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Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

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Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#41

Post by anonbanker »

yladiz wrote: post #32

As someone out of the loop with any of this (I've always just been content with using Debian as-is, and I haven't done much work with systemd), can someone explain why systemd is as bad as it seems to be? As in, why is it so bad that an entire major Linux distro was forked and created with the seemingly sole purpose of removing this program?

> why do people hate it?

Poorly-designed, poorly-implemented, half-baked ideas, legendary feature creep that presents a corollary to Zawinsky's Law, awful developers, clear political agendas in the devteam, Embrace-Extend-Extinguish tactics, against the basic UNIX concept of "many small apps that do one thing and do it well", an informal adoption of Windows service/logging techniques, political lobbying by the developers, and a literal RPC-based backdoor into the enforceability of the GPL.

Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#42

Post by mdekkers »

slau wrote: post #21
aerique wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Void Linux for a couple of weeks now on my new machine at work and I've been enjoying it a lot. It brings a BSD'ish elegance to Linux. No issues hardware-wise either so far: - Intel Core i7-7700K - MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G - Samsung 960 EVO 1TB (M.2, NVME)

I've been a Void user for a year and some months now. It's a great system. Xbps (the package manager) is so ridiculously fast, it puts zypper, apt and dnf to shame. The base system is extremely light and nimble. Getting FDE up and running was a breeze, even with the fairly barebones installer, and it being a rolling release makes it very nice as well. It's maybe a bit too bleeding edge to run on servers, but as a wor…

this looks interesting. I have been looking to replace ubuntu as my weapon of choice for servers for some time now. I am hesitant of the rolling release idea though. I like the idea that my servers remain in a specific state, but remain up to date with security patches, and don't like the idea of spending time fixing update issues. How is that handled in Void?

Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#43

Post by mdekkers »

JdeBP wrote: post #34
vacri wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counting empty lines and comments is hardly the way to make your point. The mariadb unit file you linked to is only 34 actual lines, the mysql unit file only 22, percona 23. And if you're writing your own unit files rather than ones for public consumption, you probably won't include lines like "Documentation=" and some other minor args.

Actually, counting lines, whether empty, comment, or otherwise, very much is the way to make the point. The reality of actual service units that people write is not anything like the picture that was being painted. You erroneously think that the point is that short is good and long is bad, rather than what it actually is, which is learn the subject and don't make facile arguments based upon rubbish numbers plucked fr…

Thank you for putting this argument across so succinctly and with such good research behind it. Everytime I hear the arguments in favor of systemd, I wonder when these people actually come down from their ivory towers to do some real life work, where the rubber meets the road.

The argument of "lines of code" in a startup script is such a stupid strawman, it defies belief. I design and build large scale production system, and have exactly zero interest in the size (or complexity) of a startup script. I am interested in being secure in the knowledge that a control script handles all possible cases, including edge cases, that might present themselves during the forseeable lifecycle of the service/application in a predictable and understandable manner. If it takes a bit more time and work to understand these scripts, so be it - what are a few extra hours (which, incidentally, force you into a better understanding of the thing your working on - always a good thing) when seen across the timeline fo the service lifecycle?

systemd does a few cool things, and many blindingly retarded things. It is probably really nice to have on your laptop, what with the fast boot times and all, but many of the things touted as "advantages" really do not hold up for server work. What do I care if my boot time is a few seconds less on a server? rebooting a prod server is usually a scheduled event, with (depending on the context) can call for anywhere between a 30 to 120 minute maintenance window.

The systemd people should be made to work building and maintaining a real-life backend environment for a while.

Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#44

Post by mdekkers »

anonbanker wrote: post #41
yladiz wrote: post #32

As someone out of the loop with any of this (I've always just been content with using Debian as-is, and I haven't done much work with systemd), can someone explain why systemd is as bad as it seems to be? As in, why is it so bad that an entire major Linux distro was forked and created with the seemingly sole purpose of removing this program?

> why do people hate it? Poorly-designed, poorly-implemented, half-baked ideas, legendary feature creep that presents a corollary to Zawinsky's Law, awful developers, clear political agendas in the devteam, Embrace-Extend-Extinguish tactics, against the basic UNIX concept of "many small apps that do one thing and do it well", an informal adoption of Windows service/logging techniques, political lobbying by the develo…

a literal RPC-based backdoor into the enforceability of the GPL

Oh, I didn't hear that one before - any more info?

Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#45

Post by INTPenis »

SwellJoe wrote: post #11
INTPenis wrote: post #3

Actual announcement: https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-candidate-announce-... Reminds me of dragonfly bsd. Anyone still use that? I stayed on 4.x until 6.x came out and later Scott Long actually admitted that 5.x was a bad release. So Devuan now wants to continue Debian with tons of shell scripts to maintain while most other major distros move to systemd. That means package maintainers are moving to systemd. S…

"I mean who in their right mind would write a 27 line init script when they could write a 7 line systemd unit?" 27 lines is horribly optimistic. Complex services like Apache, MySQL, etc. could have initscripts hundreds of lines long, plus the library of support scripts that most distros ship to make the initscripts shorter and more manageable. Most initscripts are like 50%, or more, boilerplate that's the same across…

>27 lines is horribly optimistic

Yes of course, I was referring to the skeleton script in wheezy to be fair. ;)

A more normal systemd unit I wrote for one of my own services is actually 15 lines but that's for a Python service, with virtualenv and above all no shell script wrapping.

Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#46

Post by INTPenis »

JdeBP wrote: post #18
SwellJoe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I mean who in their right mind would write a 27 line init script when they could write a 7 line systemd unit?" 27 lines is horribly optimistic. Complex services like Apache, MySQL, etc. could have initscripts hundreds of lines long, plus the library of support scripts that most distros ship to make the initscripts shorter and more manageable. Most initscripts are like 50%, or more, boilerplate that's the same across…

As I pointed out at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14169188 , there's a discussion of MySQL on the systemd-devel mailing list right now. Clearly some people in that discussion are not familiar with MySQL. Clearly some of the people in this discussion are not familiar with MySQL either. To help combat this ignorance, here are some actual systemd units: * https://github.com/MariaDB/server/blob/10.1/support-files/…

To be fair, mariadb systemd unit is 173 lines of ini-style configuration. Not 173 lines of bash code. There's a massive difference.

Also most of it is commented as examples.

Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#47

Post by INTPenis »

mdekkers wrote: post #12
INTPenis wrote: post #3

Actual announcement: https://devuan.org/os/debian-fork/stable-candidate-announce-... Reminds me of dragonfly bsd. Anyone still use that? I stayed on 4.x until 6.x came out and later Scott Long actually admitted that 5.x was a bad release. So Devuan now wants to continue Debian with tons of shell scripts to maintain while most other major distros move to systemd. That means package maintainers are moving to systemd. S…

I mean who in their right mind would write a 27 line init script when they could write a 7 line systemd unit? That is a gross and asinine misrepresentation of the impact of systemd.

Not from my viewpoint. I'm the one installing the packages and writing the occasional unit/override unit in my daily work.

I don't see those complex use cases systemd critics often point to. I mostly see the fact that I get to maintain a few lines of ini-style configuration instead of many lines of bash.

Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#48

Post by mdekkers »

INTPenis wrote: post #47
mdekkers wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean who in their right mind would write a 27 line init script when they could write a 7 line systemd unit? That is a gross and asinine misrepresentation of the impact of systemd.

Not from my viewpoint. I'm the one installing the packages and writing the occasional unit/override unit in my daily work. I don't see those complex use cases systemd critics often point to. I mostly see the fact that I get to maintain a few lines of ini-style configuration instead of many lines of bash.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14175261

Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#49

Post by lomnakkus »

dane-pgp wrote: post #23
lomnakkus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They missed an opportunity there. Should have been "jessie-j". ... but I actually agree with duskwuff. It's hugely confusing and possibly even disingenuous to call it "jessie".

Devuan "jessie" is designed to match Debian "jessie" as much as possible, and is a one-off copying of the release name in order to mark the branching point in the histories of the two distros as they diverge slightly over time. As the release announcement says: "Devuan is the Debian that was and could have been. Our goal is to provide a viable and sustainable alternative. It is a new path, nurtured with your help and…

Well, yes, I think we all got that point. It's just that Google's search bot may not. I'd be absolutely fine with something mechanically derived from "Jessie" (etc).

Re: Systemd-free Devuan announces its first stable release candidate 'Jessie' 1.0.0

#50

Post by aerique »

lomnakkus wrote: post #15
aerique wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Void Linux for a couple of weeks now on my new machine at work and I've been enjoying it a lot. It brings a BSD'ish elegance to Linux. No issues hardware-wise either so far: - Intel Core i7-7700K - MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G - Samsung 960 EVO 1TB (M.2, NVME)

Did you expect hardware issues? AFAIK that's all handled by the kernel.

I had expected more issues getting the official Nvidia drivers to work but all it took was a package install and a reboot.
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