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Linux distros without systemd

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Re: Linux distros without systemd

#151

Post by eropple »

chapium wrote: post #111
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.

...and when you care quite deeply about the problems being solved, think they're being solved in a pretty good way, and are unsettled by the anti-systemd frothers literally sending Lennart death threats? (Like...this is bad, yo. There are arguments--bad ones, IMO, but arguments--against systemd. But the people who like systemd aren't sending death threats to Devuan people or whatever.)

What group is that?

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#152

Post by hedora »

tssva wrote: post #62

The biggest complaint I regularly see about systemd from those that don't like it is that it violates the UNIX philosophy by combining too many functionalities into one project. Based upon this I found the following quote from the article in regards to Alpine Linux, a distribution based upon BusyBox which implements the functionality of over 100 usually separate executables into one, quite amusing. > It is small and…

The difference is that with busy box, everything is optional (just replace the symlink in /bin with another implementation), and designed as a drop-in replacement for standalone utilities (instead of redesigning them poorly from scratch).

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#153

Post by bunderbunder »

aerique wrote: post #88
bunderbunder wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to pile it on, I think it's becoming something of a viral force for monoculture, too. 20 years ago, I might occasionally reboot to Windows or fire up a Windows virtual machine in order to open up the occasional recalcitrant Word document in Word itself. Nowadays, if I'm not running Linux on the metal, then I need to keep some sort of a Linux virtual machine running constantly, because so much software has a hard…

Yes, this. And SystemD adds to this monoculture (as does Docker).

I realize I'm picking a nit, but I think that, in this situation, it reflects a distinction that's worth making:

Systemd and Docker do entrench the monoculture, but they can only have that effect because the monoculture is already so well-established. If this were EEE, they'd be part of the transition to the third E.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#154

Post by sprash »

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 watched the video a few moths ago. I disagree with almost everything this guy said.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#155

Post by vetinari »

eropple wrote: post #136
Crinus wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with your logical consistency, but I'm curious: is D-Bus sufficiently specified that one could write an alternative to it? That is, is it a hard dependency or is it itself an interface? I'm not nearly sufficiently experienced with desktop Linux application development to know. ;)

Yes, DBUS is specified [1]. There are multiple implementations shipping (dbus reference implementation and dbus-broker), as well as several different client libraries.

As dbus user, or application, you just need some client library. As an operating system, you also need a daemon running, which is routing the messages among all the clients.

[1] - https://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-specification.html

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#156

Post by eropple »

JohnFen wrote: post #147
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “shovelware” is what makes it useful.

In my opinion, as an init script replacement, systemD is almost a great thing. Including everything else is what makes it a terrible thing.

But...it doesn't include "everything else". My desktop doesn't use systemd-timesyncd, I'm not even sure systemd-nspawn is installed on my home server, that same server isn't using systemd-resolved. I haven't fiddled with journald anywhere 'cause I like it a lot more than rsyslogd, but you totally can forward journald stuff to rsyslogd if that's more your bag (and I think, though don't quote me on that, you can remove it entirely if you want).

Yes, there are additional, thoroughly optional, components to the systemd ecosystem that you can choose to opt into. And...so?

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#157

Post by sjwright »

darkpuma wrote: post #137
sjwright wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "Trust me, I don't give a damn about open source as a means to an end" See, I think that's where you differ from most people. To most people, I believe open source is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. What they want first and foremost is something that works, and it happens to be the case that having the source code freely available facilitates having something that works and gives them a sense of comfort,…

Apologies, I erred in my previous post and meant to say the opposite. It is now edited. Sorry.

(Hopefully that makes my aggressive indifference to Stallman more comprehensible.)

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#158

Post by yarrel »

eropple wrote: post #140
tyingq wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the init replacement part that bugs me. It's the expansion into audio, kernel logging, resolvers, containers, and so forth that is the issue. It's a monolith of sorts that breaks the loosely coupled toolbox concept of Unix.

Systemd is a bunch of loosely coupled tools, though; it's not a monolith at all. PulseAudio was written by Lennart but isn't part of systemd. You don't have to use systemd's resolver. systemd-nspawn is a completely separate process and isn't required for systemd as a whole. It's worth watching Benno Rice (a BSD developer, actually) discuss systemd and some of the misconceptions, some of which you're expressing, there…

It's good that systemd apologists have moved on from arguing that it isn't a single binary. But it is not a bunch of loosely coupled tools any more than it is "just" an init replacement.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#159

Post by asveikau »

eropple wrote: post #136
Crinus wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with your logical consistency, but I'm curious: is D-Bus sufficiently specified that one could write an alternative to it? That is, is it a hard dependency or is it itself an interface? I'm not nearly sufficiently experienced with desktop Linux application development to know. ;)

I'm not a huge fan, but dbus at least runs on FreeBSD and others.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#160

Post by JohnFen »

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #17
Whatitat90 wrote: post #4

SystemD definitely spurred some controversies years ago but is it that bad in 2019? All major distros adopted it and even some that are listed there as "no systemd" in reality just give you choice (e.g. Gentoo). I'd gladly hear the opinion of distro maintainers why did they switch to SystemD if it's as bad as it looks like in people's perception.

Earlier versions of systemd were fairly buggy, but then it was still in its infancy and its in a much better state now. systemd (not SystemD) changes a core part of the OS, we go from a userspace being bootstrapped by a bunch of different shell scripts calling a dozen individual binaries, to an actual system and service manager configured with unit files. It's a large change, although one other operating systems went…

> and some people don't like change.

People really need to stop saying this rather than taking the time to actually understand what people are objecting to.

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