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Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

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Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#91
post #22

The fragmented nature is what I love about Linux. In other words it's called "choice". Because of the fragmentation, I don't have to use systemd, or pulseaudio, or snap, or Gnome desktop, or most other things I don't want to use for whatever reason. I can configure my box (or my container) mostly the way I see fit. If you want ultimate unification, choose macOS. These guys are certain that they know what you need, an…

> Because of the fragmentation, I don't have to use systemd, or pulseaudio, or snap, or Gnome desktop, or most other things I don't want to use for whatever reason. I think part of the very reason some folks like you don't like to use some of those things is their shortcomings... which likely come about in part due to the plethora of choices leading to fragmented efforts on the development side. People shift their at…

I specifically did not speak about kernel services.

I would gladly replace the window manager and the desktop manager in Windows. It is even possible.

Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#92
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

systemd isn't an init system and doesn't pretend to be one [note] - it's OS middleware with ambitions to becoming a distro unto itself. The systemd project assumes responsibility for numerous aspects of the system that have no technical justification for being under the same project umbrella. You might like systemd-homed, for instance, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the functions of init. Calling it a…

Honest question, if nobody likes systemd, then why is it still around and why is it so difficult for me to find a distro that hasn't adopted it?

I was careful not to include any value judgements in my comment. I simply wanted to lay to rest this "init system" business.

However, you ask a good question. Lots of people do like it, supposedly. But I think there's a large clue to its controversial nature in that people still call it an "init system", and pointing out that it isn't is interpreted by some as an attack.

Basically, it started out as an init system, which was used by Red Hat / Fedora, which was positioned well at a time when certain distros, notably Debian, used crufty SysV init scripts which they wanted to move on from. When Debian adopted systemd, after some debate, every Debian-based distro did too. This wasn't considered a particularly invasive change at the time. But systemd started to expand into its "middleware" position, absorbing vital system functions like udev. Distros which adopted systemd found themselves along for the ride, while distros that didn't increasingly found that software was starting to break, forcing them to maintain forks, or chisel out the piece of systemd that made it work and run it standalone. So was created a network effect that forced even more distros down the path of least resistance into systemd.

Meanwhile, amidst all the grumbling that this bait-and-switch was provoking, the systemd project leaders had an astonishingly bad attitude towards the maintainers of software that they were breaking, which fomented considerable personal animosity on top of the technical resentment. Not only were they driving a horse and cart through the standard ways of doing things, breaking a lot of stuff in the process, they were being rude about it.

So, more or less, people resent systemd because it's difficult to find - or build - a distro without it.

Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#93

This post is mostly Linux FUD. I don’t understand what’s the use of this. Actually I always found it funny and a little brave that Linus called ZFS a buzzword. In my opinion he’s right. ZFS breaks a lot of use cases but unless you know what you’re talking about you’re going to think it’s the end-all. I slightly prefer the MD-RAID system.

I didn't get the ZFS complaint either. Countless years of development went into OOP. Lots of great software has been written with it. It's still a buzzword.

Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#94

"Linux is fragmented", and then goes on to list Free, Open, Net, Dragonfly and avoids listing a few more. "Poettering creepware". Web developers who use Google Analytics are "stupid". This is emotion-driven drivel.

Linux is fragmented in the sense that userland is separate from the kernel.

Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#95
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question, if nobody likes systemd, then why is it still around and why is it so difficult for me to find a distro that hasn't adopted it?

Running a distro is a ton of work. Writing your own one off init scripts per package is even more work. The short answer is...Red Hat has money and threw it behind systemd. Like them or hate them, they are in many ways the deciding fate of Linux systems. So, other distros fall in line. Ubuntu is a contender, but gave in and followed suit too. Void and Solus are both good distros that don't use systemd. I'd go as far…

You're half right, but writing init scripts is by far the easiest part of not running systemd. As a sibling comment lightly puts it - "various shims exist".

Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#96
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know you turn that DNS server off by adding "DNSStubListener=no" to /etc/systemd/resolved.conf right?

Then.. why does it exist? More importantly, why is it enabled by default? Does systemd want to be an init system? A logging system? a dnsmasq replacement?

There is a "project" named systemd and an "init system" named systemd, in much the same way that there's the GNU project and GNU-$everything.

Nobody says things like "what is GNU? Is it a kernel, a compiler, a libc, a build system, a set of userspace tools?".

Likewise, the systemd project has many utilities under its umbrella, and most of them are completely optional.

Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#97
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed that, too: the author doesn't mention the many-splendored versions of *BSD. My personal favorite is FreeBSD. I like Linux, but I have mixed feelings about systemd, especially when I discovered that systemd runs its own DNS server, which prevents the DNS server I wrote from binding to port 53 using INADDR_ANY. Instead, I had to write code to enumerate the interfaces & corresponding IP addresses & bind to eac…

I swear at this point there is not a soul that really understand the low level pieces of a Linux distro fit together. systemd-resolved is a separate project from systemd whose only relation is that it’s in the same repo. It’s up to your distro builder to decide if they want to use it. And also up to your distro if they want to use the stub resolver. It’s not necessary for systemd-resolved to work. The reason they hav…

Why does it use the same repo, exactly?

Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#98

> Proprietary operating systems like Microsoft Windows 10, Apple MacOS, and Google Android have become famous for their ill conduct... I find it mildly ironic that MacOS was based on BSD.

You mean like adding systemd and snaps ... that make it harder to run a system in a deterministic manner with easy security updates, etc?

Snaps, flatpak, and similar containerized package distribution are all trying to build an app store to monetize software distribution. And an attempt to get a software distribution method gain popularity across linux distribution lines.

While I will never use these methods, and I think they are completely flawed ideas, I think the goal of them is a natural evolution of fragmented similar systems.

The BSDs have the same problem as linux distributions. The open source BSDs share a lot of code but aren't quite the same. If several of them got very popular, someone would attempt to make a method to distribute software across all of them. Though in BSD this is harder because in linux land at least the kernel is standardized.

Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#99

> Proprietary operating systems like Microsoft Windows 10, Apple MacOS, and Google Android have become famous for their ill conduct... I find it mildly ironic that MacOS was based on BSD.

MacOS is not based on BSD, it's an old legend. NeXTStep was designed to be "compatible" with 4.3BSD (the diagram on Wikipedia is wrong because of this confusion). Edit : source about compatibility on the last page : http://www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/Developer/NeXT_D...

Re: Migrate Everything from Linux to BSD

#100
post #95
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running a distro is a ton of work. Writing your own one off init scripts per package is even more work. The short answer is...Red Hat has money and threw it behind systemd. Like them or hate them, they are in many ways the deciding fate of Linux systems. So, other distros fall in line. Ubuntu is a contender, but gave in and followed suit too. Void and Solus are both good distros that don't use systemd. I'd go as far…

You're half right, but writing init scripts is by far the easiest part of not running systemd. As a sibling comment lightly puts it - "various shims exist".

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