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Systemd 250 Released

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Re: Systemd 250 Released

#151

Post by guywhocodes »

esarbe wrote: post #120
guywhocodes wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about (2). Alsa "just worked" when pulse audio was released and PA did not "just work" for like 8 years after the first release. Seems like software history revisionism to me.

While PA in the beginning certainly wasn't manna from heaven, it still was a godsend; pulseaudio exposed all the inconsistencies, flaws and straight out bugs in the alsa driver implementations. The reason so many people had issues with PA was not PA but the brokenness of the underlying system that PA exposed for the first time when trying to use all these drivers in a systematic way and build functionality on top of…

I'm grateful we got a reasonable system out of PA eventually but damn it took time and I agree it is today better than what we had with ALSA. But as I remember it audio sucked with ALSA until it didn't and then we had about two good years of audio before PA came about. Then we had 8~ years of crap again and yes a lot of it was definitely due to really bad drivers and masked inconsistencies in the past.

That's not my point tho, my point is that PA didn't sweep in and save us, in fact it at first pushed us back A LOT. And claiming otherwise is a disservice to ourselves when we consider additional radical change. Such as Pipewire and and Wayland.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#152

Post by kaba0 »

lmm wrote: post #34
starklevnertz wrote: post #9

I just want to pre-empt the inevitable bitching about systemd to say I think it’s awesome and incredibly useful and consistent and powerful and I’d take it any day over the mess of stuff that filled systemd’s duties before. Sure it isn’t perfect, but what software is? And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the a…

> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the alternative? Because it's tightly coupled to everything (particularly to the few profitable parts of linux - most open-source is maintained on a shoestring, so it's pretty cheap to take control over development of even vital low-level infrastructure). This is how syst…

Why was it chosen by debian multiple times with the most democratic process out there?

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#153

Post by hasperdi »

AstroDogCatcher wrote: post #114
pritambaral wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Portable home directories. Think pen drives.

In a cloud setting, I guess having user /home dirs on separate volumes from the root disk and having them relocatable is a reasonable analogue. The real issue is that much like the pen drive thing, absolutely no-one actually does this.

No one? Some people were cared enough about this use case to push it through, so I don't think it's no one. Minority maybe, but not no one.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#154

Post by tssva »

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.

Should macOS and Solaris also not be considered "UNIX derived" or "UNIX like" because of their use of launched and SMF?

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#155

Post by IshKebab »

fsflover wrote: post #124
3np wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's toxic for the long term, because it undermines the whole point of using linux if you can't swap out pieces or maintain your own forks of individual components. You can, though? And many distros do by default. Don’t like systemd-boot? You can replace it with grub. Don’t like systemd-networkd? You can replace it with networkctl. Want to use it but prefer to handle Wireguard tunnels with wg-quick? Fine! Don’t…

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd

Where's the "hard dependency on libc" list? Or "hard dependency on Bash"?

It's ridiculous to imagine that no program is allowed to depend on SystemD.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#156

Post by IshKebab »

toast0 wrote: post #72
starklevnertz wrote: post #9

I just want to pre-empt the inevitable bitching about systemd to say I think it’s awesome and incredibly useful and consistent and powerful and I’d take it any day over the mess of stuff that filled systemd’s duties before. Sure it isn’t perfect, but what software is? And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the a…

> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the alternative? If Windows is crap, why does every system builder ship the majority of their machines with it? Why bother with a different desktop than Windows? Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good. Building a distro is a lot of work already, and avoiding sys…

Windows isn't crap though.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#157

Post by mariusor »

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 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.

With all due respect, but this is bullshit. The devs that started and are working on systemd are clearly veterans of linux system programming and understand quite well the ins and outs of initializing a linux machine. Unless by some chance you're a gray beard that was working on posix in the eighties, I would give the title of veteran to Lennart and the gang.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#158

Post by lmm »

kaba0 wrote: post #152
lmm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the alternative? Because it's tightly coupled to everything (particularly to the few profitable parts of linux - most open-source is maintained on a shoestring, so it's pretty cheap to take control over development of even vital low-level infrastructure). This is how syst…

Why was it chosen by debian multiple times with the most democratic process out there?

It was forced through by breaking the rules of the process and overruling the committee that should have made that decision. Many old-school Debian maintainers quit in disgust at that point, so if subsequent votes have been in systemd's favour then that's probably why.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#159

Post by lmm »

IshKebab wrote: post #155
fsflover wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd

Where's the "hard dependency on libc" list? Or "hard dependency on Bash"? It's ridiculous to imagine that no program is allowed to depend on SystemD.

> Where's the "hard dependency on libc" list?

There are multiple libc implementations. libc independence is important and valuable. You'll probably find a "hard dependency on glibc" list in the documentation of e.g. Alpine.

> Or "hard dependency on Bash"?

Ubuntu will have a list from when they switched to ash as /bin/sh. Again, multiple implementations and independence are important, and something the linux community generally cares about.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#160

Post by 1_player »

captainmuon wrote: post #135
1_player wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux has never been about choice. There was choice because no two people could agree on a set of protocols and standards. And slowly we're converging on a small set of decent (not perfect!) ideas volunteers can focus their efforts on. I honestly hope the choice meme dies because it is so toxic. My Linux workstation and servers are not something I want to tinker with, I want solidity and stability and a fragmented us…

"linux" (as in: Unixoid distributions for desktop systems) has always been about choice. Debian's update-alternatives, the whole FreeDesktop project, ICCCM standards. The theming community, gnome-look.org, kde-look.org, and so on. If I want the stabilty and flexibility of Linux (the kernel) and the GNU command line tools, and the flexibility to choose a UX paradigm that I prefer and visuals that I like, I go to deskt…

> "linux" (as in: Unixoid distributions for desktop systems) has always been about choice.

Again, no. You call it choice, I call it chaos, it was anarchy, and that's the default state for any loosely-coupled systems. There is no manifesto, no underlying philosophy that decided that yes, Linux is about choice. Don't conflate lack of organisation with choice.

Linux has always been about creating a libre UNIX-like kernel for x86 processors. And converging toward the same set of libre techonologies isn't against the Linux spirit.

I still don't understand why people keep harping on about choice. I've used Linux full time since 2001, and the anarchy has just made a libre desktop an utopia because everyone wants every software to support every single option, with no understanding that the number of bugs scales exponentially with the number of choices.

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