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Wow, great comment -- and one that all who endeavor to innovate in systems should take to heart. As my former colleague Bart Smaalders was fond of saying, "the

Wow, great comment -- and one that all who endeavor to innovate in systems should take to heart. As my former colleague Bart Smaalders was fond of saying, "the hardest software to upgrade is the software in our brains"; when inventing new abstraction, it must be done so sparingly and (as much as reasonable) by leveraging extant notions. This isn't merely to allow a technology to be readily understood (though that too, certainly); it also requires thinking in terms of reinvention versus reuse. This thinking enforces a kind of humility: you must learn about the systems that have come before, if only to understand which of their abstractions can be reused. I think it is a perceived lack of this kind of humility in systemd that has been so alienating for those who have a long history with Unix: it's not as if other approaches are being rejected so much as they are not being considered at all.

danieldk 12y ago
I think it is a perceived lack of this kind of humility in systemd that has been so alienating for those who have a long history with Unix: it's not as if other approaches are being rejected so much as they are not being considered at all. I really have the feeling that people are using double standards here, especially when suggesting Solaris or Solaris-derived systems. Since systemd is implementing pretty much what has been in Solaris (SMF) and OS X (launchd) for a while now: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1451/dzhid.html https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1451/dzhid.htm... https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/launchd.8.html https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin... Also, it is of somewhat questionable ethics that members of the Solaris community submit such troll posts (as others have pointed out, there is not much substance there). It reeks of wanting to destroy Linux' image for your own (Illumos, SmartOS) gain.
- toolz 12y ago
  I want to know how this even became an argument in the first place. It's not that I don't like systemd, it's that [insert affiliated party] is way too cocky It blows my mind to see people regress so far back into arguments that this because an issue of emotions in a technical debate.
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    It's not a matter of emotions. It's a matter of having observed similar behavior in other projects which went similarly off the rails. Poettering's own track record with Pulseaudio comes to mind. There's also the GNOME project, which I identified as actively intelligent-user-hostile around 2004. It's been somewhat gratifying to see that particular perception bear out with time. There are other projects which have shown similar levels of arrogance, though mostly with more limited and self-contained damage. And being prickly or hard to deal with has shades. Neither Linus nor Theo de Raat are pussycats, but both focus very much on technical issues and are generally highly responsive to specific technical complaints. Sure, they make mistakes and bad calls occasionally, but on balance they've tended to get things right. The attitudes expressed by Poettering and Sievers in particular aren't simply cocky, but contemptuous. And they're getting called on it. Including by Linus. I could give a shit about personalities themselves, I really could. For the most part I really don't care how socially awkward someone is if they're good at their job. And if they don't start going out of their way to do harm to me or others. Personality disputes in discussions bore the piss out of me. But I'm also not blind to technical failings with roots in personality traits. And those are what I'm seeing in the systemd crowd and leadership.
    - danieldk 12y ago
      I could give a shit about personalities themselves, I really could. Then stop poisoning the well. But I'm also not blind to technical failings with roots in personality traits. And those are what I'm seeing in the systemd crowd and leadership. The problem that I see that most arguments against systemd are first and foremost about Lennart Poettering. And if technical reasons are brought forward, they can all be summarized as: does not conform to the UNIX philosophy (monolithic, replaces existing tools with tightly-coupled equivalents, binary logs). I think that a reasonable argument can be made that, with the exception of binary logs, these things are true for many UNIXen. You will find only few people who would say that BSD does not conform to the UNIX philosophy. However, the BSDs have the aforementioned traits as well: developed by one project and tightly coupled (e.g. you cannot just take most BSD utilities and libraries and compile them on Linux or Solaris, it requires serious effort). People always argued that this was a good trait of the BSDs (and I agree to some extend), because it allows better integration and use of BSD-specific features. However, when systemd does it, it's suddenly violating the UNIX philosophy.
- lil_cain 12y ago
  SMF is a pita - far, far worse than the process management stuff in systemd. SMF does not seem to want to own every bit of my Linux machine, however.
- lil_cain 12y ago
  SMF is a pita - far, far worse than the process management stuff in systemd. SMF does not seem to want to own every bit of my Linux machine, however.
- cthalupa 12y ago
  This is a rather disingenuous response. It assumes that this is a troll post - which I don't think is fair. The author has concerns that are legitimate to them, and outright dismissal as a troll, whether or not you agree with them, is petty and judgmental. Second, you are somehow conflating dislike of systemd with love of sysv init. The cognitive dissonance here only makes sense to me if you believe that systemd is perfectly fine, and think that the only reason people dislike it is because it's different. However, if someone is recommending a solution that utilizes SMF, is it such a stretch to think that it might not be because they are in love with sysv init, and instead might think that the implementation of systemd is lacking? I personally like the underlying idea of SystemD - because I like SMF. I do not like the implementation of systemd, and also have reservations about the people helming the project.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Thanks.

danieldk 12y ago

I think it is a perceived lack of this kind of humility in systemd that has been so alienating for those who have a long history with Unix: it's not as if other approaches are being rejected so much as they are not being considered at all. I really have the feeling that people are using double standards here, especially when suggesting Solaris or Solaris-derived systems. Since systemd is implementing pretty much what has been in Solaris (SMF) and OS X (launchd) for a while now: https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1451/dzhid.html https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23824_01/html/821-1451/dzhid.htm... https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/launchd.8.html https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin... Also, it is of somewhat questionable ethics that members of the Solaris community submit such troll posts (as others have pointed out, there is not much substance there). It reeks of wanting to destroy Linux' image for your own (Illumos, SmartOS) gain.

toolz 12y ago
I want to know how this even became an argument in the first place. It's not that I don't like systemd, it's that [insert affiliated party] is way too cocky It blows my mind to see people regress so far back into arguments that this because an issue of emotions in a technical debate.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  It's not a matter of emotions. It's a matter of having observed similar behavior in other projects which went similarly off the rails. Poettering's own track record with Pulseaudio comes to mind. There's also the GNOME project, which I identified as actively intelligent-user-hostile around 2004. It's been somewhat gratifying to see that particular perception bear out with time. There are other projects which have shown similar levels of arrogance, though mostly with more limited and self-contained damage. And being prickly or hard to deal with has shades. Neither Linus nor Theo de Raat are pussycats, but both focus very much on technical issues and are generally highly responsive to specific technical complaints. Sure, they make mistakes and bad calls occasionally, but on balance they've tended to get things right. The attitudes expressed by Poettering and Sievers in particular aren't simply cocky, but contemptuous. And they're getting called on it. Including by Linus. I could give a shit about personalities themselves, I really could. For the most part I really don't care how socially awkward someone is if they're good at their job. And if they don't start going out of their way to do harm to me or others. Personality disputes in discussions bore the piss out of me. But I'm also not blind to technical failings with roots in personality traits. And those are what I'm seeing in the systemd crowd and leadership.
  - danieldk 12y ago
    I could give a shit about personalities themselves, I really could. Then stop poisoning the well. But I'm also not blind to technical failings with roots in personality traits. And those are what I'm seeing in the systemd crowd and leadership. The problem that I see that most arguments against systemd are first and foremost about Lennart Poettering. And if technical reasons are brought forward, they can all be summarized as: does not conform to the UNIX philosophy (monolithic, replaces existing tools with tightly-coupled equivalents, binary logs). I think that a reasonable argument can be made that, with the exception of binary logs, these things are true for many UNIXen. You will find only few people who would say that BSD does not conform to the UNIX philosophy. However, the BSDs have the aforementioned traits as well: developed by one project and tightly coupled (e.g. you cannot just take most BSD utilities and libraries and compile them on Linux or Solaris, it requires serious effort). People always argued that this was a good trait of the BSDs (and I agree to some extend), because it allows better integration and use of BSD-specific features. However, when systemd does it, it's suddenly violating the UNIX philosophy.
lil_cain 12y ago
SMF is a pita - far, far worse than the process management stuff in systemd. SMF does not seem to want to own every bit of my Linux machine, however.
lil_cain 12y ago
SMF is a pita - far, far worse than the process management stuff in systemd. SMF does not seem to want to own every bit of my Linux machine, however.
cthalupa 12y ago
This is a rather disingenuous response. It assumes that this is a troll post - which I don't think is fair. The author has concerns that are legitimate to them, and outright dismissal as a troll, whether or not you agree with them, is petty and judgmental. Second, you are somehow conflating dislike of systemd with love of sysv init. The cognitive dissonance here only makes sense to me if you believe that systemd is perfectly fine, and think that the only reason people dislike it is because it's different. However, if someone is recommending a solution that utilizes SMF, is it such a stretch to think that it might not be because they are in love with sysv init, and instead might think that the implementation of systemd is lacking? I personally like the underlying idea of SystemD - because I like SMF. I do not like the implementation of systemd, and also have reservations about the people helming the project.

dredmorbius 12y ago

Thanks.