Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along • Hacker News Board

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#71

Post by vertex-four » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:19 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #61

vertex-four wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main alternatives seem to be OpenRC and Upstart. There's also outliers like nosh[0], which implements at least some of the good bits of systemd (socket activation is in there), and the ideas and general architecture are solid enough that it could be extended to implement more (device/path dependencies through udev and inotify are two that I hear people wanting). Then separate pieces of software can implement th…

This debate has been raging for the better part of two years and many of these alternatives didn't exist when it started. Really though, systemd has the momentum and I don't see anything else remaining a mainstream alternative unless it just emulates systemd's functionality.

systemd's functionality isn't the issue - it's its architecture that is. An alternative bundle of software which is less strongly coupled would likely be accepted with open arms. I'd like to be able to pick what init system I want to use separately from what manages /dev and what handles my logging and what handles sessions/seats/logins.

nosh's architecture allows for that, whereas with systemd, while it amounts to 60-whatever binaries, you end up being required to run a significant amount of them in order to use any given bit of the system, and have to run systemd as PID 1 to run a fair amount of them. Why setting up kdbus, for example, can't be a separate process that doesn't depend on anything but libc and the kernel? No idea.

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#72

Post by e7620 » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:20 PM UTC

bkor wrote: post #50

pessimizer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>very few people will be auditing the code that don't work for redhat,

You also said: > My objection is that it's both pervasive and unauditable. You said it was unauditable, it has already been audited. Adding arbitrary limitations to this doesn't change that.

I didn't downvote you, but I want to audit it myself, thanks.

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#73

Post by jude- » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:21 PM UTC

Thank you for taking the time to write this up! (the link is also appreciated :)

I think a lot of the rage and loathing regarding systemd is due to its coupling to the rest of the OS. I think a lot of !systemd users were quiet on this initially (and today even) since it's not hard to avoid systemd if you're not running a full-fledged desktop environment. I think it's the fear that this will change in the near-future that has prompted the backlash we're seeing now.

I hope that Debian's new init system coupling GR will address this, both for itself and for its derivative distros. If the rest of the OS does not care about whether or not it's systemd managing the daemons or something else, then everyone wins.

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#74

Post by bnolsen » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:21 PM UTC

erhardm wrote: post #25

exelius wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that you can't have two competing init systems: the market will eventually need to standardize on one of them or risk forking the entire Linux ecosystem. What you call "modern sysv" would look a lot like systemd depending on your definition of modern. I think that definition of what modern should look like is what's being debated here. The big features sysvinit are missing require user space appl…

They're good points, but from the philosophical point The Unix Way , systemd leaves some things to desire. Is there a modern Unix way? I don't see a lot of exploring in this area/side, but I see a lot of this is the way it's gonna be from now on on the other side. I'm not on either side, but I appreciate the way some complexity is dealt with simple little things. So elegantly solving problems: https://www.youtube.com…

Unix had high goals but ended up compromising. It's been a good system, good enough to fend off other system competitors. Trying to argue details using precedence and pointing to the exceptions and compromises to prop up arguments doesn't excite me very much.

Plan9 seems to have better distilled and refined the "unix way". But it's been too little too late and I'm sure if it became popular there's be wars about it too.

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#75

Post by zokier » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:28 PM UTC

jimktrains2 wrote: post #39

zokier wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The more I realize all the untapped potential lying around, the more I realize how so many Linux users are living in their monoculture. Unfortunately there is no one there to amplify all the good efforts and hidden gems scattered all over the place, so you have people just reading Phoronix and LWN articles and standing in their bubble. Meanwhile, all the non-Linux Unices and the "toy project" builders are doing gre…

> This is one of the main reasons I approve of systemd. It is something completely new fighting against the old entrenched cruft. Most people aren't anti-systemd because it's new, but because it doesn't conform to their philosophy of how their computer should run. There could be newer init systems that conform to their ideals, but systemd is not one of them.

Important note: I said I approve, not like, systemd. It is an important distinction, because I like that there is activity even though I might not be such fan of the software itself. This is in contrast to (some) anti-systemd people who seem to be opposed to the very existence of systemd.

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#76

Post by imanaccount247 » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:29 PM UTC

api wrote: post #14

fidotron wrote: post #11

It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out in the long run, though the short term is utterly depressing. My hunch is Lennart will be vindicated, on the basis that systemd as it exists right now is not right, but it can be evolved into something much better, and while that may not have occurred to other projects here the stakes are enormous. There is a definite strand to the resistance that any change t…

I agree. So far I've seen it as a classic conservatives vs. liberals debate. The conservatives have no interest at all in changing the Unix paradigm under Linux. It works perfectly well, thank you. The liberals see it as archaic and unsuited to a wide variety of new use cases including rapid-deployment VMs, containers, mobile and laptop computers, and the desktop in general. I side with the liberals here, but with a…

>The conservatives have no interest at all in changing the Unix paradigm under Linux

The unix paradigm doesn't exist under linux. It was dead before linux got started (the kernel, in the early 90s).

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#77

Post by hamburglar » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:37 PM UTC

deelowe wrote: post #16

hk__2 wrote: post #2

Could someone ELI5 this pro-systemd/anti-systemd thing?

Linux/unix has a bit of an issue with it's init aging systems. One simple example is that they are serial, meaning that services start one by one with little to no concurrency. This causes several issues. Also, the most popular variant, system V is difficult to maintain having multiple directories for various run levels and other cumbersome features. I won't go into details here, just know that the popular init syste…

I agree completely that cron, logging and init all could use a little (a lot of) modernization. I just think it's really bad judgment to tie all of those together into one all-encompassing project whose scope seems to grow and grow the more I read about it, and whose leaders seem to have such a low opinion of what anybody else wants.

To make a stupid car analogy, it feels like having someone redesign your car's ignition switch and suddenly finding out that he also had strong opinions on the stereo UI so he made the changes together (and dependent on one another), and you're an idiot if you don't like it.

A lot of people complain about systemd missing the "unix philosophy" and that gets derailed on specifics of what people think that philosophy means ("everything is a file" or "do one thing only and do it well" and "be modular") but one significant difference to me between unix systems and Windows or OSX is that unix is built of simple components whose scope is very limited. It's related to do-one-thing and modularity but it's not exactly the same thing. Systemd is not simple or limited in scope.

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#78

Post by nanoscopic » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:37 PM UTC

e7620 wrote: post #70

nanoscopic wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't know much about any of the details. They have simply done things one way for a long time and now it is changing. You haven't addressed that besides accusing those people of being "ignorant about good design principles" and "having huge misunderstandings that leads to a lot of wasted energy." From the perspective of the average linux user ( one that knows little to nothing about linux internals ) the…

> From the perspective of the average linux user ( one that knows little to nothing about linux internals ) the entire discussion is the real waste of energy. If all distros adopt "systemd/linux", a future plan for systemd according to lead developers, what happens if systemd collapses? It would take GNU/Linux with it. Remember how pulseaudio adoption by ubuntu drove users away. I want others to have access to UNIX,…

You think the systemd debate is bad? The same people who made systemd intend to totally change the way the entire system works, way past just services.

See: http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linu...

Kiss goodbye to what you knew; it may be going the way of the dodo.

Remember what happened to ReiserFS? Despite what you are saying being FUD it's not entirely unreasonable.

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#79

Post by jude- » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:37 PM UTC

exelius wrote: post #43

hello_there wrote: post #37

What I really dislike about these debates about systemd is that usually nobody mentions the alternatives. From reading the debate I get the impression that both sysvinit and systemd have major problems, but I'm never presented with a solution. So if I'm going to be against sysvinit as well as systemd, then what should i be supporting?

The main alternatives seem to be OpenRC and Upstart. One of the biggest criticisms of systemd by its detractors is that it's unproven and not stable; and neither of these address that concern. Upstart was developed by Ubuntu, which has stopped supporting it and is adopting systemd because they recognized the need to standardize on a single system. After the Debian committee voted to go with systemd, Ubuntu (being a D…

> OpenRC isn't really a replacement for sysvinit; rather it bolts on some functionality on top of sysvinit. My understanding is that OpenRC is not an incredibly mature codebase and would have needed a lot of work to come up to feature/stability parity with systemd.

It's not the goal of OpenRC to be a systemd replacement either. In fact, I don't think it's the goal of any init system to be a systemd replacement, except for uselessd (please correct me if I'm wrong).

OpenRC solves some of the bigger problems that systemd solves--namely, reliable process tracking, cleaner init scripts, user-defined targets, parallel service startup/shutdown, etc. Moreover, most of the above features are optional, and the system exposes most of its runtime state through the filesystem instead of DBus (so you can inspect it however you want with whatever tools you want). As an added bonus, it's portable.

It's really a pity that the Debian TC didn't look at it closely back during the init system vote, but to be fair, OpenRC's Debian integration was a work-in-progress at the time (I'm pleased to say it runs without problems on my Debian subnotebook).

Re: Why pro-systemd and anti-systemd people will never get along

#80

Post by sanderjd » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 7:39 PM UTC

FreakyT wrote: post #3

Interesting discussion! I would have liked it if the author had provided some background information (for the uninitiated) about some of the other related issues mentioned. For example, what was meant by "the horrors of PulseAudio", "the udev debacle", and why was HAL bad? I realize that I could probably find out "bad things about HAL" via internet searching, but it would be more interesting to see the author's take…

Yep, I hate stuff like this:

> The fallacies that systemd opponents make have been pointed out so many times that it’s not worth giving a comprehensive overview.

Great, now I have homework to do before I can read your article. I guess I'm just not in the target audience for this article because I haven't been following the debate from the start.