Systemd 252

Why do you assume they didn't know about this quite basic mechanism? They added 2 configuration options, one at compile time (to set the default) and another configurable by the user. In fact, distro maintainers didn't look up what it did and they just compiled it as is, resulting in the surprising behavior of killing lingering processes.

Also, it is an init and service management system and long-running processes are services. If you want to run something for "reliability" you should create a service for it, or just run the command with "systemd-run", to properly communicate with the responsible process manager what it supposed to do when the user logs out (and to actually make it reliable, e.g. you can then set it to auto-restart on failure, etc) Safely killing lingering processes and cleaning up after them is the correct default behavior, so systemd just tries to enforce that - they actually communicated with nohup maintainers to optionally add this systemd communication, so that "nohup whatever" would still work, but they were not open to it.

I myself don't have a problem with the monolithic thing that replaced sysv init scripts. While the definition of sysv init scripts was attractively simple, the resulting implementation was not. Wading through many lines of boilerplate shell that's mostly accidental complexity is not my idea of a good time.

But I do hate how systemd splays its config and dependency graph throughout hundreds of tiny files and symlinks in multiple directories (and .ini files at that!), and then insists that this is no problem because you can "just" learn some bespoke commands to analyze them for you. With my sysadmin hat on, I'd much rather have a unit be a single file in a single well known directory, that specifies only the service properties and no dependency information. And then have the dependencies orchestrated by a single logical top-level file that pulls those units in and defines what depends on what. In general if I'm going to customize a distribution-supplied config file, I'd much rather overwrite the distribution file and completely own it going forward, rather than having the distro file and my file merged with some arbitrary rules.

Having said that, I've moved many of my machines to NixOS where systemd is just another thing to be mitigated and nixified. The expected on-disk format doesn't matter, because it's all generated from a single logical config file and then splayed out however systemd wants. The nix config looks a bit verbose and wonky, but at least it's contained. But it also feels like it would be quite easy to switch out down the line...

Linux+GNU is either a Unix operating system or it is not. Having systemd on board changes exactly nothing, since there never was a system services interface anyway. Files in a directory you say? That's not an interface, it's a recipe for failure. Or why do you think that every distribution used to ship their own init scripts?

You EV car dealership is awfully flawed, especially with Linux+GNU you can even build you own car. So why are you complaining? Nobody is forcing you to use a distro with systemd. Nobody can force you. You're not a victim, you're privileged.

systemd is for the first time providing Linux+GNU with a sane system services management and finally gets it ahead of OSX or windows in terms of capability. Instead of unconstrained bash scripts (that require ridiculous template magic or fail for the first edge case) you need only a ten line service description that does things that an init script would not been able to deliver. Like the most basic thing ever; reliable restart. The amount of hacks that were necessary to get an init script to only semi-reliably restart are atrocious - and deamontools are just the beginning.

I've come to understand that the dislike of systemd has less to do with the technology at hand but more with human nature.

I can grep my way through text logs as well but being able to get logs for different purposes using --flags is better user experience. I can always resort to to using grep, sed, and awk if I want to when using journald but the loss of these quality of life features make it hard for me to consider using a distro that does not have systemd.

So maybe you think I have issues in general.