantly [ed:than what is good for just Debian], a Linux monoculture would be a bad thing. We need (open)solaris, openbsd, freebsd, netbsd and OS X - which means any Linux-only, not-very-portable solution to these things just should not be mainstream. Consider that jails on freebsd works with, but do not demand, zfs. Even if arguably zfs solved a lot more real nuisances and problems than systemd does. Last time systemd was mentioned, I addressed the issue of the journal, and how it being prone to corruption on bad crashes didn't really help its utility. There's room for improvement in init handling (see eg daemontools/runit) - and there may be a case to replace init. But so far I've yet to see any compelling arguments for systemd that have much to do with systemd. And their stance on portability, and complexity demonstrate to me an absolute ignorence of risk: portability, simplicity and small components are effective tools to mitigate risk. Probably the most compelling argument is that simple services can now have simple config files rather than complex redundant shell init scripts - but it must surely be possible to take a simple config and generate a correct script for most of those services that really benefit from simple configs (iow those that have pretty straightforward demands).
    - makomk 12y ago
      A Linux monoculture would be a bad thing for users, but it'd be very beneficial for big Linux-centric companies like Red Hat - if everything depends heavily on Linux-specific functionality, there's less risk of another Unix they can't offer like Solaris coming along and eating their lunch.
    - vertex-four 12y ago
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
Fedora is known to be horribly unoptimized: http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Optimizations/ http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/Optimizations/ I've also noticed that the unit ordering and dependency chains can be quite flimsy and slow, occasionally freezing entirely before the display manager is started.
- krakensden 12y ago
  IIRC, Fedora 20, out of the box, will block your login screen on setting up wireless.