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Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

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Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#311

Post by BadBadJellyBean »

palata wrote: post #228
razighter777 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What practical problems do you run into with systemd? All the compliants I see tend to be philisophical criticism of systemd being "not unixy" or "monolithic". But there's a reason it's being adopted: it does it's job well. It's a pleasure being able to manage timers, socket activations, sandboxing, and resource slices, all of which suck to configure on script based init systems. People complain in website comment se…

> But there's a reason it's being adopted: it does it's job well My problem with systemd is that it's taking over more and more and locking in . It is encouraging developers to have a hard dependency on it, and making it harder to have an alternative. My problem is not philosophical with "it's a monolith, it's not unixy". My problem is "it's on the way to lock me in". We like to complain about lock-in across the boar…

I think you got it backwards. Systemd is a standardization that is appealing to developers. They want to adopt it because it makes their life easier. It is just nice to know that all the tools you need for a system are there and work together. Pluggability is hard to maintain and is only done if there is no standardization.

I somehow don't think your gripe is with systemd but with developers who prefer the easy route. To be honest though you get something for free. If you want it differently then you have to do it yourself.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#312

Post by BadBadJellyBean »

rendaw wrote: post #168
razighter777 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What practical problems do you run into with systemd? All the compliants I see tend to be philisophical criticism of systemd being "not unixy" or "monolithic". But there's a reason it's being adopted: it does it's job well. It's a pleasure being able to manage timers, socket activations, sandboxing, and resource slices, all of which suck to configure on script based init systems. People complain in website comment se…

I wrote up some issues with service reliability here https://github.com/andrewbaxter/puteron/?tab=readme-ov-file#... Design-wise, I think having users modify service on/off state *and* systemd itself modify those states is a terrible design, which leads to stuff turning back on when you turn it off, or things turning off despite you wanting them on, etc. (also mentioned higher up) FWIW after making puteron I found di…

Systemd usually only modifies the state if is somehow configured to do so. Socket activations, timers, depwndencies. They all tell systemd what to do and can usually be modified if needed.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#313

Post by bjourne »

imiric wrote: post #200
pjmlp wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how people worship UNIX design in Linux circles, especially when complaining about decisions where Linux is catching up with commercial UNIXes, as in the init systems replacements. UNIX design was so great that its authors did two other operating systems trying to make UNIX done right. One of the few times I agree with Rob Pike, > We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We…

This is not about mindless worship, but about the fact that the UNIX design has stood the test of time for this long, and is still a solid base compared to most other operating systems. Sure, there are more modern designs that improve on security and capability (seL4/Genode/Sculpt, Fuchsia), but none are as usable or accessible as UNIX. So when it comes to projects that teach the fundamentals of GNU/Linux, such as LF…

The first version of UNIX was released in 1971 and the first version of Windows NT in 1993. So UNIX is only about 60% older than NT. Both OSes have "stood the test of time", though one passed it with a dominant market share, whereas the other didn't. And systemd is heavily inspired by NT.

Time flies fast, faster than recycled arguments. :)

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#314

Post by BadBadJellyBean »

tokyobreakfast wrote: post #40
antonyh wrote: post #27

All I want is init scripts and X11, but the horizons are shrinking. I've already compromised with systemd, and I don't like it. I see BSD in my future, or at least a linux distro from the list here https://nosystemd.org/ - probably Gentoo. Nothing to stop me, absolutely nothing at all. I just need a few days free to backup/wipe/reinstall/reconfigure/restore_data and I'll be good. Better make that a few weeks. Maybe o…

I wonder if the impetus behind the (terrible) monolithic design of systemd was to force standardization across distros. The choice was more political than technical. If different choices were available for init, DNS resolver, service control manager, volume manager, etc... we would adversely contribute to the schizo distro landscape the people holding the money bags are actively trying to get away from. With systemd…

The thing is not just about distros and big developers it is about every developer out there who wants to write system software. Instead of doing the work to support multiple different APIs they can concentrate on the software. Its just easier. You don't have to track the compatability of different tools.

For many people Linux is not an academic exercise. It is a tool they want to use. The don't care to use a different network manager or resolver.

And that is exactly the same as Windows. There is one solution across the whole system and it works together because it is written by the same people and tested together.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#315

Post by palata »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #311
palata wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there's a reason it's being adopted: it does it's job well My problem with systemd is that it's taking over more and more and locking in . It is encouraging developers to have a hard dependency on it, and making it harder to have an alternative. My problem is not philosophical with "it's a monolith, it's not unixy". My problem is "it's on the way to lock me in". We like to complain about lock-in across the boar…

I think you got it backwards. Systemd is a standardization that is appealing to developers. They want to adopt it because it makes their life easier. It is just nice to know that all the tools you need for a system are there and work together. Pluggability is hard to maintain and is only done if there is no standardization. I somehow don't think your gripe is with systemd but with developers who prefer the easy route…

I don't think it's backwards; it's not incompatible with what you said.

> It is just nice to know that all the tools you need for a system are there and work together.

It is indeed! Just like everybody uses WhatsApp for a reason. But because everybody uses WhatsApp, it is very difficult to get traction with an alternative. That's the lock-in part.

It is easier for developers to only care about systemd. It's often worse: many times I have seen projects that only work with Ubuntu. Of course I understand how it was easier for the developers of those projects to not learn how to "be nice" and "do it right". That does not mean I should be happy about it.

> If you want it differently then you have to do it yourself.

Or I should support alternatives, which I do. I am not saying you are not allowed to use systemd, I am just explaining why I support alternatives. Even though systemd works.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#316

Post by pjmlp »

krautburglar wrote: post #294
pjmlp wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a book on that, gets posted every now and then on HN. In case you never read it, https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf Hardly the piece of OS beauty that gets praised about FOSS circles.

But that book is a waste. It is just MIT dunning-krugerites who were salty that LISP machines never took off. When it comes to real life, the bell labs approach won, and for several good reasons. Not "worse is better" (another dunning-krugerite cope), but "less is more."

Turns out free beer is great, even when it is warm.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#317

Post by prmoustache »

jeroenhd wrote: post #241
cbolton wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think systemd is the one to learn now if you want to learn Linux. Maybe someone can make a Unix from Scratch for people more interested in the Unix philosophy than Linux per se.

systemd is most certainly the most pragmatic service to learn, but if you're doing LFS to "learn" how a Linux system gets brought up, something lower-level may be a better idea to pick up.

All this stuff is versioned anyway so if the point is learning youe can still read an old version of the book and use old versions of the repos.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#318

Post by theamk »

palata wrote: post #229
sxzygz wrote: post #156

Sadly is Linux is no longer what is used to be for my generation that cut their teeth having to patch kernels for basic hardware support. Linux is now effectively systemd/linux, and is attempting to become flatpak/systemd/linux through various corporate sponsored initiatives. The only thing worse, in my eyes, are people who distribute things as docker containers. The Linux distro as such is becoming an anachronism. T…

> Linux is now effectively systemd/linux This is my issue with systemd. I wanted Linux because I wanted to have a choice. The philosophy was that users should have a choice. Systemd goes against that: it's taking over everything and more and more projects require systemd. Flatpak as well: if a project only supports flatpak, chances are that it won't be easy to package normally. So if I don't use Flatpak, I'm screwed.…

Except for the main pid1 process, systemd is one of the most customizeable things, certainly much more than old shell-based things. Everything is documented, can be disabled or replaced, and in such a way that the rest of the system can keep functioning, and the system upgrades don't mess it up.

A lot of people said you can edit /etc/init/ scripts, but this was pretty annoying, as the moment you upgrade the package, your package manager throws a conflict at you. It was certainly non-scaleable if you have many machines with automated upgrades. Compare to systemd overrides, where there is both drop-ins and wholesale service replacement, and system upgrades never mess with that.

Heck, even something as simple as "disable distribution-provided service" was a pain! I can't remember how many times I've added "exit 0" to /etc/default/something file, just because the sysvinit did not respect user decisions during upgrades or reinstalls! Compare to systemd, where I can "mask" the service even before it's installed.

And for deeper changes? Pre-systemd ubuntu had this this stupid "system is online" idea, and I once needed to customize this.. this was lots of undocumented reading and hacking on the script, and let's hope we did not need to upgrade. Or something like "my service X should start after NFS, but ssh should start before NFS" - this was pretty hard as well, and would cause upgrade conflicts.

Systemd has lots of problems, but the customizeability is one of their best parts. It is the only thing that I know which clearly delimits "user" vs "distribution", and gives all the power to user.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#319

Post by bjourne »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #252
cf100clunk wrote: post #2

This is a mindblower. To quote Bruce Dubbs: ''As a personal note, I do not like this decision. To me LFS is about learning how a system works. Understanding the boot process is a big part of that. systemd is about 1678 "C" files plus many data files. System V is "22" C files plus about 50 short bash scripts and data files. Yes, systemd provides a lot of capabilities, but we will be losing some things I consider impor…

> To me LFS is about learning how a system works. I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, Linux plus systemd, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Linux/systemd. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning systemd system made useful by the systemd corelibs, systemd daemons, and vital systemd components compr…

This, of course, is a tongue in cheek.

Re: Linux From Scratch ends SysVinit support

#320

Post by BadBadJellyBean »

JCattheATM wrote: post #21

> Understanding the boot process is a big part of that. systemd is about 1678 "C" files plus many data files. System V is "22" C files plus about 50 short bash scripts and data files. Systemd is basically the Windowsfication of Linux. I'm always surprised by the people that champion it who also used to shit on Windows with the registry or whatever. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a thing.

It is not cognitive dissonance to learn from others. The pluggable nature of Linux makes developer lifes harder. They have to write wrappers and abstractions to use base functionality. Having a unified api surface is very attractive.

Windows did something right because you can run very old binaries on a new system. Good luck doing that on Linux.

In the end for most people Linux is not an intellectual exercise in freedom but a tool to get work done and systemd is pretty good at that and is getting better.

And another important point: systemd is still lgpl licensed software. There is literally no legal way for someone to rug pull it. So if it works and brings a benefit it might be a good thing to start to depend on it. Just like we depend on the GNU tools.

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