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Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

danielcordova.me

151–160 of 168 posts

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#151
post #98
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.

Sorry for nitpicking, maybe you didn't think through the choice of word, but what is a "technical" argument and how is it different from other types of arguments? I think all arguments about a technology like systemd need to have a technical part (what systemd does) and a (sometimes implicit) personal part (what I think about it). If it doesn't have the technical part then I don't think it's an argument about systemd…

Technical as in there a precise and empirical reason for it such as a technological reason for it.

The bloat argument is perfectly suitable once you remove its derogatory meaning and instead say resource constraints such as when working in embedded.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#152
post #80
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.

Why you need systemd for that when you can just enable pam_microsoft_account.so?

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#153
post #54
post #43

I have a curious question. My local setup has worked for me for ages ever since arch decided to switch to systemd. Same on the servers I deal with, after Debian's switch. At the same time, I can say I'm not involved with inner workings of a Linux system enough, to be affected by init system change and the pain it might bring. In other means consider me an average Joe of the Linux world. Hence this question: If it suc…

It doesn't suck, people are just emotional beings and have some "football team" level takes on technical stuff as well. The very same people that hate systemd for "being a monolith" and limiting choice are usually also love X and hate Wayland where they can manage to explain how being a monolith is suddenly good. Especially that systemd is pretty modular - at least the actual systemd program running as PID 1. It also…

> The very same people that hate systemd for "being a monolith" and limiting choice are usually also love X and hate Wayland where they can manage to explain how being a monolith is suddenly good.

Wayland is very much a monolith compared to X. I guess people never really realized how much desktop environments could be mix'n'matched under X, bringing window managers, system trays, hotkeys bindings, and a whole bunch of other things not designed together but that could still work together. Under Wayland it's all smushed together and you have to accept whatever your chosen desktop environment chose to implement. It's very similar to how systemd is going.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My searches for "systemd partition autodiscovery" lead me to [0]. In the table labeled "Table 1. Partition Type GUIDs", we find this in the Explanation section for 'SD_GPT_HOME' The first partition with this type UUID on the same disk as the root partition is mounted to /home/. ...you can't spread your /home and / partitions on separate disks and use this? In fact, it looks like you can't use this autodetection unles…

> ...you can't spread your /home and / partitions on separate disks and use this? In fact, it looks like you can't use this autodetection unless all of the partitions of interest (including your /boot/) are on the same disk? Seriously? How would it choose from 2 home partitions on other disks?

A little better than how you'd handle having multiple '/home' lines in fstab? Either pick one to mount, or have the bootloader give a hint as to which one to mount (as there's apparently a whole protocol the bootloader must use for this to work). [0]

But. Having said that, why would you have two home partitions on other disks? Having a bigass disk for your home partition [2] is way more common than having multiple entirely-independent Linux installs that you all want to use this automagic mount point detection on. Do you disagree?

[0] > Note that automatic discovery of the root only works if the boot loader communicates this information to the OS, by implementing the (Boot Loader Interface)[1].

[1] https://systemd.io/BOOT_LOADER_INTERFACE/>

[2] ...because where else would you store all your porn?

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My searches for "systemd partition autodiscovery" lead me to [0]. In the table labeled "Table 1. Partition Type GUIDs", we find this in the Explanation section for 'SD_GPT_HOME' The first partition with this type UUID on the same disk as the root partition is mounted to /home/. ...you can't spread your /home and / partitions on separate disks and use this? In fact, it looks like you can't use this autodetection unles…

> you can't spread your /home and / partitions on separate disks and use this No, you'll need to add a line to your fstab manually if you want something autodiscovery cannot do, like multi-disk setups, LVM, and FDE with unsupported configurations. It's great if it works for you and a very minor change if it doesn't. I don't recall ever installing a system with / and /home on separate partitions, though.

> No, you'll need to add a line to your fstab manually if you want something autodiscovery cannot do...

It's just shocking that autodiscovery is so extremely limited. I'm aware that if you want to do something that autodiscovery can't do, then you cant use autodiscovery for that thing... I'm pretty sure that was covered in a recent Tautology Club meeting.

> I don't recall ever installing a system with / and /home on separate partitions, though.

I'd wager that that's the configuration of vast majority of the consumer systems out there... which makes it even more confusing how anemic partition autodetection is.

Its target user is one who bothers to partition out space for subdirectories, but doesn't use either multiple disks or LVM? That's a very particular sort of user.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#156
post #81
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found a few bugs where journald was losing data for example. I reported them and they got fixed in later releases. Of course I still got called a neckbeard and got told that I didn't like systemd because I'm a dinosaur and so on. So I have a really hard time to take positions such as your seriously to be honest.

If you mean that there are times systemd has a critical bug; sure the same way x11, kernel modules or drivers have critical bugs are annoying. You can always point to where I said you are a neckbeard, so I do not get the "hard time" angle. You can not like systemd, but the arguments for it is silly, and that is fine it's your machine and I don't care as long as people stop spreading FUD on such awful grounds. Say in…

You are precisely part of the mob I was describing. Perhaps you did not say exactly word by word "neckbeard" but you are dismissing all the arguments as FUD.

As I said, when distributions were already using systemd by default I installed it and tried it for one hour and found 3 different ways it was losing data sent to journald.

According to you when a logging daemon loses log entries, stating that it's not ready for real use is FUD. Funny how you think of yourself as being the reasonable one here :)

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#157
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both systemd and wayland were quite broken when they were first being pushed onto everyone... they're mostly fine now.

It's the bazaar. No one is pushing anything on you, you have a wrong mental model if you think anything can be pushed.

[deleted]

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#158
post #156
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mean that there are times systemd has a critical bug; sure the same way x11, kernel modules or drivers have critical bugs are annoying. You can always point to where I said you are a neckbeard, so I do not get the "hard time" angle. You can not like systemd, but the arguments for it is silly, and that is fine it's your machine and I don't care as long as people stop spreading FUD on such awful grounds. Say in…

You are precisely part of the mob I was describing. Perhaps you did not say exactly word by word "neckbeard" but you are dismissing all the arguments as FUD. As I said, when distributions were already using systemd by default I installed it and tried it for one hour and found 3 different ways it was losing data sent to journald. According to you when a logging daemon loses log entries, stating that it's not ready for…

Right, why did you feel the need to straw man me to somehow justify your victim complex?

You can cite me for when I said all arguments are FUD, or even that yours was.

And if your issue is that it's not ready, okay? That had nothing to do with my point.

So let me repeat, do you swear to never use a certain Linux kernel module because it has critical bugs? If yes okay good that is a most likely temporary technical argument so why spread FUD about it?

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can't spread your /home and / partitions on separate disks and use this No, you'll need to add a line to your fstab manually if you want something autodiscovery cannot do, like multi-disk setups, LVM, and FDE with unsupported configurations. It's great if it works for you and a very minor change if it doesn't. I don't recall ever installing a system with / and /home on separate partitions, though.

> No, you'll need to add a line to your fstab manually if you want something autodiscovery cannot do... It's just shocking that autodiscovery is so extremely limited. I'm aware that if you want to do something that autodiscovery can't do, then you cant use autodiscovery for that thing... I'm pretty sure that was covered in a recent Tautology Club meeting. > I don't recall ever installing a system with / and /home on…

> I'd wager that that's the configuration of vast majority of the consumer systems out there...

I'm not so sure. Most people I know, including developers, only have one SSD, maybe a hard drive for photos or whatever that's not mounted inside /home.

The most popular mainstream Linux distributions (Android, ChromeOS, SteamOS) all default to a single disk setup, as do most virtual machines (which must exceed the number of home installs by at least a thousandfold).

For a particular brand of enthusiasts, running multi-disk is definitely more popular (I have 4 in my desktop), but I don't think those are the majority, and even among those splitting partitions across disks rather than just using a /media (or equivalent) to access the larger disk like you would an external drive is quite popular.

Multi-disk detection would be nice, but I can already imagine the absolute mess that would happen if you were to try to boot on a multi-distro PC, or even just a recovery flash drive on an existing Linux image. My recovery boot drive only has a root partition so auto-detecting the drive will work fine, but auto-mounting my home directory to /home would mess up the entire system.

The code would be so full of edge cases and weird guards that it'll inevitably just break without configuration, making the entire thing pretty damn useless.

Re: Replacing Systemd with OpenRC in Debian

#160
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can just ignore them. What are they going to do about it?
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