I wish voidlinux gained more attention from the community and got adapted to serious production stuff. It has all the good elements on paper except the maturity and user base.
Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
111–120 of 191 posts
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#112Everything I know about systemd is bad. When I want to write a script that runs on startup, I expect that I can just put (or link) it in some directory where the scripts are that get started on startup. Or that there is one main script that calls all scripts that are intended to be startet on startup. I do not want to write a "service" that has some "only run once and then discard" flag or whatever. When I want to lo…
That's just saying "I want things to be the way I first learnt them and don't want them to change." This is fine, but you do have to accept that things are going to move on without you.
No, that's saying I want things that stick to the Unix philosophy of simplicity, clarity and text formats with no hidden magic.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#113> If you want to start your own services at startup, you do not need to create any systemd units, but simply enter them in the text file /etc/rc.local, which contains explanatory examples.
Okay, but doesn't that remove a lot of functionality that is available with systemd units? In this whole systemd debate, I've never seen a really clear outline of how much complexity systemd covers, and whether the older alternatives were actually simpler or not. Granted, I haven't looked very hard. I use systemd with Arch and have no known issues with it.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#114I am a bit surprised that they (seemingly? not clear in the article) went back to sysv init rather than exploring other options. I assume they just wanted to go back to something with which they were very familiar (and for which they probably already had scripts). But after going to void linux, I've found runit [1] to be an excellent init system. I was able to sit down and read the documentation in under an hour and understand exactly how it works and how to add my own services (which is fairly trivial). The programs also seem very thoughtfully developed, taking into account specific circumstances and signals. I encourage others to take a look if you're interested; I believe a number of modern distros have support for using it rather than systemd (I know at least Arch does).
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#115The fact that we're still having _this_ conversation, after after a decade since being released and years after mass adoption, should say a lot. I can't think of any other software I have to use on a daily basis that gets so much heat, every time it comes up. One can make all the arguments for it they want but the continued public comtempt means something.
> One can make all the arguments for it they want but the continued public comtempt means something.
It means that Linux community is full of people that refuse to give up on their gripes even after years. Those also tend to be the people who refuse to understand that "the old way" might not be the best way to do something and also fail to produce a viable alternative.
Linux audio was not usable for end users until PulseAudio stabilised. Init based on scripts was a trash fire. And yet, although SystemD and PulseAudio aren't perfect, noone managed to produce anything comparable except pages and pages and pages of whining.
These people need to let it go. This toxicity is unhealthy and it's just damn software.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#116I wish voidlinux gained more attention from the community and got adapted to serious production stuff. It has all the good elements on paper except the maturity and user base.
What are the benefits of void in production compared to Alpine?
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#117Good - but I wish that change would have been coordinated with Devuan instead of duplicating the effort. And by the way - if you're doing something Debian-based - make it Devuan-based, it's pretty straightforward. http://www.devuan.org/
>if you're doing something Debian-based - make it Devuan-based, it's pretty straightforward. It's also pretty straightforward to switch Debian systems back to sysvinit.
No, actually it isn't straightforward. There a lot of artificial dependencies that you can't break. I mean, conceptually it's not difficult, but in practice it is.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
You still have s6, openRC etc. as choices, but it's funny that nobody of the anti-systemd folk was willing to pick up the work needed to maintain consolekit, yet when logind came around, had lots of strong things to say. How about picking up the work as well? And none of the alternatives seem to really get away from the bash script paradigm & more towards the declarative side of things, which doesn't feel like much b…
> nobody of the anti-systemd folk was willing to pick up the work needed to maintain consolekit Why would I want to start working on software I don't use or need? Why do systemd advocates always insist that every implementation must include the features they think are important? The entire point of designing for modularity is that different people have different requirements; operating systems cannot be "one size fit…
> Why would I want to start working on software I don't use or need? Why do systemd advocates always insist that every implementation must include the features they think are important?
If you don't care about multi-user session management, sure, but considering practically every window manager/DE relied on consolekit and now logind to provide that functionality, I find it hard to believe it's not desirable by a large majority of users, some of which would belong to the group I was talking about.
I love how people who are obliviously not the target audience feel the need to chime in.
> Yes, we had strong things to say about software requiring logind, because it is a terrible (and poorly documented, at least at the time) design.
I agree about the lacking documentation, but in terms of design it seems quite solid. Any technical specifics as to why it is terrible? It's interesting that systemd's detractors always seem to be rather vague in this regard, makes me suspicious as to whether they did more than have a knee-jerk reaction to a tool that is different than what they used before.
> because it's easier and has fewer problems, at least in some situations
Am going to need specifics, because in my experience, the bash scripts always ended up being a hot mess of variable quality as per the individual author's scripting skills with inconsistent behavior across scripts.
Not to mention that none of the alternatives give me the functionality I want, because their authors strictly focus on the init part, whereas systemd's much more useful even after the system is up and running due to its event driven nature.
Now I realize that not everybody needs some of the extra features, but for those of us that do, (like container management), s6, openRC etc. is even less of an alternative in a real sense.
> nothing is stopping you from replacing the bash init scripts with another language
The init system needs to be designed to support declarative services from the get go, am not simply talking about using Perl instead of bash here, am talking more along the lines of the Nix vs apt paradigm.
> or replacing the entire init subsystem with something else
And is something stooping you? This is my biggest gripe with the anti-systemd crowd, am personally happy with systemd, so it's not me who needs to look for alternatives. It's you. And there are plenty, so please pick one that suits you. The constant anti-systemd bashing every time the name is mentioned from people who seem to barely know much about what it's trying, (rather successfully), to do is rather annoying.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#119I see a lot of hate about systems and I used to loathe it too. Then I took a course on systemd specifically and it opened my eyes, and now I'm quite fond about it. Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. It has quirks and bugs like all software, but I think it works very well, all things considered. To those who say that it's…
> it manages the system
It manages the system in a way that not everybody needs or even likes. To the people who hate it, it solves problems that other people have but brings new problems that they now have. It's not so much about if it's good or bad but more about whom it was made for.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's complex because it does a complex work Hence it's pointless because it doesn't make things any simpler. All it does is making things monolithic and wrapping concepts that are perfectly fine by themselves, forcing third-party software to write to systemd's APIs. > Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. "Managing systems" is not what is meant by "doing one thing, and doing it we…
As an end user, meaning a web app developer, I actually like systemd a lot. I perceive the software quality to be good enough. I've used it in production since 2014 and encountered zero bugs. It does seem to me to be vastly simpler compared to the old way of doing things. I don't really feel strongly either way. I'll be pretty sad if Debian and redhat diverge.
Simpler for simple things, which is great when it works, but more complicated for more complicated work, which is simply unacceptable when it prevents you from controlling the system. Good old bad design that matters more as you scale up. It isn't the point of systemd that is the problem, it is this particular case of horrible design.