Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Interview: Lennart Poettering

linuxvoice.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 91 posts

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#21

Post by vezzy-fnord »

mksaunders wrote: post #13
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #8

Lennart seems to harbor this very strange belief that developing your software in one repository makes you Unix-like, and that this alone is sufficient entirely. So by this logic, a standalone Unix kernel is not Unix-like, but a fully integrated DOS clone, is. In addition: Then we convinced the Fedora Technical Committee to adopt it, and then Red Hat internal management accepted it for RHEL, and we managed to convinc…

"So there was, in fact, a PR campaign." Er, how do you think the Systemd developers convinced these technical teams to use Systemd? With bribes? Sexual favours? Or perhaps, you know, using the software itself? It's funny. The lead developers of Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mageia, Debian etc. etc. etc. have all chosen to use Systemd. Yet for some reason, many commentators assume these people -- distro technical lead…

Hold up. Please don't invoke the argument from popularity, it simply doesn't work. The lead developers of major distros, as smart as they may be, do make mistakes (Debian with cdrkit, sticking with libav for too long, the PRNG bug, etc.) and they may not be fully in line with the intricacies and conceptual differences between process management, init, supervision, hotplug and so on. There's lots of misinformation from both sides and a lot of knowledgeable people (like those maintaining powerful daemontools derivatives) have never been ones to proselytize, but stick to their inner circles.

Furthermore, how are you sure the decision to adopt was entirely technical in nature? Perhaps they realized that the incoming systemd-integrated Linux desktop userland wasn't worth the maintenance hassle of trying to avoid it?

The way Lennart worded those sentences sounded funny. He is known to distort and exaggerate when promoting, for which I don't blame him, since his goal is to get his software adopted, but nonetheless. systemd proponents have been all too eager to completely dismiss any political meddling on part of systemd's adoption as totally unsubstantiated, insisting it was purely "technical merits". Lennart's words paint a subtly different picture, at the least.

Most people don't fully grasp the state of Unix process management, so it's no surprise they're susceptible. For example, the only alternatives that have been debated primarily were Upstart and OpenRC. That's a red flag.

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#22

Post by vezzy-fnord »

vinkelhake wrote: post #17
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #8

Lennart seems to harbor this very strange belief that developing your software in one repository makes you Unix-like, and that this alone is sufficient entirely. So by this logic, a standalone Unix kernel is not Unix-like, but a fully integrated DOS clone, is. In addition: Then we convinced the Fedora Technical Committee to adopt it, and then Red Hat internal management accepted it for RHEL, and we managed to convinc…

> Lennart seems to harbor this very strange belief that developing your software in one repository makes you Unix-like, and that this alone is sufficient entirely. He is saying that a trait of the Unix systems was the development in a single repository. In that particular aspect, a fully integrated DOS clone might be more Unix-like than, say, Linux. This is a response to the people who mistake the "Linux way" for the…

The thing is, the aforementioned trait is far too generic - it's a characteristic of how development is structured, and has little or nothing to do with the more technical aspects of the Unix design, which is what is being contested.

It's not just Unix. Development in a single repository has been how almost all operating systems were done.

In fact, standalone kernels have usually been research projects throughout the years. Linux is a notable exception.

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#23

Post by nurb »

"if you do an init system but still invoke all the shell scripts and all the other things needed to bring up the system, you’ve only solved part of the problem."

That's exactly what I think is wrong with systemd. If a script bring a speed issue on start up, it should fixed by optimizing the script, use/create another script language with parallelism and higher pref, or even turn it into a compiled program. This is not supposed to be the problem of the init system developper.

In fact the only purpose of an init system is to start executables in a defined order, not more.

This is going to be like X, a huge pile of unmaintainable code, and that's definitely not the UNIX philosophy.

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#24

Post by gergles »

mksaunders wrote: post #13
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #8

Lennart seems to harbor this very strange belief that developing your software in one repository makes you Unix-like, and that this alone is sufficient entirely. So by this logic, a standalone Unix kernel is not Unix-like, but a fully integrated DOS clone, is. In addition: Then we convinced the Fedora Technical Committee to adopt it, and then Red Hat internal management accepted it for RHEL, and we managed to convinc…

"So there was, in fact, a PR campaign." Er, how do you think the Systemd developers convinced these technical teams to use Systemd? With bribes? Sexual favours? Or perhaps, you know, using the software itself? It's funny. The lead developers of Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mageia, Debian etc. etc. etc. have all chosen to use Systemd. Yet for some reason, many commentators assume these people -- distro technical lead…

The distro developers likely all 'chose' systemd because they were forced to to continue using GNOME, which is the experience people expect as end-users on Linux.

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#25

Post by forgottenpass »

digi_owl wrote: post #6
XorNot wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how an opinion like this: "...to make it clear, I think Upstart actually has its benefits. The source code is very, very nice, and it’s very simple, but I think it’s too simple. It doesn’t have this engine that can figure out what the computer is supposed to be doing." is callous and myopic?

I find myself wondering why the init is supposed to figure out what the computer is to be doing. That kind of "automagical" behavior is what drove me bonkers when trying to use Windows for more than a games console...

I find myself wondering why the init is supposed to figure out what the computer is to be doing.

I've never messed with systemd configuration too much, but is it much more complicated than a make-style "how do I get there from here? OK lets do that"?

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#26

Post by mksaunders »

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #21
mksaunders wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So there was, in fact, a PR campaign." Er, how do you think the Systemd developers convinced these technical teams to use Systemd? With bribes? Sexual favours? Or perhaps, you know, using the software itself? It's funny. The lead developers of Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mageia, Debian etc. etc. etc. have all chosen to use Systemd. Yet for some reason, many commentators assume these people -- distro technical lead…

Hold up. Please don't invoke the argument from popularity, it simply doesn't work. The lead developers of major distros, as smart as they may be, do make mistakes (Debian with cdrkit, sticking with libav for too long, the PRNG bug, etc.) and they may not be fully in line with the intricacies and conceptual differences between process management, init, supervision, hotplug and so on. There's lots of misinformation fro…

"Please don't invoke the argument from popularity, it simply doesn't work."

Even when almost every distro has switched? If the situation were 50-50, I'd agree with you. But given that Systemd has been overwhelmingly adopted by distros, I think that says alot.

"The lead developers of major distros, as smart as they may be, do make mistakes"

Yes, but again, they surely haven't all made a giant mistake, right? I don't buy the "they've switched because of upcoming desktop userland" argument either. Distro devs -- like Linux users in general -- aren't ones to roll over easily.

With overwhelming support from distro developers, the people who know their stuff, Systemd must be doing something right. And if you look at the Benefits section here, you can see a lot of things that are appealing to distro devs: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1149530#p1149530

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#27

Post by ForestC »

mksaunders wrote: post #13
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #8

Lennart seems to harbor this very strange belief that developing your software in one repository makes you Unix-like, and that this alone is sufficient entirely. So by this logic, a standalone Unix kernel is not Unix-like, but a fully integrated DOS clone, is. In addition: Then we convinced the Fedora Technical Committee to adopt it, and then Red Hat internal management accepted it for RHEL, and we managed to convinc…

"So there was, in fact, a PR campaign." Er, how do you think the Systemd developers convinced these technical teams to use Systemd? With bribes? Sexual favours? Or perhaps, you know, using the software itself? It's funny. The lead developers of Arch Linux, OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mageia, Debian etc. etc. etc. have all chosen to use Systemd. Yet for some reason, many commentators assume these people -- distro technical lead…

I believe there's a lot of worry about systemd because what Pottering is doing is relatively new. To grossly oversimplify; the ecosystem of inits among Linux distros looked something like "sysvinit -or- spin your own." So when systemd comes along and starts getting integrated into damn near everything, there's naturally some alarm. There have been endless flame wars about init systems for almost 25 years now. It's almost unfathomable that every major distro has managed accepted systemd with relatively little drama.

I feel like "the marketing is too aggressive" or "they're being astroturfed" or "they're being forced" are all expected responses to what's going on.

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#28

Post by digi_owl »

vinkelhake wrote: post #17
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #8

Lennart seems to harbor this very strange belief that developing your software in one repository makes you Unix-like, and that this alone is sufficient entirely. So by this logic, a standalone Unix kernel is not Unix-like, but a fully integrated DOS clone, is. In addition: Then we convinced the Fedora Technical Committee to adopt it, and then Red Hat internal management accepted it for RHEL, and we managed to convinc…

> Lennart seems to harbor this very strange belief that developing your software in one repository makes you Unix-like, and that this alone is sufficient entirely. He is saying that a trait of the Unix systems was the development in a single repository. In that particular aspect, a fully integrated DOS clone might be more Unix-like than, say, Linux. This is a response to the people who mistake the "Linux way" for the…

Maintained in a single repository and maintained as a single blob of code is two different things. Can i get the systemd repository to hand over just udev as a tarball, and then compile it? Or do i have to grab the whole of systemd, extract udev from that, and then attempt to compile?

for example XFCE is maintained in a single repository, but each part is released on their own.

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#29

Post by bhaak »

jdub wrote: post #16
bhaak wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interview wasn't as bad as I expected from the OP's opinion but this one seems mind-bogglingly wrong: "What’s typical for Unix, for example, is that all the tools, the C library, the kernel, are all maintained in the same repository, right? And they’re released in sync, have the same coding style, the same build infrastructure, the same release cycles – everything’s the same. So you get the entire central part of…

He's talking about UNIX , not Linux, and he's 100% right. Look at the BSDs some time, or the Solaris forks. The disconnect between the Linux kernel and basic userland has been a criticism of UNIX traditionalists for years. It's part of the reason why BSD has a few forks and Linux has hundreds of distributions.

I'm very well aware of the difference of Unix and Linux. I even smiled slighty as he also could just have claimed Linux to not be Unix and that would have been undisputable.

I actually don't know what you mean with "criticism of UNIX traditionalists for years" in regards to the Linux kernel and the userland.

I know of Linus' disregard of POSIX where it's crappy or doesn't make any sense anymore in his opinion but that can't extend to the userland as Linus doesn't do userland.

Some clarification or links to said criticism would be welcome.

Re: Interview: Lennart Poettering

#30

Post by bhaak »

geographomics wrote: post #20

There's a lot of complaint about logical fallacies in the comments of this article. Does anyone know what they're referring to? Seemed like quite a clear interview to me, and interesting to hear a bit of the history behind such a fundamentally useful piece of software.

It's probably from readers of this blog post where "logical" and "fallacy" is quite often used (careful, needs js for viewing): http://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fall...
Post reply on HN