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.
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.
Does it really matter if you can’t use those independent binaries with any other init system? If you want to use systemd, you pretty much have to take the whole ecosystem.
You just compared a browser extension and an init system that takes proc id 1. The unix philosophy is about what runs as processes at the system level.
The unix philosophy is about what runs as processes at the system level.
I don’t know what you mean by “system level” (cat is userspace) but I don’t believe there is any clarification about what kind of applications should apply to the unix philosophy or not. It doesn’t say that applications “should do one thing and do it well only if it is a system process or terminal based program built for purely shell environments.”
Also, if the argument was exclusively about OS processes, dbus should be in the firing line of everyone in the anti-systemd camp too. That never gets the same level of hate.
The unix philosophy is old and, while nice to have, is insufficient to fully address the needs of the modern world. It’s not as simple today as it was in the 1960s and 70s and we need to embrace change to progress.
I’m honestly not sure what you’re talking about here. The unix philosophy is something informal that applies to compiled utilities that run usually in a bin/ directory. The philosophy isn’t attempting to apply to all software that exists and certainly doesn’t intend to apply to browsers or browser extensions.
You just compared a browser extension and an init system that takes proc id 1. The unix philosophy is about what runs as processes at the system level.
Btw. The Linux kernel does more than one thing. But monolithic kernels are much better for small student projects that won’t be relevant anymore, when Gnu Hurd comes out
Monolithic kernels are also generally more performant, compared to micro-kernels, it turns out. A bit counter-intuitive at first but, makes sense when you think about it.
Micro-kernels in general-purpose OSes suffer from a death of a thousand cuts due to context switching. Something that would be a single callback to the kernel in a monolith turns into a mess of calls bouncing between kernel and user space. When using something like an RTOS where hardware is not likely intended for general-purpose computing, this is not an issue but, when you start adding all of the complexity of user-installable applications that need storage, graphics, inputs, etc, the number of calls gets huge.
Systemd was half baked literally when it came out and figuratively as an idea, so much so that there’s already a replacement for it in the works.
A longer version:
Systemd replaced the init script style of boot and process management, which had been in place for decades. init scripts were so simple they could be understood just by looking at the name: the computer is Initialized by Scripts. Systemd was much more complex and allowed many more tools to interact with the different parts of the computer, but people had to learn these tools. Previously all a person had to understand to deal with the computer was how to edit a text file and what various commands and programs did. After systemd a person has to understand how to use the dozens of invocations of systemctl and it’s variants and if they are dealing with a problem, —you know, the only reason a person would ever be dealing with initializing services— they gotta know what’s going on with the text files that systemd uses to run different commands and programs.
So a person who already understood what was going on might rightly say “hey, this systemd thing is just the same shit with different file locations and more to learn”.
People complain about the creator and maintainer of systemd, lennart poettering . Poettering is also the person behind pulseaudio, an powerful but complex audio management daemon in Linux whose name you only recognize because it’s caused you no end of trouble. Pulseaudio was also replaced relatively quickly by pipewire.
The argument could be made (and probably has) that poetterings work is indicative of the problems with foss developers working as employees of major companies with their job responsibilities inclusive of their foss projects. The developer in that situation has an incentive to make big sweeping changes, they’re being paid for it after all, instead of being more careful and measured.
When every big foss maintainer is trying to find a way to justify being paid for it, their projects are never done.
At least poettering is working for Microsoft, ruining windows now…
E: oh my god I forgot about the binary log files! So before (and now), the universal format for log files was plain text. You know, because it’s a log that’s text. Systemd uses binary log files that need a special tool to open and parse. So if you want to look through them on a computer without that tool you’re kinda screwed. Now systemd isn’t the only software package with binary log files, but many people have made the very persuasive argument that it’s not a trait to copy.
E2: actually spelled the man’s name right. Thanks @floofloof !
To ask a different question… what was wrong with initd? I’m the better part of a decade stale at this point but I don’t know that I ever ran into an edge case that initd couldn’t handle with a little massaging
When systemd first showed up there wasn’t much parallelized init systems. People managing complex systems with many services may find the tools of systemd make their lives easier. Of course, nowadays all that complex multi service machine stuff is containerized and none of those containers run systemd 🤔
If I were gonna psychologize it, poettering and kay typify what the Linux user of the 0s felt when they actually looked at what windows of the time had going on under the hood. “Look at you, tla username, pathetic creature of twenty text files under a trench coat!”
The problem with that sentiment is that there’s an honesty to recognizing and accepting that you’re not too far removed from the z80 and it keeps you from believing all this computer stuff is more than it’s cracked up to be.
No one who’s happy with python also keeps a loaded gun next to the server for when it acts up and that’s the problem.
Pulseaudio was also replaced relatively quickly by pipewire.
I really wouldn’t say that… PulseAudio has been around since like 2004, and PipeWire’s initial release was in 2017 (13 years later). I don’t think PulseAudio was incorporated into most distros by default until like 2007 or so, but that’s still 10 years before PipeWire was even released. PipeWire is only recently becoming the default in popular distros. We’ve had to deal with Pulse for a long time.
pulseaudio, an powerful but complex audio management daemon in Linux whose name you only recognize because it’s caused you no end of trouble. Pulseaudio was also replaced relatively quickly by pipewire.
PulseAudio never gave me trouble but I guess I’m just lucky or some shit. Also PipeWire took forever to come out.
In games after I press button to shoot, animation plays and then eternity later comes shooting sound when animation ends. JACK compared to PA is super responsive in games, direct ALSA reduces lag by additional 15ms.
Oh man you reminded me of bad init scripts that would prevent you from getting to multi-user login. I hope you remembered your root password so you can get into single user mode!
The log files only have binary markers within the text. You could run the raw log files through strings and get the plain log files with everything important intact.
Pottering is also the person behind pulseaudio, an powerful but complex audio management daemon in Linux whose name you only recognize because it’s caused you no end of trouble. Pulseaudio was also replaced relatively quickly by pipewire.
Powerful? No, JACK is more powerful and was created 2 years before pulseaudio.
For context back then OSS was primary audio api, and unlike ALSA it did not have software mixing. So sound servers were created. Lots of sound servers, so it was and still it yet another sound server without extra functionality. Meanwhile dmix existed since at least 2001 and JACK allowed route output of one application to input of another.
At least pottering is working for Microsoft, ruining windows now…
They weren’t that bad. You had to look in like 3 places, depending on the distro, but you could find them. And you could see exactly what they were doing once you found them.
systemd gets a job done but I’d much prefer something simpler.
Yep, to add on as well as summarized this… Linux has historically had a design methodology of “everything is a file”. If your not familear with the implications of this, it means your command line tools just kind of work with most things, and everything is easy to find.
For instance, there’s no “registry / regedit” on Linux… There’s just a folder with a config file that the application stores settings in. There’s no control panel application to modify your network settings… Just a text file on your OS. Your system logs and startup tasks were also (you guessed it) sinole filea on the system. Sure there might be GUI apps to make these things easier for users, but under the hood it reads and writes a file.
This idea goes further than you might assume. Your hard drive is a file on the file system (a special file called a block device). You can do something like “mount /dev/sda1 /home/myuser/some_folder” to “attach” the drive to a folder on the system, but that special block device (dev/sda1 in this case) can be read and written to byte by byte if you want with low level tools like dd.
Even an audio card output can show as a file in dev (this is less the case now with pipewire and pulse), but you used to be able to just echo a raw audio file (like a wav file) and redirect the output to your audio device “file” and it would play out your speaker.
Systemd flipped this all around, and now instead of just changing files, you have to use applications to specify changes to your system. Want to stop something from starting? Well, it used to be that you just move it out of the init directory, but now you have to know to “systemctl disable something.service”, or to view logs " journalctl -idk something.service" I dont even remember the flags for specifying a service, so I have to look it up, where it used to just be looking at a file (and maybe use grep to search for something specific)
Want to stop something from starting? Well, it used to be that you just move it out of the init directory, but now you have to know to “systemctl disable something.service”,
That is still the case, nothing stops you from manually moving a file and its dependencies into or out of /etc/systemd/system/
Systemd flipped this all around, and now instead of just changing files, you have to use applications to specify changes to your system. Want to stop something from starting? Well, it used to be that you just move it out of the init directory, but now you have to know to “systemctl disable something.service”, or to view logs " journalctl -idk something.service" I dont even remember the flags for specifying a service, so I have to look it up, where it used to just be looking at a file (and maybe use grep to search for something specific)
not true, SystemD still uses files for this very reason…
and what is the last time you used the text version of a syslog.8.xz file?
you are basically complaining that you need to learn how your system works… before you can use it. and there is nothing preventing you from making your own distro that doesn’t uses SystemD, or using rSyslog instead of systemd-journal for logging.
want to see the status of a daemon : systemctl status want it for the system systemctl statuswant to see the logs of only a specific daemon journalctl -xefu . this all, means that its easier to find the logs for diffrent services since there not scattered somewhere in the /var/log dir… (is it in the syslog, does it have its own log file, is it in the kernel log)…
You are free to setup your system in whatever way you like… but whining about that something works differently is “Microsoft mentality”… lets leave that with them.
Not the really the point of your post but I personally tend to use journalctl -fu something.service. That brings you to the end of the logs for that unit and I get to smile about flipping off systemd.
Systemd flipped this all around, and now instead of just changing files, you have to use applications to specify changes to your system. Want to stop something from starting? Well, it used to be that you just move it out of the init directory…
Enable and disable just create symlinks of the “just changing files” files in your example. It tells you this every time you install something that enables a service.
Want to do it manually? ln -s (or rm the link to “disable” it).
Want it to happen later in the init sequence? Put the link in a different .target directory.
All “systemctl enable” does is put the symlink in the target directory that’s specified in the Install section of the unit file.
As for “specifying a service”… Everything is a unit file (yes, file), journalctl -u just means “only show me logs for this unit”.
There’s no flag for “specifying a service”, you just type in the service name. If there’s any ambiguity (eg. unit.service and unit.socket), you type the service name followed by .service
A flag you might find useful is -g, which means “grep for this string”. You can combine this with -u to narrow it down.
init scripts were so simple they could be understood just by looking at the name: the computer is Initialized by Scripts. Systemd was much more complex and allowed many more tools to interact with the different parts of the computer, but people had to learn these tools. Previously all a person had to understand to deal with the computer was how to edit a text file and what various commands and programs did.
It’s complex because it solves a complex problem. before people had to hack that together with complex init scripts, now they can let systemd do the hard work.
so “relatively quickly” is a time span of 13 years in your idea… or the difference between 2004 and 2017.
if that’s your level of detail… your whole “rant” is worthless…
But lets be generous and look into it,
init scripts were so simple they could be understood just by looking at the name
this is blatantly false, for the old system you need to know about runlevels, what they mean, how the half backed init annotations work, and its dependency check works.
<span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;">### BEGIN INIT INFO
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># Provides: myrec
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># Required-Start: $all
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># Required-Stop:
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># Default-Stop:
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;"># Short-Description: your description here
</span><span style="font-style:italic;color:#969896;">### END INIT INFO
</span>
you needed special tools to watch if an application actually was running and not crashed, and to keep it running.
add to that that the difference between systemd.service file and a sysv / init / initd script is more or less the same complexity (just different standards).
the universal format for log files was plain text false, the universal format for logging was plain text…
which is currently (slowly) getting replaced with structured logging. (which is objectively better, imho). there are a number of different log formats, most use a binary (compressed) format. logging to plain text was generally only used for the most recent log entries. a binary format for logging, as long as there’s is tooling to get it to a (structured) textual output, is better than a pure text log. I mean, if its good enough for MySQL / MariaDB it ought to be good enough for you…
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.
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.
ya see, when i ssh into a server and i run some commands, sometimes i mess up, see, and i wanna reboot to get the system back to a known state, right
and even if the system is in an unknown or invalid state, right,
i don’t wanna wait half a bloody hour for systemd to get tired of waiting for 1m30s countdowns and actually bounce the damn machine, if it bounces at all
and i can’t just hold the power button, see, because i’m 2000 miles away from the bloody box
(I did not make that number up, by the way. I once has a hard drive get hot removed while it was mounted, couldn’t umount it so I had to reboot, and it confused systemd so bad it took 27 minutes to shut down)
EDIT: aw come on, are you really gonna downvote without leaving a reply?
I can quite clearly remember the long shutdown times back when Ubuntu was still using Upstart.
Generally speaking, long shutdown times are an indication of a system issue (e.g. HDD going bad or slow network) or just scripts being written poorly, and could be worked around by changing the timeout value. Systemd defaults to 90 seconds, but you can change that to 30 secs or lower.
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.
Binary logs are annoying, but once you get the hang of journalctl, it’s not so bad. That is about my only remaining hate for it.
In its early days, it was a serious pain. Its service management was annoying and is still a bit scattered to this day. It has improved a ton, for sure.
Above all else, it was kinda forced on us. Most of us were comfortable with sysv already. If I remember correctly, people often said the main dev for systemd could be a real jackass. I have no judgement or experience regarding that though.
Above all else, it was kinda forced on us. Most of us were comfortable with sysv already.
And at least for me it solved a problem which didn’t exist. Sure, there’s some advantages, but when it rolled out it was a huge pain in the rear and caused various problems and made things more complicated for no apparent reason.
Most of the bolted on services are rather shitty. ResolveD in particular is straight up hot garbage unless the only thing you are comparing it to is nscd. I like shipping all my logs to a centralized service and journald just gets in the way. It feels like they took upstart, bolted on some really crappy daemons,
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.
Are you using Linux for ordinary daily tasks like browsing, gaming, and coding? Then SystemD is perfect for such systems. No need to use distros that sell the lack of SystemD as their main selling point—it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Avoid SystemD haters like the plague.
Do you use Linux for enterprise servers? Then SystemD is just one of the options for you, go try all of them out to see what’s best for such workflow.
Wooow, 180 seconds (which probably won’t even get to timeout) when shutting down my computer. My life is ruined forever because I had to wait sooooo much. /sarc
Tell that to my laptop when I’m at the airport and boarding.
It’s the same with windows - push power button, “Windows is installing some updates, do not turn off y…” (screen goes blank from the forced shutdown as I continue to hold the power button)
If I’m turning off my computer, I’m turning it off for a reason. Any delay gets in the way of my reason nearly 100 percent of the time.
Nope. Not when my laptop is connected to my monitors/dock at home. The screen locks, the monitors time out and power off, everything else remains on/dormant. When travelling with it, it just hibernates.
If I had a desktop PC and it had fans/etc I would probably hibernate it rather than shut it down. As I understand it windows tends to do this by default these days as well.
Apologies, I will literally never be able to relate to this entire line of thinking. If I’m at an airport and it’s close to boarding time, my laptop has already been shut down ten minutes ago because when I first hear the announcement I see that as ‘computer time is over’ and consider this just generally the smart thing to do (… And you can just hibernate or disable wifi/bluetooth and leave the thing on anyway)
Generally if I’m turning off my computer I understand that as something that could take a minute or three because a small wait is not this huge dramatic thing y’all make it out to be.
It’s not a dramatic thing for me personally. 90 percent of the time my laptop politely sleeps when I ask it to, the remaining 10 percent of the time it’s going to sleep regardless of its opinion on the matter.
Small edit: I have sometimes been the unlucky recipient of a bundle of windows updates that that 15-20 minutes to complete. One thing about Linux distros, they don’t pull that kind of stunt in shutdown.
And lucky you to be able to not have any last minute things to deal with at the airport that get foisted upon you by clients / coworkers. Computer time is never over.
Would be nice, but it (that is, windows in this case) won’t go to standby because by the time you get to the shutdown/update stage, power management is shut off.
Instead it turns into a lovely mini furnace in its pocket in my travel bag until windows deems that it has finished.
Edit: and that’s what I find alarming. Once , I just hit the power button and closed my laptop and got on the plane, and about 15 minutes later I went to get something from my bag in the overhead compartment before we took off. Holy shit, was my laptop hot, and it was 70 percent through an update. Presumably it was throttling due to heat and the throttling was making the updates even slower so it was a vicious cycle.
Everything everybody else said plus everything with Systemd is just… more complex. With OpenRC, it felt like I could keep all the information I needed to use and administrate it in my head. With Systemd, I have to look stuff up all the time.
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