The arguments against systemd come from the same people that love IRC, mailinglists, tiling window managers, split keyboards, don’t have a mouse, debug with printf, main arch or gentoo, unironically write RTFM|LMGTFY, call users “lusers”, play DnD, think Startrek and/or Star Wars cannot be topped, identify with the portrayed super hackers in media, and are proud of doing things the hard way just to feel some kind of superiority in their life.
Edit: for those who don’t get it, I’m obviously not being serious. If you fit this mythical, stereotypical person… uh… good job?
Well, I like IRC, ergonomic keyboards, sometimes debug using print commands, use Gentoo (Happy birthday!), play DnD and sometimes have to do things the hard way, and I like systemd, especially as a developer, I can test services right from my user account.
I think the hate comes from people who just want something to hate.
I meh IRC(no history without bouncers), rarely debug using printf, mostly debug in some GUI, but sometimes in GDB TUI, use Gentoo(HB, Larry the Cow), don’t even know DnD rules, don’t use systemd and really hate pulseaudio.
Just because I ran arch with ratpoison and firefox with Vim keybindings because I didn’t have a mouse wasn’t out of superiority, twas cause I was too poor to afford a mouse at the time.
Acktuchlly, I had moved just moved to Colorado and ended up living in a family friend’s shed for a couple months. Every few days i walked to the library for wifi to download shit and check email. My TouchPad went out on my acer aspire 1 so if I remember correctly I borrowed a friend’s mouse to get it all setup and afterwards used only keyboard, but out of necessity. Eventually I did get a mouse, and I just use xfce now, but I seriously can’t use a web browser without vim bindings now.
I simply don’t care. I am in a position lucky enough that I can trust distro maintainers, without the need to care about the details, as long as my system behaves as I expect, satisfying my requirements of reliability and stability
Same, I interact with it so rarely that it could work with fairies and unicorns for all the difference it makes to me.
I don’t know what people do with their machines that they keep poking at the damn thing anyway. For the most part I stay out of systemd’s way, it stays out of mine and we’re both happy.
It does things in a way that it’s hard to use other init without banning Systemd completely from your repo. And because it has feature and scope creep and causes dependencies to it everywhere, that does not happen once you’re on it, too much work. Which most distros are, because at it’s time it was either Systemd or SysV scripts.
Yeah I agree. It was rolled out pretty early in its development maturity so it undoubtedly left a bad taste in some people’s mouths. Overall it’s a net positive though. I don’t want to go back to the old way.
Having sniffed around the Linux community for years, I feel like whatever flaws SystemD has as a computer program are of tertiary importance when faced with the thing that really matters:
The developer of SystemD was mildly rude to some community members that one time. That means he is two hitlers and a stalin wearing a trenchcoat and everything he makes must be utter garbage.
Yeah they seem to think he “took over” the Linux init process all by himself. Like distro maintainers aren’t the ones who made the decision to move to systemd based on technical merits (presumably).
It is on technical merits as you don’t see maintainers complaining about systemd, only users who just don’t like it for number of randomly picked reasons.
I interacted with him briefly in a forum but didn’t realize who he was until later. He had that a bit of that programmer awkwardness going, but also having such a vocal abd sustained backlash against a major project you’ve been working on for years has to affect the poor dude pretty heavily.
I’d argue systemd has bad, borderline incorrect design. I didn’t like SysV because it caused inconsistencies and hard to understand processes. systemd fixed the inconsistencies but the rest is sort of hacked together bullshit that developers play wackamole with. That hackery is the reason it can’t be used in Docker for example. It has a complicated parser for a language that’s basically a DSL that doesn’t really solve the problem of complexity for the user. It requires a whole slew of random non-sense to work and it feels like stars have to align perfectly for things to function. It encourages bad behavior like making everything socket activated for literally no reason.
Compared to SysV, I’ll take systemd. I don’t find it ideal at all though. It’s serviceable… much like how Windows services are serviceable. S6 is I think what the ideal init would look like. I’m more impressed with it’s execline and utilities suite but that’s another story.
The only thing I think systemd did right is handling cgroups.
Some docker containers come with systemd. Of note, the RedHat ubi8-init and ubi9-init containers. Not that they’re wonderful and perfectly open, but that it is possible and available.
I underatand, but I just don’t care. Give me a functioning linux desktop and I will also run your garbage proprietary nvidia software. The alternative is windows, so I have to take what I can get.
I use runit on Artix. I wasn’t around for the init wars, but dove into the rabbit hole of Debian email exchanges, where lots of shade was thrown around because of suspicions over corporate influence on Linux, and Canonical dropping the ball because of their Licensing on their competitor init, Upstart.
I reviewed videos of Poettering going on about it, adamently placing systemd as the hill he was willing to die on.
I read the Torvaulds email complaining about Kay Sievers being an asshole. Looked at how Kay Sievers famously refused to fix early boot problems with systemd. Read Laurent Bercot’s technical break down of why even from a software design level, systemd should be called into question.
Its all interesting, and on my home desktop, I decided to only use Artix, Void, Gentoo, or Devuan over any of the others for as long as I can.
At work, I don’t care. Do I wish that runit or s6 was more predominant and widely used? Absolutely. Imho both init systems are just more minimal and their implementations are so solid, they are two of the very few pieces of software I can say are finished. No notes, no new features, and because of the minimal attack surface, barely any security patches have been necessary.
Due to their following of the UNIX Philosophy, both runit and s6’s source code can be reviewed in an afternoon, as opposed to systemd which has taken me considerably more time to parse through (though I’ll admit systemd has some decent comments in their code that helps out).
But at work, while I have my preferences and opinions, the systemd debate isn’t even close to the top of my list on arguments I’d like to have at the work place.
It’s a giant mess of interconnected programs that could theoretically still be disentangled, but in practice never are. It was very quickly and exclusively adopted by pretty much every major distro in a short period of time, functionally killing off any alternatives despite a lot of people objecting. Also, its creator was already pretty divisive even before systemd, and the way systemd was adopted kinda turned that into a creepy hate cult targeted at him.
There’s nothing actually wrong with systemd. I personally wish there was still more support for the alternatives though. Systemd does way more than I need it to, and I just enjoy having a computer that only does what I want.
Am not sure about “giant mess” but indeed it has a lot of moving parts. All that said, systemd is solving tangible problems which is why you will almost never see maintainers complain about it. It’s mostly Linux users which by definition oppose any change, Firefox 4 → Firefox 5, Gnome2 → Gnome3, SysV → systemd
“Giant mess” was maybe an uncharitable phrase to use, but it really is a lot of programs that are always used together because trying to mix and match it with other stuff or even just take pieces out is a massive pain in the rear. Again, I don’t actually object to systemd. I use it myself because it’s so much better supported. It is not always ideal for everything though, and I’m a little sad about the lack of support for other options.
The idea that Linux users by definition oppose any change is just silly though. We almost all got here by making a big change in how we use computers. Almost any change will be opposed by at least some members of any group. That’s just how people are. That’s not a special thing about Linux users. Sometimes a change that is overall for the better causes some things to be lost, and saying the people who are unhappy with that “by definition oppose any change” is kinda creepy, if I’m being honest. In particular all of those examples you gave are times people were forced into a change that was not all for the better, especially in the short term, with little notice, and no opportunity to voice their concerns in a more constructive manner. Of course some people complained. It would be weird if they didn’t.
I didn’t say there were better options. I didn’t say it shouldn’t have been adopted. I said it has some drawbacks, wasn’t rolled out very well, and I miss having other options even if they aren’t as generally useful for everyone, and it is inevitable that some people would complain because of that. That isn’t a problem. It’s okay to complain sometimes. We all do it.
this is a Just World fallacy, assuming the best thing will always be adopted and therefore everything not adopted is worse than [current thing], when it is entirely possible that there are in fact better options
This is not a Just World fallacy because I’m not talking about justice or people getting what they deserve. My assumption is that OS developers are competent. Until I see otherwise I’ll maintain that assumption.
I find it incredibly useful - instead of needing to learn a million quirks about the init of every distro they all use the same predictable system now, you learn it’s quirks once and those skills transfer everywhere. Hopping from Ubuntu to Debian to Arch to Fedora is trivial now compared to the old days.
That and systemd-boot and systemd-nspawn are awesome.
Hopping from Ubuntu to Debian to Arch to Fedora is trivial now compared to the old days.
Let me guess: travelling for you as an American have never been so easy since English today is a must-know virtually everywhere. What’s the point though?
instead of needing to learn a million quirks about the init of every distro they all use the same predictable system now
Autistic, right-wing conservative or just not much of a learner? The first one I understand, but the other two are just urging you to be pissed upon.
Linux has also overshadowed BSD. Diversity matters, but so do standards. Code interaction contracts (think APIs and syscalls) are the glue to make a program that will run on a lot of diffrent software/hardware stacks (like diffrent OSes and hardware combinations). Sadly specific implementation diffrences make the genaric contracts (like UNIX/POSIX) unable to be implemented pefectly.
I feel like, at this point, it has more than proved itself as a general purpose desktop scheduler. But there are situations where you would want something different but a lot of software depends on it anyway.
I also kinda don’t understand the hate toward the project itself, other than hearing some of the technical guidance on it has been a bit arrogant in the past or something. Sounds like sily open source drama to me honestly.
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