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Linux distros without systemd

ungleich.ch

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Re: Linux distros without systemd

#111

Post by chapium »

beaconfield wrote: post #39

It's comical how people get so "jazzed" about something like not liking systemd and make a whole movement about it (with their t-shirts and everything). I get people may not love everything about systemd (or maybe they hate it), but I'm not convinced it's so bad. I've been using it since RHEL 7 and I've really gotten used to all of the benefits of systemd. It also doesn't hurt that I went to the session on pid 1 by L…

You either fall into a group that hates systemd or one that could care less about the problem systemd is solving.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#112

Post by sjwright »

vpzom wrote: post #96
sjwright wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is systemd any more of a monoculture than the Linux kernel itself? In principle they are more alike than you might care to admit.

That's a problem too, but existence of other problems doesn't excuse this one

There's a definite [citation needed] on the assertion that integrating tasks into one project/process == monoculture.

And a [citation needed] that systemd is large enough to warrant being called a monoculture in the first place—and to flip the coin, that GNU init is small enough to not be a monoculture.

Let's not forget a huge [citation needed] that the addition of another alternative into the marketplace of ideas could ever be described as monoculture.

And while we're at it, how about a big juicy [citation needed] that a monoculture is a bad thing anyway, in this instance?

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#113

Post by dmitryminkovsky »

marcosdumay wrote: post #95
AsyncAwait wrote: post #12

I get that not everybody likes systemd, but a lot of the criticisms seem misguided and looking at sysvinit with role-colored glasses. For example, people are complaining about logind being included, but forget that consolekit was unmaintained before that. Yes, there's parts to systemd that not everyone will use, like container support, but in that case you can pretty safely ignore that use case. For me, systemd has p…

When there was a problem with a sysvinit procedure, one could simply fix it. As a result, mostly nobody ever had a problem with it. When there is a bug with systemd, you have to fix systemd. And your version of systemd is completely different from the head, because head was rewritten last month (in a process that persists bugs) and yours is a year old. You can't just use head either, because every low level system on…

> As a result, mostly nobody ever had a problem with it.

The number of broken init scripts I have encountered throughout the years, that went unfixed for months if not years, stand in stark contrast to this statement. And I’m talking packages like uWSGI on Ubuntu 14.04! This is exactly why I gravitated immediately to systemd. The idea that init scripts actually worked and when they didn’t were easily fixable is not true. Yeah you can fix a broken script locally, but this doesn’t fly at scale n > 1. Submitting patches to distros is not a simple process, and not one that makes sense in this context either. Declarative beats imperative 9/10 times, and systemd is one of those 9.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#114

Post by darkpuma »

lmm wrote: post #69
sjwright wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that makes any sense to me. It's all open source. It's laughable to worry about Gnome taking a hard dependency on an API when hundreds of software programs take a hard dependency on Gnome. Hypocrisy, much? Meanwhile if the maintainers of GNOME betray your trust, it sounds like you should hate this hypothetical GNOME for the same reasons you apparently hate systemd. Or rather than hating it, you could just for…

> If the maintainers of GNOME betray your trust, it sounds like you should hate this hypothetical GNOME for the same reasons you apparently hate systemd. Or just fork it. If enough people agree with you, a disentangled fork will inevitably be maintained. And then they move on to the next project and introduce a hard-dependency on systemd there. RedHat has more programmers than me, they're always going to be able to a…

> RedHat

Soon to be IBM, darling child of precisely nobody on HN. I think a lot of people are still in denial over this acquisition.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#115

Post by blu3r4d0n »

sjwright wrote: post #10

One of the better videos on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AeWu1fZ7bY BSDCan 2018—Benno Rice: The Tragedy of systemd "systemd is, to put it mildly, controversial. Depending on who you ask it's either a complete violation of the UNIX philosophy, a bloated pile of bugs, a complete violation of the elegant simplicity it replaced or, it most cases, some or all of the above. So why have so many Linux distr…

I love this video and have to share it every time I see this debate. He really show how this argument is kind of weak and this is coming from a BSD guy!

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#116

Post by darkpuma »

Klathmon wrote: post #57

This list is missing a linux-ey system which doesn't use Systemd that is growing in popularity! WSL! WSL somewhat annoyingly has a custom/proprietary init system. Partially due to it's "interesting" integration with windows, and partially because it's not even really a full linux system yet. I'm curious if with the switch to WSL2 where they will begin shipping a full linux kernel if systemd will be included or will t…

> WSL

I think you mean GNU/Windows, or as I've taken to calling it, GNU Plus Windows. (Seriously though, the WSL name is deceptive because it doesn't actually contain any Linux code. There is no Linux in "Windows Subsystem for Linux")

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#117

Post by sjwright »

darkpuma wrote: post #105
sjwright wrote: post #8

I get no end of bemusement from open source advocates that think it makes any kind of rational sense to campaign against an open source project. THIS IS ALL OPEN SOURCE. Freedom and choice is the whole point, isn't it? If you prefer an alternative or forebear to systemd, that is great. Use it. Advocate for the system you prefer. Convince people that the choice you have made is better. Meanwhile the vast majority of d…

You are presuming that everyone gives a damn about open source as an end unto itself, not merely a means to an end. Ironically, the people who do consider it an end unto itself are probably the people most likely to despise the term "open source" and prefer "Free Software". Ask RMS what he thinks about SystemD and I bet you he'll shrug and say it's fine because it's Free, and that's all he really cares about. Needles…

Trust me, I don't give a damn about open source as an end in itself—to me RMS means root mean square first, Roads and Maritime Services second, and occasionally I might be reminded of an unwashed beard.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#118

Post by Crinus »

Piezoid wrote: post #91
brobdingnagians wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the problem I have it is with the imperialistic culture that came with it and with the serious security bugs that they keep sweeping under the rug. It is easier to configure and is convenient to have one holistic system in a lot of ways, but... They pushed for Gnome to have a hard dependency on it so that everyone would be _forced_ to use it instead of just letting it be accepted by merits. They have a track…

> They pushed for Gnome to have a hard dependency on it so that everyone would be _forced_ to use it instead of just letting it be accepted by merits. We should standardize on the interfaces, avoiding hard dependencies. There is dbus for that.

dbus is also a dependency though. If you are on the bus (heh) that says systemd is a hard dependency that should be avoided then dbus is also the same thing.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#119

Post by blu3r4d0n »

telmich wrote: post #72
microtonal wrote: post #14

Guix is missing, which uses GNU Sheperd, which is in Scheme: https://www.gnu.org/software/shepherd/ That said, to me systemd has been a large improvement. Maybe it has its problems, but at least there is consistency in handling services and logs between Linux distributions, which is a big improvement over a bunch of homegrown sysvinit derivatives, Upstart, and homegrown non-sysvinit scripts.

Just added as as-good-as-we-could to the website - do you have any experiences in using it?

Couldn't you have just looked into a little bit instead of saying you know nothing about it? It's a distro with functional package management. https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#120

Post by jimktrains2 »

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #93
jimktrains2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my biggest issues with systemd is that I don't like the idea of not being able to replace pieces of it. If I don't like their logging, dns, or ntp daemons, I can't easily replace them without feeling like a second-class citizen and/or having the overhead you've mentioned. From my understanding, alternatives _could_ be written, but haven't yet and that means we currently having to ignore more battle-hardened so…

The ntp and dns are easy to replace, they're not part of the actual systemd binary. Fedora from what I remember, doesn't even enable systemds ntp service on Workstation. Logging is a bit different, but you can tell journald to use syslog.

I don't mean in terms of the binary, but in terms of the whole system.
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