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

Systemd redux: The end of Linux

blog.lusis.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 464 posts

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#271

Post by hawleyal »

icantthinkofone wrote: post #225
dgdsgdsg wrote: post #142

for me it seems that most people complaining/crying out loud come from a system admin perspective. For example the author of this blog article does not seem to have contribute a lot of code to any project and is more "just" an admin and not a dev. for me it looks like they don't like new stuff love the linux world how they knew it and don't want things to get easier or even change.

Complaining and crying from a system admin perspective is pretty significant.

Agree. However, admins and devs often have competing interests. Admins want stability and ease of maintenance. Devs want features, agility, and speed of development. Admins often disregard or downplay technical debt in light of "has been working in production for X years". Devs often don't care enough about backwards compatibility.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#272

Post by dredmorbius »

east2west wrote: post #92
dredmorbius wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the more reason to be judicious in what new technologies are introduced. One of the huge benefits of the Unix/Linux, CLI, and Free Software traditions is that they tend to be very strongly preserving of established knowledge . Changes are incremental, usually additive, a reliance on scripting means that interfaces are unlikely to change, and new tools are very frequently drop-in replacements for old. As specific…

I understand your strong opinion and since I am no sysadmin I have no technical problem with arguments. But I am not sure I totally agree with your characterization of slow pace of change by Apple or the wonderful state of Unix/Linux. Aqua was quite a break from the previous GUI and Apple changed the whole stack at one point from computer architecture to OS to graphic library. I don't know a more radical change than…

Also, to be clear, I'm not accusing Apple of failing to innovate elsewhere in its product chain. It clearly has. Since 1999: the iBook, MacBook Pro, Air, and a few iterations of the iMac, just in form factors. There's been a lot of under-the-hood stuff going on as well.

But where the user interacts with the system, things have been remarkably stable. Even the relatively minor changes which have been presented have been covered with the usual Apple levels of obsession -- skewmorphic vs. flat designs, etc., ad nauseum.

Again the point being: screw with how things are visually and how users interact with the system, you're going to create huge usability costs with little to show for.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#273

Post by general_failure »

badgersandjam wrote: post #174
devcpp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux developers are generally very smart people in my experience. It's consensus of many experienced and smart people that makes it significant.

They are individually I agree, but as a group of people it's not such a good story. It's quite dysfunctional from what I've seen.

What does this comment even mean? What's wrong with them as a group?

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#274

Post by chimeracoder »

morganvachon wrote: post #262
chimeracoder wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how this is relevant. Saying he wouldn't have created Linux at the time is not the same thing as saying he wouldn't work on it or use it today instead of FreeBSD.

I may be wrong, but I took GP to mean that FreeBSD is a good enough OS to use daily, hence Torvalds wouldn't have had a need to create Linux. Obviously, Torvalds hasn't abandoned Linux in favor of FreeBSD today, and no one said he has or is planning on it.

> I may be wrong, but I took GP to mean that FreeBSD is a good enough OS to use daily,

But that's not at all what Torvalds's quote means. He meant that, if FreeBSD had been available, he would have worked on contributing to that instead and improving it for daily use, rather than building Linux to be used for daily use. (The state of FreeBSD in this hypothetical world has no bearing on the state of FreeBSD today).

In terms of FreeBSD today, while it's possible to use it for daily use, it suffers from even worse driver issues than Linux does, and of all the problems of just simply having much smaller market share (both for contributing developers and users) than Linux does.

This may or may not be 'good enough' for OP's purposes, but it's disingenuous to suggest that Torvalds's hypothetical from the early 1990s implies that FreeBSD is a clean substitute for end-user Linux today.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#275

Post by linuxydave »

dgdsgdsg wrote: post #142

for me it seems that most people complaining/crying out loud come from a system admin perspective. For example the author of this blog article does not seem to have contribute a lot of code to any project and is more "just" an admin and not a dev. for me it looks like they don't like new stuff love the linux world how they knew it and don't want things to get easier or even change.

>for me it seems that most people complaining/crying out loud come from a system admin perspective.

Sysadmins complaining about it is pretty important, as at the end of the day they are the ones who are maintaining the systems.

Personally, I have a strong dislike for Systemd. I don't believe it's the right replacement for sysvinit however it's not going away so we'll have to try and work around its warts. Also, currently it's buggy as hell so I will use Centos 6/Ubuntu 14.04 for a few more years to see if the many problems are sorted by then.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#276

Post by general_failure »

frozenport wrote: post #81

I used Gentoo for 10 years, and I can't figure out how to get a Systemd configuration working with XFCE. Indeed, most of the existing documentation has greatly slowed me down.

Fwiw, my friend runs Ubuntu for 10 years and he cannot understand gentoo for the life of him. He thinks it is absurd people want to keep recompiling stuff.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#277

Post by sethrin »

return0 wrote: post #237

As a rule of thumb, it's good to distrust products when you know that the politics behind have been loud enough to be heard widely. But the sharp razor which will decide if systemd is better is simplicity. Those who have switched, is systemd simpler than sysvInit?

Simplicity is not necessarily a good measure of suitability. See this: http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/2414.html

There are some aspects of systemd that are simpler than sysvinit. The mess of double-forking and PID files goes away, and process management is much more reliable. Setting up containers for services is much simpler. Unit files are generally much simpler than a given init script.

I think more useful adages ("boned wisdom for weak teeth" - AB) would be, "Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler," and "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible." There is an enormous amount of complexity inherent in the problem of initializing and monitoring a modern OS. If your solution to this is actually simple, it is probably wrong or incomplete. How you manage that complexity and what your abstraction layers are are the vital questions.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#278

Post by general_failure »

linuxydave wrote: post #275
dgdsgdsg wrote: post #142

for me it seems that most people complaining/crying out loud come from a system admin perspective. For example the author of this blog article does not seem to have contribute a lot of code to any project and is more "just" an admin and not a dev. for me it looks like they don't like new stuff love the linux world how they knew it and don't want things to get easier or even change.

>for me it seems that most people complaining/crying out loud come from a system admin perspective. Sysadmins complaining about it is pretty important, as at the end of the day they are the ones who are maintaining the systems. Personally, I have a strong dislike for Systemd. I don't believe it's the right replacement for sysvinit however it's not going away so we'll have to try and work around its warts. Also, curre…

That's exactly as intended. People who want to help out systemd will use latestbsoftware, report bugs and fix it because you know thats how free software works.

People who don't want to help out use the most recent stable and have nothing to worry about.

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#279

Post by general_failure »

edwintorok wrote: post #268
dgdsgdsg wrote: post #142

for me it seems that most people complaining/crying out loud come from a system admin perspective. For example the author of this blog article does not seem to have contribute a lot of code to any project and is more "just" an admin and not a dev. for me it looks like they don't like new stuff love the linux world how they knew it and don't want things to get easier or even change.

I don't think they would complain if things became easier. All I hear about is problems with systemd, and having to solve problems (and learn how systemd and all its components interact so you can debug it) is not easier.

Yeahz they all spend like 20 mins and come out crying without spending at least a week understanding it.

Which software stack do you know that you instantly get in 20 mins. I for one cannot understand the sysvinit or upstart in 20 mins (ie) to develop and debug. How do you debug sysvinit anyway? Echo's I place in the code do not appear on the screen. Can i claim 'Oh shit this is so broken...'?

Re: Systemd redux: The end of Linux

#280

Post by linuxydave »

general_failure wrote: post #278
linuxydave wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>for me it seems that most people complaining/crying out loud come from a system admin perspective. Sysadmins complaining about it is pretty important, as at the end of the day they are the ones who are maintaining the systems. Personally, I have a strong dislike for Systemd. I don't believe it's the right replacement for sysvinit however it's not going away so we'll have to try and work around its warts. Also, curre…

That's exactly as intended. People who want to help out systemd will use latestbsoftware, report bugs and fix it because you know thats how free software works. People who don't want to help out use the most recent stable and have nothing to worry about.

TBH with the current direction systemd is going in I'll probably end up using one of the BSDs. However, I doubt I'd be able to use a *BSD in a production environment as I am a contractor and all of my clients only want Linux.
Post reply on HN