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Linux distros without systemd

ungleich.ch

231–240 of 449 posts

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memory safety is not the alpha and omega of programming languages. People do not write million lines of code applications in bash, for a reason, trade-offs are to be made. That said I agree they should have picked Go instead /s.

I'm not such a lover of Go, but: non-sarcastically, Go may well have been a good choice.

> Lennart Poettering and Kay Sievers started the project to develop systemd in 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#History

> Go was publicly announced in November 2009,[29] and version 1.0 was released in March 2012.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)#Hist...

The brand-new language that Google just announced last year was probably not considered a serious option here.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Why is it another open source developer's obligation to satisfy your design desires?

I never said it is.

What I said is that if someone values diversity of software, then they should object to applications including a hard dependency on systemD. That's just logical, as including hard dependencies on systemD reduces software diversity by requiring that the system it runs on uses systemD rather than allowing them the choice.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We did fork debian, and here are a TON of people who say they do not care, but still insist that we are doing it wrong for some reason.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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?

To be fair, the ones sending death threats are contributing negatively, while the fork effort is a positive contribution to the situation. We'd appreciate not being lumped in with the worst offenders, if you'd be so kind.

A lot of the western world has devolved into tribalism and identitarianism. People of similar views on anything are lumped in en-masse and presumed to hold all of the same values, opinions and support all actions of the collective whole.

It's a shame that a lot of core values are lost in favor of these viewpoints.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people who prefer initv are the people who enjoy digging in other people’s (untestable) Bash scripts This is demonstrably untrue. I strongly prefer SysV (which is not to say I think SysV is wonderful or anything) over systemD for a number of architectural and functional reasons. But I do not enjoy digging into other people's init scripts. Fortunately, I rarely have to do that. I think the last time I had a prob…

You're right. Bad generalization. Sentence removed, but archived in your comment. Out of curiosity, what distros do you use that you've had such a good run with init scripts?

I currently use Debian on everything except my R-PIs, where I use Raspbian.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#236
post #128

Systemd is the worst init system except for all the others that have been developed from time to time. Some of the trade-offs it makes, and its expansionist attitudes, are really grating. But it introduced a higher level of consistency in the Linux world for userland developers, which is almost invariably a good thing from a commercial perspective.

> from a commercial perspective

Nailed it. The hobbyists are revolting. Anyone interested in making their system do something odd and clever is having problems, and the people running linux systems 9-5 are busy calling us morons for trying or even caring...

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fut…

Bash is memory safe until you run 'rm -rf $DIR/' when DIR is unset. Let's just say the language choice went from bad to equally bad.

That's not a memory-safe error.

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 fut…

Bash is memory safe until you run 'rm -rf $DIR/' when DIR is unset. Let's just say the language choice went from bad to equally bad.

do beginner bash guides not tell you to "set -u"? all the system scripts on my system have it

it causes the script to terminate with an error if it encounters use of an unset variable

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#239
post #109
post #40

I do find it funny that people crap all over systemd, but don't seem to have a huge problem with launchd, despite the fact that systemd was almost a direct port of it. Personally, while I do think that systemd's scope might have been a bit too ambitious, I do find it easier than something like Upstart

systemd was not a port of launchd, direct or otherwise. The problem with launchd being difficult to port off MacOS is one of the reasons why launchd never came about for FreeBSD. * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/launchd-on-bsd.html systemd was not a port of anything. And its immediate inspiration was Upstart, the system that Fedora was using at the time, and whose drawbacks provoked Lennart Poettering et al. to start working o…

> systemd was not a port of anything. And its immediate inspiration was Upstart

Its motivation was perhaps upstart's shortcomings, but systemd was definitely inspired by the design of launchd and that was repeatedly and explicitly mentioned in Lennart's very first blog post introducing it:

> But first, let's clear a few things up: is this kind of logic new? No, it certainly is not. The most prominent system that works like this is Apple's launchd system ...

> For socket activation we support full compatibility with the traditional inetd modes, as well as a very simple mode that tries to mimic launchd socket activation and is recommended for new services.

> More importantly however, it is also our plan to experiment with systemd … to make it the ideal session manager… The problem set of a session manager and an init system are very similar… Using the same code for both uses hence suggests itself. Apple recognized that and does just that with launchd. And so should we…

> Writing Daemons:: … The list above is very similar to what Apple recommends for daemons compatible with launchd. It should be easy to extend daemons that already support launchd activation to support systemd activation as well.

http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html

Re: Linux distros without systemd

#240
post #165

Most arguments about systemd will devolve into a Motte and Bailey argument. The problems with systemd are all the stuff tacked on that are mandatory, but if you criticize them you'll get people switching to try to put words into your mouth about how the init replacement is good/bad. The Motte is all the shovelware attached to systemd that is nearly impossible to detatch and the Bailey is the init replacement.

Welcome to 21st century arguments. Humans used to be able to disagree and still get along, but that was boring for drama-preventing reasons. More on topic, though, I wonder: What exaclty is the relationship between Alpine Linux and ungleich.ch?

There are no official ties between Alpine Linux and ungleich.ch. We at ungleich are simple people liking simple systems. And we think it is important to support systems that are not mainstream.

That's why we endorse Alpine Linux.

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