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Boycott Systemd (2014)

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Re: Boycott Systemd (2014)

#31

Post by amelius »

toast0 wrote: post #21
amelius wrote: post #3

Can anybody explain to me what dbus is for, and why I sometimes have to start applications using "dbus-launch" because otherwise they can't connect to dbus. Or why sometimes when I login on other systems using "ssh -CY" I cannot even start applications like eog (eye of gnome) because dbus is in the way, but somehow mysteriously they DO start when I run them with "strace -f"? Seems to me that Linux systems are startin…

> Edit: thanks for all the replies, yes, I get that dbus is for sending messages between applications, but what is wrong with e.g. UNIX domain sockets? I think the reason for dbus is that all of these processes want to talk to all the other ones, and they need to rendezvous somewhere. You probably don't want to open a unix socket for every 'topic' you want to respond to, and anyway if there's multiple programs intere…

> if there's multiple programs interested in the topic, how do you make sure they all get all of the messages, if they all listen to the socket, only one gets the message.

Well, you could listen on a socket for subscribers ...

(Basically a decentralized approach vs a centralized approach)

> OTOH, dbus doesn't transit over the network, so eog on a remote host can't communicate with your desktop environment, so that's kind of a pain.

Yes, and what I find mysterious is that dbus was conceived by the freedesktop.org project. How could they have missed this important requirement?

Re: Boycott Systemd (2014)

#32

Post by qbasic_forever »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #25

Perhaps the issue with systemd is not technical superiority nor convenience, as many commenters routinely present it. Perhaps the issue is actually user control. Personally, I know that if I followed the philosophy of always picking the solutions that were the most technically superior, the easiest to use and/or the most convenient, I would have far less control over the computers I own. YMMV. For the avoidance of do…

Systemd doesn't remove any control, and in fact gives a lot of extra control over things like process dependencies, environment, etc. The big complaint people had/have really just boils down to someone moved the cheese--your bespoke and brittle startup scripts are now declarative config files. Some people had to learn something new and that _really_ angered them.

Re: Boycott Systemd (2014)

#34

Post by quicklime »

dale_glass wrote: post #26

I don't care about a single one of those. Computers exist to solve problems, not to be compliant with a particular philosophy. The appeals to Unix philosophy, dogma about how logs should be stored, etc, are all completely irrelevant to me. I don't run Linux because it fulfills an ideology but because it does a job. Also, journald is actually extremely nice. Of all the complaints, I don't really get some people's love…

The “Unix philosophy” is a core part of the user interface to Unix systems. You might not care about this yourself, but I’d bet that most people do care about UI consistency.

Re: Boycott Systemd (2014)

#35

Post by amelius »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #27
zh3 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, some of us would wonder what the easier alteratives are?

Unix domain sockets or FIFOs could be an alternative, but you'd have to do all kinds of complexity to support pub/sub style many to many communication over them (which is what dbus effectively does for you).

It depends if you are a fan of a centralized server vs decentralized communication.

Anyway, all the complexities of using sockets/FIFOs could be hidden inside libraries.

Re: Boycott Systemd (2014)

#36

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #31
toast0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Edit: thanks for all the replies, yes, I get that dbus is for sending messages between applications, but what is wrong with e.g. UNIX domain sockets? I think the reason for dbus is that all of these processes want to talk to all the other ones, and they need to rendezvous somewhere. You probably don't want to open a unix socket for every 'topic' you want to respond to, and anyway if there's multiple programs intere…

> if there's multiple programs interested in the topic, how do you make sure they all get all of the messages, if they all listen to the socket, only one gets the message. Well, you could listen on a socket for subscribers ... (Basically a decentralized approach vs a centralized approach) > OTOH, dbus doesn't transit over the network, so eog on a remote host can't communicate with your desktop environment, so that's…

[deleted]

Re: Boycott Systemd (2014)

#37

Post by dale_glass »

quicklime wrote: post #34
dale_glass wrote: post #26

I don't care about a single one of those. Computers exist to solve problems, not to be compliant with a particular philosophy. The appeals to Unix philosophy, dogma about how logs should be stored, etc, are all completely irrelevant to me. I don't run Linux because it fulfills an ideology but because it does a job. Also, journald is actually extremely nice. Of all the complaints, I don't really get some people's love…

The “Unix philosophy” is a core part of the user interface to Unix systems. You might not care about this yourself, but I’d bet that most people do care about UI consistency.

Right now I'm looking at this in Firefox in KDE. I'm not sure what "one thing" either of those does. Neither deals with plain text in a terminal.

But if you want a comfortable commandline UI, I'd say journalctl does the job far better than grepping log files. And heck, it outputs text so you can still grep that if you really want to.

Re: Boycott Systemd (2014)

#38

Post by [deleted] »

amelius wrote: post #35
qbasic_forever wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix domain sockets or FIFOs could be an alternative, but you'd have to do all kinds of complexity to support pub/sub style many to many communication over them (which is what dbus effectively does for you).

It depends if you are a fan of a centralized server vs decentralized communication. Anyway, all the complexities of using sockets/FIFOs could be hidden inside libraries.

[deleted]

Re: Boycott Systemd (2014)

#39

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

quicklime wrote: post #34
dale_glass wrote: post #26

I don't care about a single one of those. Computers exist to solve problems, not to be compliant with a particular philosophy. The appeals to Unix philosophy, dogma about how logs should be stored, etc, are all completely irrelevant to me. I don't run Linux because it fulfills an ideology but because it does a job. Also, journald is actually extremely nice. Of all the complaints, I don't really get some people's love…

The “Unix philosophy” is a core part of the user interface to Unix systems. You might not care about this yourself, but I’d bet that most people do care about UI consistency.

The Systemd project largely follows the "Unix philosophy" anyway. Lots of sub-tools, each doing one thing well. It's a bit like complaining that the GNU coreutils don't follow the "Unix philosophy".

Re: Boycott Systemd (2014)

#40

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

amelius wrote: post #35
qbasic_forever wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix domain sockets or FIFOs could be an alternative, but you'd have to do all kinds of complexity to support pub/sub style many to many communication over them (which is what dbus effectively does for you).

It depends if you are a fan of a centralized server vs decentralized communication. Anyway, all the complexities of using sockets/FIFOs could be hidden inside libraries.

Once you hide the complexities of using sockets you just end up with some sort of message bus that each application connects to and registers an ID with... which is essentially what dbus is.
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