I didn't know this was a thing, ignorance truly is bliss.
Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
31–40 of 89 posts
Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
#32This finishes with: "Operating Debian without systemd is a pleasure and every time one of my friends has some systemd-induced lossage I get to feel smug." How common is a systemd-induced loss? I've never had one, and I've never seen or heard of any. Is this a larger problem that I've somehow missed? (This is an honest question, I was just surprised to read this)
While "lossage" in the context of an OS implies other things, in this statement it could mean time. I've had plenty of time wasted by systemd, as has pretty much everyone I know who has had to do more than basic tasks with systemd (and some people who were just trying to do basic things).
Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
#33The hate towards systemd stems from a fact that it tries to do so many things -- which is clearly against Unix philosophy.
Also, it has 1.2 million lines of code. It's massive for an init system. It increases the chance of potential bugs which can be exploited.
Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
#34This finishes with: "Operating Debian without systemd is a pleasure and every time one of my friends has some systemd-induced lossage I get to feel smug." How common is a systemd-induced loss? I've never had one, and I've never seen or heard of any. Is this a larger problem that I've somehow missed? (This is an honest question, I was just surprised to read this)
I did have systemd induced problems but not recently. It was beta quality software when it was first introduced. Even on Debian which wasn't the first distro to ship it. Problems were mostly related to the different naming schemes they introduced to solve problems where the name of a disk or a network interface could randomly change and cause issues. Incidentally that's exactly the areas where it bit me. On a remote system the issues could have been very serious. I did not have such problems in at least 10 years. Ubuntu's new networking changes are causing a similar problem on the latest LTS upgrade. The package manager does not complain about anything nor migrate the configuration but systems end up with no network. These issues are a pain to resolve on remote bare metal servers, thus unacceptable. Yet we accept them. (Not really. There's already an exodus from Ubuntu, due to Snap)
I used Debian without systemd for a long time until it was no longer possible by upgrading. (I believe they make an effort to optionally run without systemd nowadays). In the meantime systemd got better. I still don't like it. It's like how people won't give btrfs another chance because it ate their data once 15 years ago. I think this is completely understandable. Thinking about the past, looking at the history, there's no reason to trust neither the technical skills or ethics of the people pushing systemd (or snaps) either.
Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the default distro configuration more than a systemd issue. It can be changed and 20 minutes for a desktop config is far too high.
I have googled this in the past with no success, how do you change the timeout?
See `man system.conf.d` and DefaultTimeoutStopSec. This can also be set per-service with TimeoutStopSec documented in `man systemd.service`.
Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
#36It's been fashionable to hate on systemd, but I definitely prefer it to the hodgepodge of inconsistent init scripts, logging hacks, and bespoke process monitors that preceded it. init.d was familiar to graybeards (like myself), but I'm loathe to consider them a superior solution.
100%. My toes hurt every time Lennart Poettering steps on them, but every time I dig into the "why" it turns out to not only have been a good reason but a couldn't have worked any other way reason. If someone hadn't dragged Linux kicking and screaming into the 21st century, the arbitrary choices made in the definition of a config file format 50 years ago would cripple the ability to deliver basic features 50 years la…
> good reason
I've been looking for these for years: the reasons that might justify the removal of basic functionality and interoperability with other tools. Got any sources?
Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
#37Or you could use https://www.devuan.org/ (although Bookworm is still being worked on - https://www.devuan.org/os/releases)
"Init Freedom is about restoring a sane approach to PID1 that respects portability, diversity and freedom of choice."
Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
#38This finishes with: "Operating Debian without systemd is a pleasure and every time one of my friends has some systemd-induced lossage I get to feel smug." How common is a systemd-induced loss? I've never had one, and I've never seen or heard of any. Is this a larger problem that I've somehow missed? (This is an honest question, I was just surprised to read this)
I've never suffered data loss from systemd, but I certainly have encountered loss of functionality. There are a number of things that I just can't accomplish with systemd that I can accomplish without it.
Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
#39I hate systemd with a passion, but I won't fiddle with Debian to get rid of it. I would love if a major distro emerges which works with human-readable scripts and logs and stays away from any "binary" formats for system configuration and logging.
I'm neutral on systemd, just give me something that works and I'll be ok with it.
Anyway, if you're after a distro that doesn't use systemd and is a joy to use and tinker with, take a look at Alpine [0]. It is a lot more compact and faster compared to other distros for using Musl instead of Glibc, which means you may find software that has not been ported yet, however so far I've installed it also on mini PCs and laptops with great results.
Re: Installing Debian bookworm without systemd
#40I hate systemd with a passion, but I won't fiddle with Debian to get rid of it. I would love if a major distro emerges which works with human-readable scripts and logs and stays away from any "binary" formats for system configuration and logging.
How is systemd a binary format for configuration?
I get the silliness of journald not being clear text, you can configure it to be, but it's not the default, which is really weird. If you have the scale where you need binary logs for performance, then you also have remote log hosts. The remote log hosts will frequently also store logs in a binary format, like logstash, Humio, Splunk and what have you, but they are shipped a text, so the binary is just an unnecessary extra step. Sure you can use journald as a log collector, but I've never seen anyone do that... Kinda cool, but not frequently used.
Systemd unit files though, those are much much better than any other init system I've ever used. They are easy to write, easy to understand and just overall nice to work with. Timers are awesome as well, same easy syntax as startup scripts, easy to test, easy to debug.