Maybe I'm just out of the loop but what is the controversy regarding systemd?
My pet-bitch is that it's far too large and convoluted to audit properly for most-sized teams.
As is the Linux kernel.
Operating Systems Without Systemd
111–120 of 166 posts
Re: Operating Systems Without Systemd
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wut. What has it de-cargo-culted? Most of the stuff that could use de-cargo-culting is still there under it.
Init scripts used to be mostly unportable since every distro shipped with their own support library. You could technically have a portable init script, but it would not behave like the rest of the distro's native init scripts in terms of status reporting etc. systemd units behave the same across all distributions. Another smaller thing: /etc/os-release replacing the various /etc/*-release files.
Cargo culting is the practice of blindly copying a solution without understanding why it makes sense and when it might not apply. You're describing the opposite.
Re: Operating Systems Without Systemd
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Init scripts used to be mostly unportable since every distro shipped with their own support library. You could technically have a portable init script, but it would not behave like the rest of the distro's native init scripts in terms of status reporting etc. systemd units behave the same across all distributions. Another smaller thing: /etc/os-release replacing the various /etc/*-release files.
Cargo culting is the practice of blindly copying a solution without understanding why it makes sense and when it might not apply. You're describing the opposite.
Fictional Debian dev A: "Why do we have /etc/debian-release? Can't we have a release declaration file with a neutral name, like maybe /etc/os-release, in a format that all other distros can adopt?"
Fictional Debian dev B: "That's how we've always done it. Plus if we touch it it might break some guy's script."
It may not be exactly cargo culting, but at least an adjacent concept.
Re: Operating Systems Without Systemd
#114[deleted]
Re: Operating Systems Without Systemd
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The fact that NixOS other other new fangled package management systems are rarely mentioned in the same context as Gentoo has led me to wonder whether the new kids on the block have done their homework. The Nix thesis[0] explicitly cites Gentoo multiple times; it's very much inspired by, and intended to surpass, Gentoo. [0]: https://edolstra.github.io/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf
I didn't mean to imply that Nix itself did not, rather that when I have seen Nix mentioned in other contexts where I might have expected to see Gentoo mentioned as well, it was not. The thesis probably isn't the best thing to link because it was written before both ecosystems evolved into what they are today, e.g. at least one statement in the thesis about Gentoo is no longer true (Gentoo prefix allows regular users…
>at least one statement in the thesis about Gentoo is no longer true (Gentoo prefix allows regular users to install and manage packages using portage on a variety of systems [0]).
I assume you're referring to the following sentence, but that's not what it's talking about.
>As claimed in the introduction, deployment systems tend to have monolithic trust models. Typical Unix package management systems such as RPM [62], Debian APT, or Gentoo Linux [77] allow installation of software by the administrator only; software installed by individual users is not managed by those tools
This is talking about a single instance of the package manager; for any given instance of the package manager (where an "instance" is defined by various things like the list of installed packages, package data, various package management databases, etc.), only the owner of that instance is allowed to install new packages. For a system-wide package manager, only root is (safely) allowed to install new packages.
Even at the time, RPM and dpkg, and presumably portage, had the ability to create non-system-wide instances of the package manager, like Gentoo Prefix does; but even for such instances of the package manager, it's only safe for the owner to install new packages. (You wouldn't want random other users installing packages in your home directory!) Such instances don't share anything with the system-wide instance - it's essentially like creating a chroot or container.
The reason this is being pointed out in the thesis is that Nix does not have this limitation; any user can safely install arbitrary packages into the system package manager, which are visible to the system, share package data, etc.
I'm taking pains to be clear about this because, IMO, this is one of the places where Nix has the clearest advantage over traditional package managers.
Re: Operating Systems Without Systemd
#116Just finished reading Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, and if we could travel back and show the original hackers at MIT things we use in 2020 like systemd, electron etc. I think they would be in complete disbelief over the amount of bloat, and ask us why we stopped caring and started to accept software design like that.
That's because those hackers are in the frontline of the last war (which we don't have to fight anymore). :v
Crossplatformness or security or convenience in exchange for bloat are all EZ trades. 2.8/62.8 GB of RAM used right now, btw.
Re: Operating Systems Without Systemd
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can output journald to syslog with one config option[1]. 1. https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-jou...
Then it should be on by default. Having to use journalctl instead of reading a plaintext file in /var/log should have resulted in a swift slap upside the noggin the moment it was first considered. I otherwise don't care about systemd, except for the more-than-one locations I might find an init script hiding on my system. It's fine. But don't make me use journalctl just to tail a god damned file like a normal person.…
What is the advantage to having to write all the log messages twice instead of once? What is the disadvantage in having to type "journalctl -f" instead of "tail -f"?
Re: Operating Systems Without Systemd
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually AFAIK the main usecase is single user client systems (say a laptop). Homed makes it easier to encrypt the home directory at any time (without the need to reformat with LUKS) and handles stuff like suspend better (can drop encryption keys before going to suspend and then requesting them on resume).
that's such a small sliver of linux users that the vast majority of linux users (who actually need SSH) are taking the overhead for nothing in return...
Don't use it if you don't need it. The developers made it very clear that systemd-homed is only meant for single-user laptops.
Re: Operating Systems Without Systemd
#119Maybe I'm just out of the loop but what is the controversy regarding systemd?
Part of it is that it is a more or less monolithic package that started as an init system and now does more than some people would like. This results in certain packages switching to require systemd modules(gnome & udev) and essentially locking systems without systemd out of using said software. Communities supporting non-systemd init systems now have to maintain forks of these modules so that they can keep these pac…
I find systemd journals much more accessible. Instead of passing a log file to the tool, you pass journalctl's output to the tool, and you can serialize the output to any of the supported formats (incl. json) and use much more tools, more directly, than you could previously.
Compare that with random older default debian log line from one of my systems:
Feb 14 01:15:30 shakes kernel: [ 4.014481] [drm] No driver support for vblank timestamp query.
Re: Operating Systems Without Systemd
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
I found that extremely strange. Along with Void it's pretty much the go-to distro for people that don't want systemd.
I took the point of the article to highlight the interesting items. Who hasn't heard of, and even know the elevator pitch for Gentoo? For decades already no less. It's great, and it obviously qualifies to be in the full list, but it's not interesting or novel to anyone who already uses unix-like os's other than osx.
Thanks for the list. There are a bunch of gems on there that I’ve never heard of.