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Systemd 252

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Re: Systemd 252

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should glibc also be optional? What about the Linux kernel? What about apt-get? In my opinion, yes, they should absolutely be optional. Whether or not that is feasible today does not change the advantages of each component of the system being optional and replaceable. It is more failure tolerant both from a purely technical perspective, and also from an organizational perspective.

If you're only talking in hypotheticals then they're already optional and replaceable. Someone just needs to do the work to replace them. You're missing that these parts have to get replaced for a practical reason. Not just because someone vaguely feels it would be more fault tolerant. For example, think of some other libc that's optimized for a certain hardware. Distros that don't support that hardware would have no…

I'm not saying that every distro should support every piece of software that's out there, that would be wasteful and very difficult.

What I am saying is that, ideally, every component in a distro (or any important software, really) should have at least two options, so that if one option fails for whatever reason, the user has a choice to swap it and keep working. This is already true with many components of a distribution.

This is how I am writing my application. It is not fully there yet, but I plan for every dependency to have an alternative. I also favor dependencies with long streaks of no breaking changes, having been previously affected by breaking changes in dependencies I was using.

Re: Systemd 252

#312
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? That is a very good question! Libc and linux kernel are good solutions to well defined problems: a standard C library, and a kernel. They pretty much do what is expected, sometimes they do more, but not by much. Systemd? It is not a good replacement for an init system for the users. Instead, it is an OS functionality accretion for the benefit of distributors, a baroque monstrosity that provides mediocre buggy so…

>Libc and linux kernel are good solutions to well defined problems: a standard C library, and a kernel That's subjective. I've talked to a lot of Windows users who all say Linux is a terrible solution for them. I don't think most Debian developers feel they should suddenly drop everything and start making Linux exactly like a copy of Windows just to please those people. They voted on this several times, they wanted s…

> That's subjective. I've talked to a lot of Windows users who all say Linux is a terrible solution for them.

That's a different statement. I said those linux parts are good solutions to a libc library and unix kernel. Not good solutions to needs of Windows users.

> Most users don't touch the init system that much.

Most BFU users don't touch the init system. If you're a developer/administrator/power user, you do. Yes there is more BFUs (website users, android users) than power users, but that does not mean that the latter group should be pushed to not care about their init system.

> Those are all optional

Not in practice; some of those options are integrated and others are chosen by the distributions. It's hard to reconfigure the system to opt out of journald or user session control.

> You don't have to use socket activation. It's there if you want it and you don't need to strictly order services.

Yes, but that won't solve the problem entirely, systemd is non-deterministic init system where you can't fix the boot order reliably.

> Not sure what this means or what keyboard input you were pressing. In systemd the keyboard shortcut to force reboot is pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del 7 times

Ctrl+C, Ctrl+Z. I mean I don't always want to reboot because something went wrong in the boot process and systemd is stalling. I want info from my init what went wrong, and the option to fix the problem in the shell if possible. This is often not allowed by systemd when it could.

> Not sure what this means either. You can disable those.

It means systemd launches bogus processes slowing down the system. It's well known, it's in the trackers, yes I can and i do disable them.

The point is this sucks and neither the systemd developers neither the distribution(rhel and derivatives) care to fix this.

Re: Systemd 252

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why s6 over other options? I've long considered switching from arch to something without systemd since I use almost zero systemd features but have not had time to discern which init system to use.

Mostly because of the philosophy of the software's author. This was the selling point for me. It is incredibly small scoped by design, easy to understand, and is very explicit in it's actions. It is not as "user friendly" as other inits, though the author is currently working on making it more accessible. It practices separation of mechanism and policy, it attempts to do less than more, and it know when to stop and n…

Thank you for this information. I was leaning towards other init systems for the potential future where I switch to artix simply due to recommendation, I will reevaluate at some point. Thanks again.

Re: Systemd 252

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They broke tmux too: https://superuser.com/questions/1372963/how-do-i-keep-system... Systemd does a lot of good but they like to move fast and break things. Making tmpdir per process, their homedir changes etc are all good for security but tend to break things in unexpected ways

They've never done tmpdir per process... There's a PrivateTmp option for services, but that has to be enabled explicitly

It is enabled by default on some distros.

Re: Systemd 252

#315
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem is that Microsoft has historically tried to destroy linux, and beyond that, has a huge history of FUD and embrace and extinguish. And now they're one of the major backers. All the work is being done in the open, so it's not like there's a nefarious hidden agenda there (an agenda that would have needed to somehow stay dormant for 10+ years). The idea that working for Microsoft is something dirty tha…

Microsoft pushes ads, surveillance software and broken updates on most Windows users. That they are buying influence in Linux and throwing some money at it does not absolve them. Working for bad behaved corporation isn't laudable unless you're literally saving lives there.

Err that seems like an unreasonable (and child-like) simplification of the world.

Microsoft has done many terrible things. Most companies of that size have. But they have also done a ton of good things. It’s impossible to take a group of tens of thousands of humans and not find rampant examples of both good and terrible things.

Sometimes one outweighs the other and that may sound like where you are but there is a wide gap between doing evil and saving lives, and most of us live somewhere in that gap.

Re: Systemd 252

#316
post #315
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft pushes ads, surveillance software and broken updates on most Windows users. That they are buying influence in Linux and throwing some money at it does not absolve them. Working for bad behaved corporation isn't laudable unless you're literally saving lives there.

Err that seems like an unreasonable (and child-like) simplification of the world. Microsoft has done many terrible things. Most companies of that size have. But they have also done a ton of good things. It’s impossible to take a group of tens of thousands of humans and not find rampant examples of both good and terrible things. Sometimes one outweighs the other and that may sound like where you are but there is a wid…

"It's not me doing the bad things, I just work there."

Re: Systemd 252

#317
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>thought that systemd was generally hated? If it was generally hated there would be a lot more support for the distros that don't have systemd. There isn't. Except for alpine, all of them are extremely niche, half of them are dead, the other half barely have enough people to stick around for a release a year. Even alpine is kinda niche, it's mostly used as a way to make lightweight docker containers, rather than as a…

Void Linux doesn't use systemd because it doesn't build against musl libc. Void ships musl and glibc packages for multiple CPU architectures and has a very lively development team and update cycle. It's not dead, it's just not insanely huge, either.

Void Linux is also the only distro I know of to switch from systemd to something else (runit).
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