- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- linux@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- linux@programming.dev
- linux@programming.dev
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You motherfucker I can barely breathe right now!
Fucking slop images contributed less than nothing to the article.
/etc/init.d, uh, finds a way
Logged logs logging loggily
Go off, king. Great points. I can’t bring myself to give a shit about anything this person has to say if they feel the need to interject Marvel quips into their own article.
I honestly don’t get what people were so up in arms about, besides just not wanting to change what already worked for them.
It uses a completely different paradigm of process chaining and management than POSIX and the underlying Unix architecture.
That’s not to say it’s bad, just a different design. It’s actually very similar to what Apple did with OS X.
On the plus side, it’s much easier to understand from a security model perspective, but it breaks some of the underlying assumptions about how scheduling and running processes works on Linux.
So: more elegant in itself, but an ugly wart on the overall systems architecture design.
It uses a completely different paradigm of process chaining and management than POSIX and the underlying Unix architecture.
I think that’s exactly it for most people. The socket, mount, timer unit files; the path/socket activations; the
After=,Wants=,Requires=dependency graph, and the overall architecture as a more unified ‘event’ manager are what feels really different than most everything else in the Linux world.That coupled with the ini-style VerboseConfigurationNamesForThatOneThing and the binary journals made me choose a non-systemd distro for personal use - where I can tinker around and it all feels nice and unix-y. On the other hand I am really thankful to have systemd in the server space and for professional work.
I’ve started doing podman quadlets recently, and the ini config style is ugly as hell compared to yaml (even lol) in docker compose. The benefits outweigh that though imho.
I agree that quadlets are pretty ugly but I’m not sure that’s the ini style’s fault. In general I find yaml incredibly frustrating to understand, but toml/ini style is pretty fluent to me. Maybe just a preference, IDK.
On the plus side, it’s much easier to understand from a security model perspective
Lol, no. Way more code in Systemd. Also more CVE per year than in some bad (now dead) init/svc’ lifetime.
I’m so tired of reading this stupid argument. “People only dislike systemd because they’re afraid of change.” No, there are plenty of other concerning issues about it. I could probably write about a lot of problems with systemd (like the fact that my work laptop never fucking shuts down properly), but here’s the real issue:
Do you really think it’s a good idea for Red Hat to have total control over the most important component of every mainstream distro in existence?
Let’s consider an analogy: in 2008, Chrome was the shit. Everyone loved it, thought it was great and started using it, and adoption reached ~20-30% overnight. Alternatives started falling by the wayside. Then adoption accelerated thanks to shady tactics like bundling, silently changing users’ default browser, marketing it everywhere and downranking websites that didn’t conform to its “standards” in Google search. And next, Chrome adopted all kinds of absurdly complex standards forcing all other browser engines to shut down and adopt Chrome’s engine instead because nobody could keep up with the development effort. And once they achieved world domination, then we started facing things like adblockers being banned, browser-exclusive DRM, and hardware attestation.
That’s exactly what Red Hat is trying to pull in systemd. Same adoption story - started out as a nice product, definitely better than the original default (SysVInit). Then started pushing adoption aggressively by campaigning major distros to adopt it (Debian in particular). Then started absorbing other standard utilities like logind and udev. Leveraging Gnome to push systemd as a hard dependency.
Now systemd is at the world domination stage. Nobody knew what Chrome was going to do when it was at this point a decade ago, but now that we have the benefit of hindsight, we can clearly see that monoculture was clearly not a good idea. Are people so fucking stupid that they think that systemd/Red Hat will buck that trend and be benevolent curators of the open source Linux ecosystem in perpetuity? Who knows what nefarious things they could possibly do…
But there are hints, I suppose. By the way, check out Poettering’s new startup: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572
Red Hay has helped a lot the Linux system, I doubt desktop systems would be a good viable idea by now without their contribution. Does your analogy imply that you think Red Hat made systemd to eventually break it and thus make Linux not viable? I doubt they could do that without losing all their customers.
I mean, systemd can indeed do a lot of things but it mostly is used for startup and service management. And I prefer systems services to a cronjob.
Poettering’s new startup:
Amutable - verifiable system integrity
Btw, i’m stealing your summary of browser monoculture, alright?
Btw, i’m stealing your summary of browser monoculture, alright?
Of course! The EEE pattern is crystal clear at this point. The loss of the WWW to the current browser monoculture we’re experiencing is the biggest technological tragedy of our times. I would hate to see it happen with our open source revolution as well.
Systemd inserted a lot of flaws, many of them highly unsecure, for basically no reason other than “easier”,
The main developer being a microslop emoyee and getting windfall from other corporate entities didn’t sync up that great for integrity or security conscious people.
There are now multiple alternatives that do a better job at what Systemd does.
What is it always with Systemd-is-the-only-alternative (vs. SysV scripts)? That’s 15 years out of date.
Also, you don’t need sockets.
ew ai “””art”””
LLM slop detected
ai:dr
Affluent Intelligence; Don’t Read?
Did somebody let Lennart out again? You know he shouldn’t be walking around alone outside, he’s just going to get himself into trouble.
On a slightly more serious note: systemd does some things nice, a lot of things it does very badly, and it really seriously needs to stop trying to push it’s grubby little fingers into every sub system out there.
All that is one thing, but the main issue with systems always seemed it’s main developer, Lennart Poetteting who was never one to shy away from drama and controversy, and not in a good way.
I tried to stop worrying and love systemd, but it really is terrible to deal with sometimes.
Any recommendations for a good book or online resource to learn about systemd? Not “how to use it” or “ten tricks for systemd users”, but how it works, what makes it tick, basically a systematic overview, end then a dive into the details.
The systemd website itself seems quite information-rich: https://systemd.io/
Diving into Systemd would be a book written by Nietzsche.
“Und wenn du lange in Systemd blickst, blickt Systemd auch in dich hinein.”
read the man pages. type “man systemd” into a linux terminal, and when finished also read the “see also” pages at the bottom. man systemd.unit is also a “central” page, it says lots of things common to all unit file types.
when you stumble into long parameter lists, you can skip them, you probably won’t use most of them. not because they are useless, though, so it’s better to at least read the names of all the parameters you come across that way so you have a picture what’s available.
skip systemd.directives, but know what it is: a catalogue of all systemd directives with the man page they are documented at. very useful, when you want to find something specific.
“man systemd.special” is special, it’s more about its internals, very informational, but relies on preexisting knowledge
I know how to find and read man pages, therefore I was looking for something that is better structured. A view from the top, not looking at the details that a man page delivers.
I’m not experienced at it either and don’t know the best resources.
But what I can usually recommend in case you don’t want to see the usual “THIS-IS-A-PIECE-OF-THE-PUZZLE—COME-BACK-REGULARLY-FOR-MORE-CONENT” stuff, but more in depth stuff: Enter “filetype:pdf systemd” in your search engine. Google or DuckDuckGo will then only spit out pdf files about that topic… And the people who write PDF files are usually more experienced with the topic than those who write blog posts or “how to’s”.
Let me know if that helped in your case… :)
OK, first impression: loads of PPTs turned PDF. Not a single book far and wide…
You’ve got a point here, although this topic would do well as a wiki or similar linked documents.
Its success is mitigated by how difficult it makes networking with . All I want to do is write out the config and have it work. I don’t want networkd or resolved mucking around with stuff. You end up having problems like this guy: https://piefed.social/c/linux/p/1796382/oddness-with-systemd-resolved
The day i had to debug DNS issues was the day i ditched systemd.
Yeah for that I like Canonical’s way with netplan. Write a very short and simple yaml, “netplan apply”, 'k tx bye.
this one is gonna be controversial.
Yup.
If you shoot the competitors and reject questions and dissent, then you win. Good job, IBM !
Didn’t expect this topic to still be that controversial… Maybe I’m too young to know, but how was IBM involved?
Ibm owns red hat
Here we go again with the conspiracy bullshit
Its not, though. The chain of events is well documented, with much of the original correspondence still there to read and evaluate for yourself. Its arguably not a conspiracy, either, since it was perpetrated by a single entity.
Their motivations for doing it are the subject of a lot of speculation, some of it pretty wild, but the facts that they did do it and how it was done are public record.
No, see the reasoning why distros switched, e.g. Debian or Arch. TL;DR: technical merit, no good alternatives existed at the time, as evidence by how the Arch maintainer paraphrased the average systemd critic:
I think there might be this other project that possibly is doing something similar. I don’t really know anything about it, but I’m pretty sure it is better than systemd.
Would the landscape be more diverse if other people would have built someone when Poettering first announced systemd? Probably! Did anyone do it? No! OpenRC wasn’t a fully fledged alternative back then, Upstart had fundamental design flaws.
But does anyone regret adopting systemd? Also no! Everybody is happy. It’s robust, it works, it makes admin lives easier. Users no longer have to deal with zombies, slow boots, and unnecessary services running.
Bro I’m not making a single claim about the merits or flaws of systemd. I’m talking about the huge infighting and strong arming that went on back when it came out. I had an LTS server back then and just had my popcorn out to watch, since I don’t have the programming expertise to weigh the pros and cons of init systems at a philosophical level.
You missed the point: I quoted and linked to contemporary decision making because it illustrates that there’s no “strongarming” necessary if something is the only game in town.
Sysvinit was no longer doing the trick, Upstart wasn’t architecturally sound, OpenRC wasn’t a serious contender at that point either: they could adopt systemd or wait for a few years in case some alternative would come along.
That’s why your framing doesn’t make sense to me: it implies that there was some sort of choice that Big Init was trying to stack the cards for, but there wasn’t at that point.
