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Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

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Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#111
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what?

RunIt, say.

I suspect the OP is referencing Void Linux[1] which makes use of runit as its init system. If not, it's the first thing that came to mind.

I'm not sure it's necessarily a better solution as it requires more manual interaction out of the box (namely creating symlinks by hand among other duties), but that might be argued as a feature. There appears to be a wrapper or two out there to automate away some of the tedium.

[1] https://voidlinux.org/

Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#112
post #87
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as a developer I just want something that works, has decent interfaces and abstracts away so I can care a lot less about it. As a sysadmin, I want something to be debuggable because I'm the one who gets paged when the failure rates increase.

On to microservices with you and give the developer the pager! Embrace the change :)

I always say, "Give me a platform that works, or the power to fix it, I don't care which." I'd prefer something that works I don't have to take care of... but when under the gun and IT has other priorities, it sucks.

Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#113
This is a very good point. The reason that you have trouble if you just use a bunch of scripts to start up a contemporary Linux is that the underlying system has become quite complex. Now you have to deal with the effects of stuff like udev and dbus. Systemd can be seen as an attempt to paper over the underlying complexity problem with another layer on top. That of course if not likely to work but is depressingly common in the world of OSs. People add things to a simple system until it is no longer a simple system. Eventually it becomes unreliable enough that no one dares extend it further.

As a nice counterexample, OpenBSD doesn't have stuff like udev or dbus usage during boot. The rc.d system they use is literally just a bunch of scripts and is dead simple and reliable.

Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Binary logs seem great on macOS, why is this bad for Linux?

Because Linux and MacOS targets different roles.

Could you elaborate more? My use case is very similar between the two, and I don't mean workstation operation.

Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#115
post #74

Ah, systemd. It's one of those things where I'm glad it exists, but I hate it. I'm glad it exists because more open source is good, and diversity of implementations is good. I hate it because it complicates my machine's startup process, and my life, unnecessarily, and puts a lot of shit in pid 1 that shouldn't be there. I don't want it to become a hard dependency of my entire software stack. (Same with PulseAudio, he…

As someone who's been slowly picking their way along the narrow crooked path towards free software / tinfoilhattery / unixbeardedness for the past several years, I'm interested to know which browser you use.

I assume given context that Safari and IE are right out. Chromium and variants are probably out? If Firefox and variants are out (not sure if all of them have the pulse dependency, because honestly your comment was the first time I learned about it - probably because I'm using Arch), what's left? Qutebrowser? Konqueror?

I guess implicit in the above is an assumption of certain (non-basic) functionality that many people would consider table stakes in a web browser. Given that choosing to use any software involves making certain compromises (like "if you don't use Chrome, some Google applications will likely not perform as well") I guess my underlying desire is to know which compromises you are willing to make, given that you aren't willing to compromise your desire to keep pulseaudio off your machine in order to be able to use Firefox.

On a scale I'm having trouble naming but that goes from about 1 ("my son bought me this iPad so I can see my grandchildren on Facebook") to 10 ("I wget webpages to my server then email them to my Trisquel laptop") your pulse/firefox constraint seems to me to be solidly in the upper half, which I respect, but which also makes me expect you are willing to accept compromises that I'm not (yet) in choosing a browser. Maybe I'm wrong, though, because there's a lot of browsers on this chart: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/74/Ti...

Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#116
post #49
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think ultimately a lot of the systemd hate is just fear of change and not wanting to give up an init system they are famiiliar with.

Sigh, this argument just has to come up in every discussion on Systemd. Anyone who dare to be critical about Systemd is apparently just a Luddite afraid of change. You know what, I have no problems with change at all, only when the change is to something worse.

There doesn't seem to be any single, general, perfect answer.

I use systemd across distros, and am now confused when I run into an old SysV system.

When I'm sufficiently advanced to bump into one of these corner cases, it will be a Good Problem To Have.

The market penetration of systemd is about as good an empirical validation as can be had. How soon until it's codified in Posix?

Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#117
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the Java generaton that never learned how to do it.

Somehow members of the JavaScript and Ruby generations pick up Rust rather easily, while those who pride themselves on having learned to write robust C (or C++) are flummoxed by it. Hypothesis: C is so pathologically bad that it breaks brains.

Hypothesis: Rust is a religion. The only times I've seen this amount of proselytization have been Rust and church.

Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#118
post #103
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like something like systemd, but with all high-level internals written in a embedded scripting language.

init.d was nice, using shell scripts. readable, editable, clean, extendable. I liked that

Just not maintainable, which is why distros switched away.

Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#119
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poettering used alloca() as a poor man's garbage collector. Proper manual memory management is just "too hard". Other lingering code quality issues surely remain when the primary author is taking these sort of shortcuts and not considering how to write robust C.

As long as the allocation size is bounded (due to alloca/VLAs lacking any mechanism to signal allocation failure), what's the problem with that?

The problem is that 1) you can't assume what the available stack space is and 2) you don't let tainted user input determine allocation sizes which is what Systemd did in the CVE disclosed earlier this year.

Re: Why Did ArchLinux Embrace Systemd? (2016)

#120
post #49
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think ultimately a lot of the systemd hate is just fear of change and not wanting to give up an init system they are famiiliar with.

Sigh, this argument just has to come up in every discussion on Systemd. Anyone who dare to be critical about Systemd is apparently just a Luddite afraid of change. You know what, I have no problems with change at all, only when the change is to something worse.

Do you have concrete evidence that systemd is in fact worse from a technical perspective?

I'll readily admit that systemd isn't perfect, but my overall experience is that it is better in many ways to its predecessors, and did solve real problems.

And when I referred to "systemd hate" I was not referring to healthy criticism, but to those who take very chance to claim that systemd never should have been invented and their init system of choice is clearly superior. Rather than, say trying to make systemd better, or make their init system fix the problems that systemd was designed to remedy.

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