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Busybox removes support for systemd

git.busybox.net

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Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#51

Post by digi_owl »

MichaelGG wrote: post #33
rincebrain wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason is that systemd has absorbed functionality of a number of additional pieces of software, to the point that they are no longer maintained discretely - udev being the best example. Another part of the reason is that Red Hat forcibly landed systemd in Fedora and then RHEL7, and RH is an elephant on the scale of Linux development.

So RedHat's choices impact Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, and SUSE so much? Honest question; I don't know the details. Or are you saying that distros rely on other components that are simply not feasible (maintained) anymore, so they have no choice? Just seems like if it's as bad as so many say, it just doesn't make sense for all these distros to blindly go along. Even the GNOME lockin doesn't seem like it'd explain it.

RH is the 800-pound gorilla of the Linux world. They employ a sizeable portion of the developers working on various projects within the Linux ecosystem.

Canonical revenue is 67 million according to wikipedia, by contrast Red Hat is 1.5 billion. That is 3 extra zeros (and even then it is almost 1/100 of Microsoft's revenue).

Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#52

Post by generic_user »

xyproto wrote: post #20
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fashionable in some parts of the linux world to hate on systemd.

After Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, Red Hat and CentOS switched over to systemd, it must be a very tiny part of the Linux world.

Just to add to the others CentOS was essentially bought by RedHat and there Core developer is now a RedHat employee. Magically there was a new major 7.0 version bump adopting SystemD as the one and only init system. A new flashy website and a refusal to allow any alternative init system into the official packages other then SystemD. Needles to say CentOS is no longer an independent alternative to RedHat Linux.

Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#53

Post by vezzy-fnord »

digi_owl wrote: post #51
MichaelGG wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So RedHat's choices impact Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, and SUSE so much? Honest question; I don't know the details. Or are you saying that distros rely on other components that are simply not feasible (maintained) anymore, so they have no choice? Just seems like if it's as bad as so many say, it just doesn't make sense for all these distros to blindly go along. Even the GNOME lockin doesn't seem like it'd explain it.

RH is the 800-pound gorilla of the Linux world. They employ a sizeable portion of the developers working on various projects within the Linux ecosystem. Canonical revenue is 67 million according to wikipedia, by contrast Red Hat is 1.5 billion. That is 3 extra zeros (and even then it is almost 1/100 of Microsoft's revenue).

There's plenty of Intel people involved as well, but their goals are mostly aligned.

Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#54

Post by digi_owl »

toyg wrote: post #50
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian isn't really a leader. They're more of a passive target platform and their committee has people from various strokes of the Linux community. As such, RH decisions with significant influence definitely would impact them. Ubuntu, in turn, is symbiotic with Debian, though still quite forked from it in most aspects beyond the packaging infrastructure (now with Snappy diverging even further). Nonetheless, Unity nee…

Systemd is pointing out the truth about lots of "emperor's clothes" in the current Linux ecosystem. When there were problems about a desktop manager revamp or some crashy audio daemon, you could liquidate certain choices as irrelevant or lazy. Now the entire ecosystem's guts are being rewritten by RedHat for RedHat, and the developer community is simply going along because, in practice, they have no other choice . No…

I suspect many didn't see it coming because systemd was under the freedesktop.org umbrella rather than a Red Hat fronted project.

Thing is though that while freedesktop.org is presented as being about cooperation and compatibility between desktop environments, a very large portion of what happens there is dictated by Gnome.

And Gnome is yet another project that on paper is independent, but with big RH contributions in terms of programming manpower (its the primary DE of both Fedora and RHEL).

Probably the worst part is that none of this is planned, there is likely no grand conspiracy. Its just that so many of the people involved walk in the same halls, share the same cafeteria tables, and sit in on the same meetings that a internal consensus ends up formed about what is the "right" way to do things.

Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#55

Post by skywhopper »

MichaelGG wrote: post #33
rincebrain wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason is that systemd has absorbed functionality of a number of additional pieces of software, to the point that they are no longer maintained discretely - udev being the best example. Another part of the reason is that Red Hat forcibly landed systemd in Fedora and then RHEL7, and RH is an elephant on the scale of Linux development.

So RedHat's choices impact Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, and SUSE so much? Honest question; I don't know the details. Or are you saying that distros rely on other components that are simply not feasible (maintained) anymore, so they have no choice? Just seems like if it's as bad as so many say, it just doesn't make sense for all these distros to blindly go along. Even the GNOME lockin doesn't seem like it'd explain it.

In this case the decision does influence other people, because as pointed out, systemd has taken over many other components' roles, not just init, and if those components are no longer maintained because RedHat pulls its support, then other distributions (with far far fewer resources) are forced to use unmaintained code or switch to systemd.

Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#56

Post by digi_owl »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #53
digi_owl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RH is the 800-pound gorilla of the Linux world. They employ a sizeable portion of the developers working on various projects within the Linux ecosystem. Canonical revenue is 67 million according to wikipedia, by contrast Red Hat is 1.5 billion. That is 3 extra zeros (and even then it is almost 1/100 of Microsoft's revenue).

There's plenty of Intel people involved as well, but their goals are mostly aligned.

Or at least don't clash. Intel is mostly involved on the hardware end. The biggest clash is perhaps Oracle, as they forked RHEL some years back. but i think that is more about shoring up a silo around their database business, rather than getting involved in the general workstation and server business.

But that is a recent move, while RH has been in the Linux development effort for some time.

Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#57

Post by gaius »

felixgallo wrote: post #34
magila wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that this is a case of Linus flying off the handle based on incomplete information. It was latter revealed that the bug which caused this whole spat on LKML had already been fixed in systemd, Kay Sievers just failed to communicate that in the bug opened by Borislav Petkov.

that is not at all what happened. Here's Kay Sievers, defiantly posting after in his own words after the incident: https://plus.google.com/+KaySievers/posts/3cWXzYqB6MB

The fact that this is posted on Google+ and not LKML says it all really.

Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#58

Post by digi_owl »

generic_user wrote: post #49
MichaelGG wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So RedHat's choices impact Debian/Ubuntu, Arch, and SUSE so much? Honest question; I don't know the details. Or are you saying that distros rely on other components that are simply not feasible (maintained) anymore, so they have no choice? Just seems like if it's as bad as so many say, it just doesn't make sense for all these distros to blindly go along. Even the GNOME lockin doesn't seem like it'd explain it.

At this point RedHat has consumed de-facto governance of some core projects that make up the Linux desktop system that sit atop the kernel. They pay developers to work on these projects and there employees have decision making authority. SystemD is almost entirely driven by current/former RedHat employees. The fact of the matter is that "Distros" like Debian etc are dependent on upstream developers to provide new ver…

Ultimately you can go for something like Linux From Scratch. And even they have gotten somewhat fed up with the Systemd antic.

For instance their main book use eudev rather than udev, because they found the effort of extracting udev from the larger systemd project a right pain.

They do however maintain a parallel systemd book for anyone interested.

Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#59

Post by gaius »

rincebrain wrote: post #28
MichaelGG wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't get is, if systemd is so troublesome, why are so many distros picking it up? I know popularity isn't a perfect signal, but in this case of highly technical users that are distributing OSes it seems valid.

Part of the reason is that systemd has absorbed functionality of a number of additional pieces of software, to the point that they are no longer maintained discretely - udev being the best example. Another part of the reason is that Red Hat forcibly landed systemd in Fedora and then RHEL7, and RH is an elephant on the scale of Linux development.

Yes systemd is Red Hat's "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy for Linux.

Re: Busybox removes support for systemd

#60

Post by digi_owl »

userbinator wrote: post #48
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, this makes the assumption that the actors are actually cooperating.

That also makes the assumption that there is only one "technologically most useful solution", when in practice every application has its own unique requirements, and trying to satisfy all of them just makes a system which is not particularly good at any one of them (systemd seems to be moving in that direction, not unlike other "enterprise" software.)

And that is why Unix as a concept has endured even in the face of opposition like Windows.

Because at its heart is a collection of tools that can be combined in whatever permutation that solves the task that the system user/admin has before him.

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