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Systemd 250 Released

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Re: Systemd 250 Released

#171

Post by majewsky »

raverbashing wrote: post #103
pverghese wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to be so dramatic. In the end you are free to use any init system you want.

> In the end you are free to use any init system you want. Not really https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd

Honestly this list is way shorter than I would have expected before clicking, and most of it is very niche stuff (not on the scale of "the entirety of GNOME", for example). Also, some of the entries have notes like "likely usable without systemd if someone puts in the work".

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#172

Post by esarbe »

p_l wrote: post #141
starklevnertz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But no systemd distro is saying “we want to dump systemd but we can’t because it’s too tightly Coupled” are they? Or maybe the maintainers are I don’t know do you have links to show this is the case? Systemd is used by all major linux flavors because it’s the best solution for the problems it solves. The distro maintainers are too smart to be stuck with systemd against their will. And it’s linux …. make a better solu…

That's a bit of revisionist history. Systemd was minority pretty much till GNOME 3.8 introduced super-hard dependencies on it through an interface that was supposedly documented (Ubuntu sunk a bunch of money trying to keep alternative implementation running). For many a distro, it became a question - "do we include GNOME, or do we drop it?" and that was impetus to move to systemd

This is simply not true[0]. To quote:

> This is really unfortunate, but GNOME 3.8 does not require logind. I discussed the non-dependency of logind+systemd on #gentoo-desktop and why they thought different. Apparently GDM 3.8 assumes that an init system will also clean up any processes it started. This is what systemd does, but OpenRC didn’t support that.

Systemd was adopted because it was (and still is) simply superior in many aspects to previously available process managers, because application developers had it up to here to maintain n different init scripts for n different distributions and distribution packagers didn't want to have to write custom init scripts for each application anymore.

As an example, check out the discussion around the adoption of systemd in Debian[1].

[0] https://blogs.gnome.org/ovitters/2013/09/25/gnome-and-logind...

[1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#173

Post by esarbe »

lmm wrote: post #158
kaba0 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No rules were broken.[0]

[0] https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#174

Post by esarbe »

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…

> If Windows is crap, why does every system builder ship the majority of their machines with it?

Because they get incentivized by Microsoft to do so. This is a well document part of their often illegal business practices.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#175

Post by esarbe »

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.

Now, I wonder what could be the reason for that? Maybe because some people just trow out unsubstantiated accusations and hearsay as matter-of-fact? Maybe. Who knows.

> If I move it to a non systemD system, you’ve just added the need to chown -R all my files because the new OS says they are all owned by nobody.

Looks like you completely misunderstood the use case. Congratulation.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#176

Post by gorgoiler »

hasperdi wrote: post #153
AstroDogCatcher wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What place do these niche solutions have in the main project?

In the old days you would write a little script to set up the mapping for your USB drive, once it is plugged in. Linux provides the UID mapping feature, udev gives you a place hook your script, and you glue it together the way you want.

If your solution was particularly high quality it might get included as a package in the OS. Someone else might write a different solution that gets packaged alongside yours. Maybe they scratch the same itch in two different ways? Maybe theirs is just better?

Systemd on the other hand is judge, jury and package maintainer. What they decide upon is what gets included. They are the cathedral, where once there was a bazaar.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#177

Post by iio7 »

sgaduuw wrote: post #68

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.

What you need is dhcpcd. I use dhcpcd on Linux as well, rather than systemd-networkd. It's better and doesn't come with any hardcode Google or Cloudflare DNS servers as systemd-networkd does.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#178

Post by nightfly »

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?

> why everyone seems to hate it to death

This isn't universal. For service management systemd is awesome, and has been way more enjoyable to use than any other system (Ubuntu's upstart, Solaris's SMF, FreeBDS, and old-school linux init). As a sysadmin my only issues with systemd have been occasional patches that required rebooting, but these have practically disappeared in the last few years.

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#179

Post by unixsheikh »

I cannot believe how big of a monstrosity systemd has become. It started out as an init system and was promoted as such and I started out liking it. Then the wording suddenly changed to "a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system", then came the hardcoded DNS servers, then the shitload of bugs that has been ignored since about 2015. Now instead of fixing what's broken and making things more secure, more and more cruft keeps getting added.

> We used to sit around in the Unix Room saying, 'What can we throw out? Why is there this option?' It's often because there is some deficiency in the basic design — you didn't really hit the right design point. Instead of adding an option, think about what was forcing you to add that option. (Doug McIlroy).

Sigh!

Re: Systemd 250 Released

#180

Post by guywhocodes »

esarbe wrote: post #170
guywhocodes wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> in fact it at first pushed us back A LOT That argument I don't quite follow. Would you consider rephrasing it? My question is; how did PA set back Linux sound if it did expose all those flaws in the audio driver in the first place?

Not everyone is a power user. At this time I was in university and Linux went from a reasonable choice to an unreasonable due to sound not working again.

If you care about real world usage, PA set us back years when Ubuntu made it default.

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