6 ms·

I'm not sure if he is really clueless or just trying to flame wars.

by fsniper 12y ago

dinergy 12y ago
i honestly think he believes his stance is the only correct one. you can see it in the way he answered the questions. the bit where he picks apart upstart, gentoo, etc., are nothing more than callous, myopic opinions yet he answers them with cheerful conviction. technical arguments can be made for or against any piece of code. but, he dismisses other projects with a wave of his hand firmly stating that systemd is the "only" correct evolution. i'm am neutral on systemd. do i think the old init system(s) are the right way? not really. do i think systemd is the right way? not really. would i be fine with systemd in the future? perhaps. would i be fine with another bit of code? perhaps. but to dismiss the concerns of a large number of community members, to neglect or downright deny bugs and issues, to shoehorn a project into _everything_ while closing your ears to everyone else, these are my issues with the project. if it works, great. but at least open your eyes and ears and work with everyone. i migrated my home kit to freebsd from debian because i was having errors. failed boots. crashes. config problems. and i didn't have a decade of old crusty init scripts to begin with. what used to be rock solid on my hardware became annoying to deal with. i'm all for change and evolution in software/systems and i don't personally have a problem with poettering or what he is trying to do, but he's doing it in a piss poor way.
- XorNot 12y ago
  I don't get how an opinion like this: "...to make it clear, I think Upstart actually has its benefits. The source code is very, very nice, and it’s very simple, but I think it’s too simple. It doesn’t have this engine that can figure out what the computer is supposed to be doing." is callous and myopic?
  - random28345 12y ago
    > how an opinion [...] is callous and myopic? There have been hundreds of thousands of words written on how simple utilities can form the basis of supportable, complex systems and still retain the ability to be comprehensible. He has dismissed all that as beneath consideration, and he has the One True Vision™ on how Unix should be architected. Don't get me wrong, hubris and self-righteousness have given us great things: GNU, OpenBSD, qmail, etc. But I don't think anyone would accuse rms or theo or djb of not being callous and myopic.
    - forgottenpass 12y ago
      He has dismissed all that as beneath consideration, and he has the One True Vision™ on how Unix should be architected. I don't see him passing a value judgement on how it should be done, just dismissing a particular criticism as poorly founded. If you look at the difference between the Unix and Linux development models, there is a point. There are a lot of properties to Unix so it's a bad argument to say "not Unixy enough" when you really mean something more along the lines of "components take on too many responsibilities at once and are too tightly coupled."
      - digi_owl 12y ago
        Focusing on the repository is a distraction. the whole of systemd sits in a single source tree in freedesktop.org. You don't find system-networkd in one tree, udev in another, systemd-init in a third. In contrast, each part of XFCE, the window manager, the panel, etc, sit as their own source trees within the XFCE repository.
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    I find myself wondering why the init is supposed to figure out what the computer is to be doing. That kind of "automagical" behavior is what drove me bonkers when trying to use Windows for more than a games console...
    - pachydermic 12y ago
      I dunno. If it's able to do what you want automatically that's amazing. If I can just plug the printer in and have it work that's amazing. If I can turn the wireless on my laptop on and it works that's amazing. And so on. The problems arise when it doesn't automatically do what you want it to do and you don't have a good way of fixing it yourself. I'm not in a position to understand init systems so I will be in this camp if there's ever any problem with any init system. What matters to me, as the end user, is how likely it is to work automatically. If systemd 'just works', then what's the problem? If systemd is broken... well, that's a problem, isn't it. But from what I've seen a lot (though not all, of course) of the arguments against it are highly political/philosophical and aren't based on whether it's actually working or not.
      - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
        Hotplug isn't the job of systemd to begin with, though. It's the job of the device manager, which on Linux is usually udev (but alternatives like eudev, mdev, smdev and vdev exist) - udev being a part of the systemd repository and to an extent coupled with it (which will become complete when kdbus is merged into mainline Linux), however it's still a rather distinct piece of software that maintains the hardware database and listens to kernel uevents. So if your init system is handling hotplug events, then that's some bad design. systemd doesn't stoop that low, though it still has plenty of mistakes - like putting the INI parser in PID1. As an example, even Apple put launchd's XML parser as a separate process!
        digi_owl 12y ago
        There is tight interaction between udev and systemd. Heck, udev was folded into the systemd code (you find it now as a sub-dir of the systemd source tree over at freedesktop.org) because they didn't want code duplication... This after having udev exist as a independent project for a decade. These days the only way to download and install udev manually is to download the whole of systemd and then extract udev from that. Something that caused Gentoo to fork udev into eudev.
antientropic 12y ago
Care to point out which remarks were clueless or trollish?
- bhaak 12y ago
  The interview wasn't as bad as I expected from the OP's opinion but this one seems mind-bogglingly wrong: "What’s typical for Unix, for example, is that all the tools, the C library, the kernel, are all maintained in the same repository, right? And they’re released in sync, have the same coding style, the same build infrastructure, the same release cycles – everything’s the same. So you get the entire central part of the operating system like that. If people claim that, because we stick a lot of things into the Systemd repository, then it’s un-Unixish, then it’s absolutely the opposite. It’s more Unix-ish than Linux ever was!" I don't even know how you could get this misconception. This really does sound clueless or trollish. The rest of the interview is of a better quality and you follow his reasoning much better even if in the end you would still disagree with him.
  - erglkjahlkh 12y ago
    He mentioned kernel, c libraries, and "all the tools". Well, kernel is in one repository. The (gnu) c library is in one repository. The tools, well the category of stuff like "ls" and "cat" is afaik in one repository. In similar manner, he seems to think that systemd should manage the set of most crucial processes of the base system. I am not saying that he is correct, I am just interpreting!
  - fsniper 12y ago
    Thank you. That's well said. I wish I could read all the piece with the pay per view part. But with this part he is absolutely sure , he is the righteous on every aspect of computing and it's history that he just tries to "create un realistic lines" to make his point.
  - jdub 12y ago
    He's talking about UNIX, not Linux, and he's 100% right. Look at the BSDs some time, or the Solaris forks. The disconnect between the Linux kernel and basic userland has been a criticism of UNIX traditionalists for years. It's part of the reason why BSD has a few forks and Linux has hundreds of distributions.

I'm not sure if he is really clueless or just trying to flame wars.

by fsniper 12y ago

I'm not sure if he is really clueless or just trying to flame wars.

i honestly think he believes his stance is the only correct one. you can see it in the way he answered the questions. the bit where he picks apart upstart, gentoo, etc., are nothing more than callous, myopic opinions yet he answers them with cheerful conviction. technical arguments can be made for or against any piece of code. but, he dismisses other projects with a wave of his hand firmly stating that systemd is the "only" correct evolution. i'm am neutral on systemd. do i think the old init system(s) are the right way? not really. do i think systemd is the right way? not really. would i be fine with systemd in the future? perhaps. would i be fine with another bit of code? perhaps. but to dismiss the concerns of a large number of community members, to neglect or downright deny bugs and issues, to shoehorn a project into _everything_ while closing your ears to everyone else, these are my issues with the project. if it works, great. but at least open your eyes and ears and work with everyone. i migrated my home kit to freebsd from debian because i was having errors. failed boots. crashes. config problems. and i didn't have a decade of old crusty init scripts to begin with. what used to be rock solid on my hardware became annoying to deal with. i'm all for change and evolution in software/systems and i don't personally have a problem with poettering or what he is trying to do, but he's doing it in a piss poor way.

XorNot 12y ago
I don't get how an opinion like this: "...to make it clear, I think Upstart actually has its benefits. The source code is very, very nice, and it’s very simple, but I think it’s too simple. It doesn’t have this engine that can figure out what the computer is supposed to be doing." is callous and myopic?
- random28345 12y ago
  > how an opinion [...] is callous and myopic? There have been hundreds of thousands of words written on how simple utilities can form the basis of supportable, complex systems and still retain the ability to be comprehensible. He has dismissed all that as beneath consideration, and he has the One True Vision™ on how Unix should be architected. Don't get me wrong, hubris and self-righteousness have given us great things: GNU, OpenBSD, qmail, etc. But I don't think anyone would accuse rms or theo or djb of not being callous and myopic.
  - forgottenpass 12y ago
    He has dismissed all that as beneath consideration, and he has the One True Vision™ on how Unix should be architected. I don't see him passing a value judgement on how it should be done, just dismissing a particular criticism as poorly founded. If you look at the difference between the Unix and Linux development models, there is a point. There are a lot of properties to Unix so it's a bad argument to say "not Unixy enough" when you really mean something more along the lines of "components take on too many responsibilities at once and are too tightly coupled."
    - digi_owl 12y ago
      Focusing on the repository is a distraction. the whole of systemd sits in a single source tree in freedesktop.org. You don't find system-networkd in one tree, udev in another, systemd-init in a third. In contrast, each part of XFCE, the window manager, the panel, etc, sit as their own source trees within the XFCE repository.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  I find myself wondering why the init is supposed to figure out what the computer is to be doing. That kind of "automagical" behavior is what drove me bonkers when trying to use Windows for more than a games console...
  - pachydermic 12y ago
    I dunno. If it's able to do what you want automatically that's amazing. If I can just plug the printer in and have it work that's amazing. If I can turn the wireless on my laptop on and it works that's amazing. And so on. The problems arise when it doesn't automatically do what you want it to do and you don't have a good way of fixing it yourself. I'm not in a position to understand init systems so I will be in this camp if there's ever any problem with any init system. What matters to me, as the end user, is how likely it is to work automatically. If systemd 'just works', then what's the problem? If systemd is broken... well, that's a problem, isn't it. But from what I've seen a lot (though not all, of course) of the arguments against it are highly political/philosophical and aren't based on whether it's actually working or not.
    - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
      Hotplug isn't the job of systemd to begin with, though. It's the job of the device manager, which on Linux is usually udev (but alternatives like eudev, mdev, smdev and vdev exist) - udev being a part of the systemd repository and to an extent coupled with it (which will become complete when kdbus is merged into mainline Linux), however it's still a rather distinct piece of software that maintains the hardware database and listens to kernel uevents. So if your init system is handling hotplug events, then that's some bad design. systemd doesn't stoop that low, though it still has plenty of mistakes - like putting the INI parser in PID1. As an example, even Apple put launchd's XML parser as a separate process!
      - digi_owl 12y ago
        There is tight interaction between udev and systemd. Heck, udev was folded into the systemd code (you find it now as a sub-dir of the systemd source tree over at freedesktop.org) because they didn't want code duplication... This after having udev exist as a independent project for a decade. These days the only way to download and install udev manually is to download the whole of systemd and then extract udev from that. Something that caused Gentoo to fork udev into eudev.

antientropic 12y ago

Care to point out which remarks were clueless or trollish?

bhaak 12y ago
The interview wasn't as bad as I expected from the OP's opinion but this one seems mind-bogglingly wrong: "What’s typical for Unix, for example, is that all the tools, the C library, the kernel, are all maintained in the same repository, right? And they’re released in sync, have the same coding style, the same build infrastructure, the same release cycles – everything’s the same. So you get the entire central part of the operating system like that. If people claim that, because we stick a lot of things into the Systemd repository, then it’s un-Unixish, then it’s absolutely the opposite. It’s more Unix-ish than Linux ever was!" I don't even know how you could get this misconception. This really does sound clueless or trollish. The rest of the interview is of a better quality and you follow his reasoning much better even if in the end you would still disagree with him.
- erglkjahlkh 12y ago
  He mentioned kernel, c libraries, and "all the tools". Well, kernel is in one repository. The (gnu) c library is in one repository. The tools, well the category of stuff like "ls" and "cat" is afaik in one repository. In similar manner, he seems to think that systemd should manage the set of most crucial processes of the base system. I am not saying that he is correct, I am just interpreting!
- fsniper 12y ago
  Thank you. That's well said. I wish I could read all the piece with the pay per view part. But with this part he is absolutely sure , he is the righteous on every aspect of computing and it's history that he just tries to "create un realistic lines" to make his point.
- jdub 12y ago
  He's talking about UNIX, not Linux, and he's 100% right. Look at the BSDs some time, or the Solaris forks. The disconnect between the Linux kernel and basic userland has been a criticism of UNIX traditionalists for years. It's part of the reason why BSD has a few forks and Linux has hundreds of distributions.