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Systemd 250 Released

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Re: Systemd 250 Released

#61

Post by 42jd »

mst wrote: post #52
42jd wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has learned Linux/Unix just the past few months using a systemd based distro, I find it a breeze to use. Great documentation, FOSS, and really easy to pick up. I just don’t understand why there is so much dislike thrown around when that energy can be focused elsewhere on truly bad behavior/software. And from my understanding, there are distros out there that don’t use systemd for those who dislike it t…

I'm an old school unixhead who's nonetheless made his peace with systemd because, honestly, it makes lots of things work way better than most previously available solutions did. Thing is, it also forcibly changed a bunch of things by introducing defaults that were not at all what people expected. They might have been better overall, but it still caused some nasty surprises. Let me try and explain a bit more concretel…

That's a fantastic explanation, thanks! Yep, I can definitely understand the dislike of software coming with defaults that break commonly understood precedent.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#62

Post by Datagenerator »

davydm wrote: post #37
ggm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be process 1 was init, and it forked/exec'd everything else typically from /etc/rc (this elides over a lot) -its the first binary the kernel runs. Everything else stems from the birth of user process number 1. Fork/exec is the lightweight process inheriting of open i/o and memory state with copy-on-write which made Unix a joy to work with. It's a delightful mapping of kernel and userspace into complex inhe…

consistency ftw: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29670751 gimme open-rc or gimme death actually, sysv was fine too open-rc solves the parallel-startup desire for people who want a faster boot and doesn't hide logs in binary formats which can only be interrogated with specialised tools - my primary reason for leaving Debian-based systems that I'd used for 16 years was having systemd forced on me and trying to dea…

Tried FreeBSD? Very consistent and has POLA, the principle of Least astonishment. The proper good stuff Dell Isilon and NetApp are relying on.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#63

Post by Spivak »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #14
ChuckMcM wrote: post #6

At this point any system that is running this should not be called "UNIX derived" or "UNIX like" as systemd has subsumed all of the pre-existing architecture around system startup and management. Not arguing if that is a good or bad thing just saying we should stop putting systemd managed systems in the 'UNIX' column just like we don't put Windows NT systems in the UNIX column.

Would anyone care to explain to someone who isn't 1337 in the inner workings of Linux, why systemd makes modern Linux not very UNIXY anymore and why everyone seems to hate it to death?

* dbus — This is part of a broader change in Linux userspace from text/byte streams to a message bus of structure data similar to COM. It’s incredibly powerful the things you can accomplish with it but it’s sysadmin/power user unfriendly if you expect the interface to system services to be “call a binary from bash.” systemd uses dbus for basically everything which makes it really really easy to program while simultaneously erasing every sysadmins muscle memory and ability to solve every program with more bash.

* lack of composability — This is what is really meant by the “do one thing” mantra. Plenty of UNIXY tools are bloated but they don’t feel like it because they can be called as filters. systemd is actually quite modular but the pieces aren’t designed to be standalone. Like how in Ansible is everything is a plug-in but it’s cumbersome to just run a single module.

* “better is worse” — one of the weirder faults of systemd is that it’s thoughtfully designed, handles edge cases gracefully, and does things the right way. Kinda odd to paint this as a fault but it’s the reason people like bash over powershell; Unix tools were mostly made by people solving their own problems and so are completely inconsistent, full of sharp edges, odd syntax and parsers, have plenty of unimplemented features but are fiercely useful. systemd is a tool not forged in battle and is designed by people trying to write good software over software that solves an immediate need. This isn’t to say that systemd isn’t useful — it’s genuinely transformative but software written out of frustration tends to be designed differently and it shows.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#64

Post by fsh »

5e92cb50239222b wrote: post #36
teleforce wrote: post #17

This week I have just learned that systemd has an alternative scheduler in addition to cron. At this rate systemd will probably become another new OS on top of Linux similar to Android.

You mean systemd timers? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/Timers They were always there, and they work much better than cron in my experience (you're not forced to use cron expressions because it supports things like human-readable time formats; they can randomize startup times, which is useful for backups; they can put additional constraints (like "start only if network is available"); and they can actually…

What I really like is that systemd can tell me when the next execution will happen. One typo in the awful crontab format and your job will never execute with no way of testing it.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#65

Post by fsh »

ddingus wrote: post #23
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would anyone care to explain to someone who isn't 1337 in the inner workings of Linux, why systemd makes modern Linux not very UNIXY anymore and why everyone seems to hate it to death?

Basically, systemd is a big binary that manages the system. That used to be many discrete programs and shell scripts and files. There is a lot of philosophy to consider from there.

On my laptop, systemd consists of 60 different small binaries. Looks pretty UNIXy to me (maybe even too much so).

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#66

Post by dschuetz »

sjansen wrote: post #47
trabant00 wrote: post #13

Work hard and solve a big, complex set of problems. Solve them well. Offer the solution as free open source. Work some more to offer extra functionality and fix the bugs. Become the internet's villain. Come up with a commercial solution to a simple problem. Ex: file sharing or password management. Make it slow, insecure, privacy violating, lose people's data. Make millions, become a hero.

There is so much truth to what you say. I used Linux exclusively from January 2000 until April 2012. A lot has changed in that time, but out of all the changes the three I'm most thankful for are: (1) Xorg replacing XFree86 and making video "just work" (2) Pulse Audio replacing OSS and making audio "just work" (3) systemd replacing the dog's breakfast of scripting madness each distro built from scratch instead of col…

> (3) systemd replacing the dog's breakfast of scripting madness each distro built from scratch instead of collaborating

Which goes completely against what Linux stands for - collaboration. The "scripting madness" as you call it was actually completely transparent - if the scripting was bad, you were free to fix it. But now you have to issue a bug report when systemd does something stupid and it's not even your fault to Lennart and his gang only to get it dismissed with "no a bug, won't fix".

Also, Pulse Audio only "just works" because the distribution maintainers do that for you. It's still a stinking pile of "don't no how, but it just works".

Keep telling yourself that Lennart does a great job. Stockholm syndrom much?

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#67

Post by lmm »

sjansen wrote: post #47
trabant00 wrote: post #13

Work hard and solve a big, complex set of problems. Solve them well. Offer the solution as free open source. Work some more to offer extra functionality and fix the bugs. Become the internet's villain. Come up with a commercial solution to a simple problem. Ex: file sharing or password management. Make it slow, insecure, privacy violating, lose people's data. Make millions, become a hero.

There is so much truth to what you say. I used Linux exclusively from January 2000 until April 2012. A lot has changed in that time, but out of all the changes the three I'm most thankful for are: (1) Xorg replacing XFree86 and making video "just work" (2) Pulse Audio replacing OSS and making audio "just work" (3) systemd replacing the dog's breakfast of scripting madness each distro built from scratch instead of col…

The thing is, you used to be able to fix something and have it stay fixed. You used to be able to find a config that worked - which, sure, might have required some manual experimentation and customization - but then you could back it up and keep it.

Maybe pulseaudio and systemd only breaks 2% of the time rather than 3% of the time. But when they do break, you can't understand what's happened and you can't fix them, and even if they worked yesterday they won't necessarily work today. If that was tradeoff I was happy with I'd use windows or OSX.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#68

Post by sgaduuw »

I recently switched from Ubuntu to FreeBSD, and systemd-networkd is what I miss the most. Network settings in /etc/rc.conf totally feel like a bandaid on a bandaid on a bandaid.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#69

Post by gorgoiler »

trabant00 wrote: post #13

Work hard and solve a big, complex set of problems. Solve them well. Offer the solution as free open source. Work some more to offer extra functionality and fix the bugs. Become the internet's villain. Come up with a commercial solution to a simple problem. Ex: file sharing or password management. Make it slow, insecure, privacy violating, lose people's data. Make millions, become a hero.

“Offering some extra functionality” is a novel way of describing how systemd has expanded since being anointed as everyone’s init-replacement.

Systemd broke my ability to login, once. That was fun.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#70

Post by traverseda »

fsh wrote: post #58
gorgoiler wrote: post #35

SystemD has something of a reputation for being a bunch of arrogant young engineers making fundamental changes to the long established status quo in order to solve clever problems that range from tiny-minority-edge-case to non-existent. It’s an absolute classic anti-pattern any industry veteran would recognise. Your new-grad engineer, top of their class and incredibly smart, spends two weeks rewriting a core system i…

systemd-homed is not intended for your single-user desktop. Don't use it.

What is it intended for? Certainly not large scale user groups backed by an LDAP server, as those would have consistent uid/gid so setting everything to be owned by nobody wouldn't make sense technically...

What is the use case?

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