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,
systemdis 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.
If there were better options then they would have been adopted.
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
But in this case, there were extensive technical talks over multiple distributions.
Debian is probably the best example of how the options were pitted against each other with systemd then winning on its merits.
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 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.
i will never grow tired repeating this: systemd is the best thing that happened to linux in the 10s
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.
The… Old way? remembers back to x86 task segment register documentation while sweating profusely
There are other ways than systemd and initrc
If you really want the short version:
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@lemmy.ca !
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.
That’s horrifying. I was just writing from memory and resisting pulse for a few years after it was sort of the defacto standard.
Init scripts were simple? Man you haven’t seen a bunch of shitty init scripts then.
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!
Simple doesn’t mean well done. Badly written code can be simple but still bad
gayHitler420 taught me something today. thank you for this informative comment
Except it is clearly written by someone who just despises it, and doesn’t really know what they are talking about.
Init scripts were awful… they varied by distro and frequently were the source of odd problems.
There’s a good reason the Linux industry moved away from them to other ways to handle initialisation of the system and service management.
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.
incidentally, to just view the logs its
journalctl -xef(see https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/journalctl.1.html for what that means) it will be like the syslog you know.want to see the status of a daemon :
systemctl statuswant it for the systemsystemctl statuswant to see the logs of only a specific daemonjournalctl -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.
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.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.
lineart pottering
Ty I’ve spelled his name probably every wrong way in the past.
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.
A comment from an Arch Linux’ init script maintainer: https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/4lzxs3/comment/d3rhxlc/
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.
Ty! That’s really good to know!
Pulseaudio was also replaced relatively quickly by pipewire. lets check that, shall we:
PipeWire: Initial release 20 June 2017; 6 years ago source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PipeWire
PulseAudio: Initial release 17 July 2004; 19 years ago source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PulseAudio
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.
### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: myrec # Required-Start: $all # Required-Stop: # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: # Short-Description: your description here ### END INIT INFOyou 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…
What is the systemd replacement you mention?
There’s both runit and system6.
dont forget OpenRC
🫡
and openrc too, i tried it once in artix
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.
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…
You know what? I wich him luck.
Simple fails when complex problem arrives. Declarative approach of systemd daemons allows for more versatile solutions in unified format.
Does too much for one tool (against unix philosophy) and has poor interop with other tools (binary logfiles).
That’s not really true. systemd is split up into many different, independent binaries, and each of those does one job and does it well.
That’s not really true. systemd is split up into many different, independent binaries, and each of those does one job and does it well.
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.
If I remember correctly, there was a ton of pain configuring a minimal systemd. I am unaware if that has changed much in recent years.
Here is an old thread talking about it: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/150975/what-is-needed-for-a-minimal-systemd-boot-to-launch-getty-on-a-virtual-console
Your link describes setting up one file, the getty@.service.
The .target unit files are built-in, and not part of configuration.
Binary log files is my only significant complaint
Does too much for one tool (against unix philosophy)
This tired, old argument needs to die already.
Do you use browser extensions? That breaks unix philosophy too.
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” (
catis 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.
Dbus does only one thing: relays messages.
as it was in the 1960s and 70s
You will be surprised, but Turing machine was created during WW2, and we still say turing-complete today.
Adblock does only one thing: blocks ads. Doesn’t sound phylosophy-breaking.
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.
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.
I LOVE systemd, flatpaks, appimages, wayland, and pipewire. The desktop environment feel way more managed!
Sure, wayland is not complete yet (HDR), flatpak is missing some things (some portals), but the whole ecosystem is way more mature than before.
This is from someone who used init.d scripts, apt-get and dpkg, x.org, and alsa/pulseaudio/gstreamer.
first sentence i thought you were being ironic
Same, it read like a shitpost on /g/
i imagined this face
I agree that Wayland is better than X, but only because X is worse than Satan. If you like X11 better than Wayland, you don’t know anything about X.
Same. It just felt way better than plain old sysvinit and X11.
Liking X11 is illegal here.
What is gstreamer doing here? Isn’t it just a library?
I just remember the problems it gave me back in the day. So much so it earned a spot there.
deleted by creator
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.
On Lemmy otoh, lol. 😁
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.
Then there was PID 1. Here is a legacy discussion about it as I refuse to talk any more about it these days: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10485131
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.
Yeah, I can easily remember the commands to tail the logs because it’s
journalctl -fuand I always think “fuck you” as I’m typing that.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,
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.
I don’t get the hate as well. It’s great for running services and system administration.
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.
A stop job is running … 3/180 s
Then when it gets to 180 it just adds 180 more seconds.
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 could work with fairies and unicorns
It’s C code. There’s no fairy dust or rainbow magic involved. You can check the commit logs…
rapid typing of
git rebaseandgit push --forcecommands to alter the code history…
Unless you want to play games. PulseAudio sucks for games.
Roughly speaking, it is because it does not follow the Unix philosophy and proposes to do several tasks making the code very complex and therefore more susceptible to bugs.
But systemd is not a single tool, nor a single binary, it’s a collection of tools.
I believe their retort would be “name one thing systemd does well”
That is a bit like asking “name one thing that coreutils does well” or “name one thing GNU does well”.
The joke being “systemd does everything poorly”. First heard someone say this about X and Wayland. People were saying Wayland violated Unix philosophy and the speaker said “name one thing X does well” lol.
Systemd might not be perfect but it certainly does every single thing init scripts did better than any init script.
Don’t the Linux kernel or the GNU core utils violate unix philosophy too? Philosophical ideas become outdated, there aren’t many presocratics around.
The linux kernel unfortunately does not follow unix philosophy.
It would be better in various ways if the linux kernel used a micro kernel architecture following the unix philosophy, something Torwalds acknowledged in the past.
Philosophical ideas being lost does not mean they’re outdated.
How old in the past did Linus acknowledge it? my source says he dislikes/disliked microkernel, it dates to 2001 ,if you have a more recent source proving that he no longer thinks it I’ll look at it
Unfortunately I can’t remember the timestamp, but it’s right around when he starts speaking about when the MINIX creator bashed him, IIRC (not to bash on you, but this implies the point you’re making, that Linux shouldn’t have a monolithic kernel is 30 years old,)
As opposed to which other tools that respect Unix philosophy. Philosophy which I might add is severely outdated. That could have been a thing when you have simple command line interfaces but pretty much every application today violates that philosophy and nothing of value was lost.
I don’t have anything against systemd that is until I tried void linux for the first time. The working of runit seemed very simple and efficient compared to the complexity of systemd.
I still don’t hate systemd, but I just wish it was simpler.
To be honest
systemdis much simpler to me. Create a unit file, define what it depends on, accesses, etc. And you are done.And most importantly you don’t have to deal with things like environment variables or other session state leaking into your startup scripts as you had with all the init script based init systems.
I seriously do not miss services that worked when starting them from an ssh session but did not work on startup (because e.g. PATH had fewer directories).
That too. I completely forgot about that.
