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Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

danielcordova.me

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Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#71

Post by gf000 »

shevy-java wrote: post #29
mkesper wrote: post #12

You do not have to use all resources that are under the systemd umbrella. That's just BS, sorry. And prod deployments breaking... Well I guess that never happened with those best-managed sysv init scripts? Guys, pick your fights reasonably.

Agreed. But you still need to know what to enable/disable, so more complexity is the outcome. > And prod deployments breaking... Well I guess that never happened with those best-managed sysv init scripts? Which of these two has the larger surface area? I would assume there are more problems in systemd simply because it has a lot more code. > Guys, pick your fights reasonably. I don't see what is not reasonable here a…

Not all code are equal.

There is an essential complexity you need, period. This is a fundamental truth that that can never decrease.

And init and service management is a generally hard problem - like a static approach wouldn't bring you too far, you have services activated at runtime, modules appearing, disappearing etc.

So it's a hard problem, yet many parts are repeating. A network service and a file system mount both require some kind of dependency management, parallelism with locks, logging etc. On top, a declarative approach is far better for such a dynamic system and that's exactly what systemd is.

OpenRC gives some of this, but bash is an abomination and anything larger than 2-3 lines will have bugs. I don't really see what it's giving you over an open-source binary that parses trivial .ini-like files that have pretty good portability across systems.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#72

Post by adrian_b »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #61
HackerThemAll wrote: post #39

Not long in the future we'll have "Systemd Linux".

It can reasonably be argued that Systemd is a very substantial chunk of what the operating system actually is. The kernel has a very focused job to do. The hard work of running the show on top of the kernel - and it's a big job - is done by Systemd. And it's awesome I love Systemd. If you dislike Systemde I can only imagine you haven't really taken the time to learn it and use it properly.

I have seen a lot of Systemd presentations, for much more than a decade.

None of them has included even the slightest reason why I would want to use it, and on my computers, desktops, laptops, mini-PCs and servers, I have run only Linux or FreeBSD since about 23 years ago, when I have reformatted my last HDD containing a Windows installation, so I have a lot of experience with Linux.

One time, already a few years after Systemd had become mainstream and it was supposed that its early bugs had been fixed, I have tried to use Systemd for a month, thinking that the criticisms that I had heard about Systemd might have been exaggerated. However, I encountered then a bug myself, which was severe enough to convince me that I cannot trust the Systemd developers, so I never used it again.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#73

Post by gf000 »

shevy-java wrote: post #34
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #13

Interesting that it's kind of that simple. It looks almost like you could make a fairly straightforward fork that works with that, as long as they sysvinit packages are kept up-to-date. I have to say while I dislike systemd it hasn't annoyed me enough to send me down that route yet.

How about age sniffing though? :) https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954 Granted, this is not quite a thorough age sniffing requirement yet, but with the legislation in the USA and other countries currently changed, the operating system is de-jure forced to sniff off data from people and send it over to others, be it state agencies or companies. It's like the novel 1984 adapted to the modern days, but crap. Wi…

Like they added a field to be possibly law-complient?

What's the alternative, Linux should just not run in places where this will be the legal framework? How is that field limits your freedom?

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#75

Post by mort96 »

tym0 wrote: post #58
mort96 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're separate programs and system services which all more or less just do their own thing, just developed under the systemd umbrella. So it can't be "toggled", you can just not use the parts of systemd you don't want. But it's meant to work as a cohesive system when everything in systemd is used together. FWIW, I think it's great that someone is trying to make a coherent set of system services for Linux. Things te…

Right, are any of the things mentioned in the GP really required if you only want this init? I know they've attached all these projects to the systemd brand because they thought it would beneficial but it's hard not to wonder if we could avoid all those discussions if the umbrella project was called something different...

No, you can just run the systemd init system and not use any other systemd programs.

I would probably run systemd-journald just because it's really nice to have a logging system which knows about the system services, but it's not required.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#77

Post by gf000 »

shevy-java wrote: post #26

The article makes one key mistake, in that it compares systemd to openrc. Aka some monster-system with billion features, to a fairly small system that juts relates to initializing a few things. The whole debate about systemd has always been very dishonest from the systemd devs. If you have 3 million lines of code, for instance, and offer 5000 features, just to give out semi-random numbers, then every alternative with…

How does a field carrying age sniffing? It's open source, you personally run whatever you want.

But not all places are like that, Linux is run in places where abusing this law is mandated. The alternative is that that place can't run Linux - so by denying such a feature you actually deny the usage of Linux, limiting "user-freedom".

You are by no ways hurt if you choose to either ignore the law or live in a place where such laws won't be passed.

(With that said, I'm absolutely against age verification - but that in and of itself won't change the law)

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#79

Post by INTPenis »

graemep wrote: post #52
lukan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what are your thoughts on deploying software to a fragmented system?

Systemd does not solve the deployment problem, and will not unless it adds something like a systemd package manager. It is interesting that Linux is far more widely used than alternatives that are not fragmented (e.g. FreeBSD) and has not standardised on one distro. Different people have different needs and preferences. People using Debian, Alpine, and NixOS are unlikely to agree on what they want.

If you want to get a good idea of how different modern Linux APIs are now compared to before. Look at cPanel vs. cockpit.

cPanel had to maintain its own unified API above a slew of other interfaces, while Cockpit benefits from a unified OS API. And we're only getting started, we still have a long way to go.

Yes I love the diversity of the open source ecosystem, I love that people are free to create their own distros without systemd. But I love my distros with systemd too much to switch.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#80

Post by xuhu »

0dayz wrote: post #50

To this day I have not found a single modern argument against systemd that is a technical one (I tried systemd but it does not support x which openrc does), instead it's these vague bike shed arguments (Unix philosophy, anti-centralization and "bloat" ). I can't wrap my head around it, since those 3 are a "you" problem, systemd is just a service manager it's you who decide to use other systemd parts.

If Unix philosophy is what's keeping systemd from requiring a Microsoft account during install, I'm all for it.
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