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Linux distros without systemd

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Re: Linux distros without systemd

#191

Post by jdefr89 »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #65
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…

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…

This is always the case with any new software. Things may get a bit worse before they get better. Honestly Systemd addresses the complexities of a modern system in the simplest fashion but no simpler, and that is the key. It is in the same spirit as launchd on macOS. It works well overall and end up being more portable and consistent in the long run. Hatred for it seems to come mostly out of dogma, something to be avoided in this age.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#192

Post by JdeBP »

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.

> you can tell journald to use syslog

No. One can tell syslogd to read from the journal. There is no mode of operation for journald that does not have the journal, on disc or in a memory filesystem. And journald itself is not optional. The only optional part is choosing to have an extra old-style syslog daemon that is using the journal as input.

* https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/294206/5132

* https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/332315/5132

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#193

Post by eropple »

JohnFen wrote: post #141
markstos wrote: post #53

I read everything I could find on systemd to form my own opinion. I used FreeBSD for a decade and have many years of Ubuntu/upstart experience after that. Based on my experience and all the anti-systemd posts online, I expected to dislike it. But on it's merits I really like the consistency it brings to the "system layer" of the OS. I find it's shame when developers skip over systemd for consideration, adding extra l…

> On the other hand, I do support diversity of software and am glad to see some other options still being promoted and used. Then you should not be wanting to see applications including a hard dependency to systemD.

Why is it another open source developer's obligation to satisfy your design desires? Are you paying them? If not, put your time where you aren't putting your money, become the purveyor of diversity, and submit a patch. Fork, if necessary and it matters to you that much--it's your right to do so.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#194

Post by jchw »

jasondclinton wrote: post #100
jchw wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, before systemd there existed other initds. Upstart was Ubuntu’s for a time.

The creator of Upstart, Scott, explicitly said that he thought that systemd was better and that Debian and Ubuntu adopting it was the right decision: https://www.reddit.com/r/LinuxActionShow/comments/1xzfv0/ups...

I don’t really have a strong opinion anymore. Scott makes the right move here for professionalism and modesty, and Linux is more united on this than it isn’t.

Still, the spats with the Linux kernel team and the rest of the community has earned systemd a reputation I can only say it deserves, even if the initial ire drawn towards it was over the top. Systemd is not a project I have strong confidence in to act in the user’s best interest, based on what I’ve seen with handling security issues.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#195

Post by sprash »

vbezhenar wrote: post #190
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…

sysvinit is easier to understand for me. It's just a bunch of shell scripts after all. So from the point of simplicity sysvinit wins for me and I never had much problems with it (while I had some problems with systemd). On the other hand, I recently had to write unit file for tomcat and it was extremely easy, systemd had all necessary options. Writing shell script was not that hard, of course, but it was some work.

One reason even big ol sysvinit is superior to systemd is that shell scripts are transitive knowledge. You can do almost everything with shell scripts. Learning some obscure (albeit very simple) systemd unit file format won't help you anywhere else besides systemd.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#196

Post by pard68 »

This anti-systemd meme is getting tiring. I generally find it is perpetuated by people who use Linux at a hobby level. Rarely do I speak with guys in Ops who dislike systemd. I am not trying to discredit people here, there are hobby users who are more knowledgeable about Linux related systems than many guys who are professionals. My point is that Linux and systemd are both meant for use on servers, in production, where speed and consistency rule.

I manage 3000 Linux servers and 20,000 services running on those servers. When I log into a machine and am welcomed by a RHEL6 motd I groan, because sysvinit is not enjoyable to use, it takes longer to reboot those machines, and tracking down logs is a chore.

When I log into a RHEL7 machine I am not elated, but I am glad to know that pid 1 isn't trying to make my life harder.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#197

Post by grumdan »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #65
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…

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 have a track record of labeling serious bugs as non-issues, ignoring them, or just not filing them as CVEs. Serious issues keep coming up.

Additionally, this is not likely to stop, since they took an init system that was (mostly) written in a memory-safe language (bash) and rewrote it in a memory-unsafe language (C++), thus enabling a whole class of systemic security issues that will keep popping up in the future over and over again as well. This is one of the design decisions behind systemd that irks me the most.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#198

Post by JdeBP »

eropple wrote: post #185
JdeBP wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> journald appears to be the only mandatory non-PID1 process for systemd. You need to read a lot more. The Desktop Bus is mandatory too. Lennart Poettering reminded everyone of this back in 2015.

D-Bus, as discussed elsewhere in this thread (where I learned about this, too), is a specification rather than a concrete implementation. Are you asserting that systemd does not work with alternative D-Bus implmentations? That would be weird, seeing as how they wrote an alternative one... Also, since I've been "reading more", and I can check after I get back from lunch--at least at some point Debian shipped systemd w…

> Are you asserting

You need to stop constructing straw men, too. I asserted what I actually wrote. And Lennart Poettering asserted that

> D-Bus has been a core component of Linux systems since more than 10 years.

and

> D-Bus refers to both a specification, and a reference implementation.

back in 2015. I suggest that instead of arguing fallaciously about something that you tell us you have only just learned about, that you go and do that reading.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#199

Post by siffland »

One of my biggest concerns about systemd is the ownership. Sure it is open sourced, however RedHat has a lot of pull on its maintainers (Soon to be IBM). What is to stop them from dual licensing it or close sourcing it. They have lots of products like that (jboss/wildfly...spacewalk/satellite). After everything runs on systemd the ball in in their court. Sure people can say they are going to fork it, but in reality how often does that work out (I concede are some examples where it does, X11, nextcloud, etc.).

In my paranoid mind I can see Redhat commercializing it and adding features to it for only paying customers after they win through attrition the monopoly on the OS (after systemd incorporates everything, resolvers, cron, ntp, etc...). They are first and foremost a business with investors and a bottom line.

Again not an attack on system itself, just my untrusting and paranoid nature (to many years of security scans and cve’s and users, can’t trust users)…

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#200

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

api wrote: post #176
dual_basis wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly agree that git has a UX issue, and the widespread adoption of it over mercurial is a perfect example of inertia leading us to get stuck in a local minima.

I haven't tried hg but from what I've seen one major advantage of git that gets under-acknowledged is its speed. Git is fast and fast really does matter for a version control system you use constantly. Is hg as fast as git?

Personally, I like pushing with hg, but I prefer pulling with git. An HgHub service at the scale of GitHub would probably result in massive end-user UX issues but maybe happier developers and repo administrators.
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