I did a small ask around the room in the office, no one heard about Knoppix. Good for them, I guess.
Logan's Run? :)
Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
11–20 of 191 posts
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#12I did a small ask around the room in the office, no one heard about Knoppix. Good for them, I guess.
It's okay to flaunt your ignorance if you can claim that your peers are ignorant as well, I guess. Knoppix was one of the first, if not the first, popular live CD distributions.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#13I see a lot of hate about systems and I used to loathe it too. Then I took a course on systemd specifically and it opened my eyes, and now I'm quite fond about it. Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. It has quirks and bugs like all software, but I think it works very well, all things considered. To those who say that it's…
systemd is a perfectly fine init system. The problem is that it comes bundled with a whole bunch of other tools for handling networks, cron, ntp, etc which really ought to be separate projects. By bundling them with the successful init system they're not exposed to the usual Darwinian selection processes that shake out the best free software.
They're separate binaries, and can be easily unbundled.
That they're part of the same project is actually a win for me, it helps to make the various components work well together. Also there is a common thread or philosophy in how things are built, making learning easier.
In fact "the system is a single project" approach reminds me of the BSDs, which is arguably better than Linux as far as usability and security is concerned.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#14I see a lot of hate about systems and I used to loathe it too. Then I took a course on systemd specifically and it opened my eyes, and now I'm quite fond about it. Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. It has quirks and bugs like all software, but I think it works very well, all things considered. To those who say that it's…
I think you are missing the point: Something like systemd has a good reason to exist. But the devil is in the creating team. We've seen pulseaudio, a good system in theory, but an untrustworthy unstable system in practice. And if it wont work, it is so complicated and non-transparent that you need a specialist. Taking a step backward from Alsa is hard, and they managed to do it. Now that same team is messing with sys…
> We know from the kernel command line debug debacle they rather see the world burn down than admit they did something wrong
Can you expand? I've not heard of this.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#15I did a small ask around the room in the office, no one heard about Knoppix. Good for them, I guess.
It's okay to flaunt your ignorance if you can claim that your peers are ignorant as well, I guess. Knoppix was one of the first, if not the first, popular live CD distributions.
The other day at the office, I was the only one that had heard of, let alone used, Slackware. I am also the oldest in the team, this is probably no coincidence.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are missing the point: Something like systemd has a good reason to exist. But the devil is in the creating team. We've seen pulseaudio, a good system in theory, but an untrustworthy unstable system in practice. And if it wont work, it is so complicated and non-transparent that you need a specialist. Taking a step backward from Alsa is hard, and they managed to do it. Now that same team is messing with sys…
> We know from the kernel command line debug debacle they rather see the world burn down than admit they did something wrong Can you expand? I've not heard of this.
IIRC, they printed more messages to the console when booting Linux with a debug parameter than Linux could handle.
Systemd developers were like "nobody can tell us how much detail to print", until the kernel developers made clear that the boot console belongs to them and if systemd doesn't back down immediately they would take away all console access. Systemd then backed down.
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#17I see a lot of hate about systems and I used to loathe it too. Then I took a course on systemd specifically and it opened my eyes, and now I'm quite fond about it. Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. It has quirks and bugs like all software, but I think it works very well, all things considered. To those who say that it's…
> does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system
"managing the system" is not "ONE [problem]". A big part of the problem with systemd is this presupposition that management of something as large and complex as a modern OS is a single monolithic[1] problem.
> it's complex because it does a complex work.
See, you agree that it's a complex problem! It's so complex with so many different use cases it isn't even possible to have one solution, because some of those use cases are mutually exclusive. Hench why a modular design is important, so it isn't too difficult to replace the management of different areas if needed.
> It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space.
That "missing layer" isn't well defined. There certainly wasn't any "missing layer" on my old server, or the compute boxen we used at ${research_lab}.
If you're talking about desktop system, I agree that there was a gap between traditional system management and the GUI, but that isn't really a new "layer" between kernal and user space (it might involve GUI userspace programs with perhaps some of them being SETUID or a privileged daemon).
[1] Any objections trying to claim systemd isn't a tightly coupled, monolithic design will be ignored. If you think the number of binary program files is in any way useful as an objection, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19024256
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#18I see a lot of hate about systems and I used to loathe it too. Then I took a course on systemd specifically and it opened my eyes, and now I'm quite fond about it. Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. It has quirks and bugs like all software, but I think it works very well, all things considered. To those who say that it's…
systemd is a perfectly fine init system. The problem is that it comes bundled with a whole bunch of other tools for handling networks, cron, ntp, etc which really ought to be separate projects. By bundling them with the successful init system they're not exposed to the usual Darwinian selection processes that shake out the best free software.
Honestly, I much prefer systemd timers over cron. They work just like systemd units and shed all the odd special cases that cron accumulated over the years. They’re pretty well defined in how they behave in face of systems being down while a job was supposed to run (more a desktop thing, but relevant for some server cases as well). It makes sense to use the same config mechanism.
Still, systemd timers are exposed to the usual selection pressures: systemd the init does not rely on systemd timers. They’re a convenient addon that integrates well. But anything more convenient could replace them with no problem (as evidenced by cron still working on systemd enabled systems)
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
systemd is a perfectly fine init system. The problem is that it comes bundled with a whole bunch of other tools for handling networks, cron, ntp, etc which really ought to be separate projects. By bundling them with the successful init system they're not exposed to the usual Darwinian selection processes that shake out the best free software.
They're separate binaries, and can be easily unbundled. That they're part of the same project is actually a win for me, it helps to make the various components work well together. Also there is a common thread or philosophy in how things are built, making learning easier. In fact "the system is a single project" approach reminds me of the BSDs, which is arguably better than Linux as far as usability and security is c…
> They're separate binaries
Re: Knoppix 8.6 abandons systemd
#20I see a lot of hate about systems and I used to loathe it too. Then I took a course on systemd specifically and it opened my eyes, and now I'm quite fond about it. Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system. It's the missing layer between kernel space and user space. It has quirks and bugs like all software, but I think it works very well, all things considered. To those who say that it's…
> It's complex because it does a complex work
Hence it's pointless because it doesn't make things any simpler. All it does is making things monolithic and wrapping concepts that are perfectly fine by themselves, forcing third-party software to write to systemd's APIs.
> Systemd actually does ONE thing and does it well: it manages the system.
"Managing systems" is not what is meant by "doing one thing, and doing it well". Systemd takes over init scripting, logging, host names, IP, time, locale, and login, plus tens of more services. Making development of this software a Lennart Poettering/RH-only business rather than community-driven.
The trend to get rid of systemd and its metastasis into most of Linux is excellent news. Note that Slackware and Devuan are also systemd-free (and have been from the beginning).