Another Systemd thread, here we go. This time though I will add my


In principle I have nothing against systemd. Again, in principle. If there are true advantages to systemd, I don't necessarily see anything wrong with it, and I am not a programmer, but suffice to say I do not think it is an easy thing for anyone to just write up a new init system from scratch; even if one is well versed in coding, which again I am not. Having said that, the main issue I have against the idea of systemd is the fact that it is just absorbing everything it seems. What do I mean by that, projects that normally should be independent of any sort of init system, is now slowly requiring systemd as a hard dependency - I found this, take it perhaps with a grain of salt, but the fact that this is even a possibility is what worries me - https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comme..._dependencies/ .


So that is pretty much all I have to say about the matter. I have nothing in principle against systemd, if it works - great - if there are truly measurable improvements over more traditional init systems, great - but if it comes at the cost of other projects having to be implemented around systemd and being more systemd-centric - then thats where I start to question the validity of systemd. I do not doubt he original intentions of systemd or its author, but it seems to have perhaps lost sight of it's goal and now has become it's own thing. Perhaps if the author stepped back a bit, and re-assessed the goals of systemd that might work out for the long run, I do not know.


As for the "UNIX philosphy" , I am rather ambivalent about the matter itself. Sure, on the one hand if things work already fine , so thats one argument against systemd, on the other hand if there are measurable improvements with little to no fundamental changes; thats one for systemd - however perhaps the jury is still out on that. Again the biggest issue systemd has, which has already been pointed out is the 'feature creep', it is starting to look more and more than just an init system as per its original goal.

Again, these are my thoughts on it - thats all.

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If/when a package for systemd appears in the ChangeLog for -current I'll look at it, no sooner.

IOW I'll let Patrick do the hard work for us, a usual

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I guess I have an addendum to this topic:


Months back I did stumble upon an interesting video about systemd, and what I gleamed from it was perhaps the point of failure of systemd itself is not so much the code, but perhaps Poettering himself. The way he interacts with others and his refusal to compromise may itself be the very thing that is hindering systemd ironically. Again, I am no programmer - but I seriously doubt anyone can just do what Pottering does and write out a completely new init system. Impressive, but at the same time the issue with systemd is too many fundamental changes; as well as the clear issue of feature creep - and losing sight of its original goal as a replacement init sytem. Perhaps replacement is also an incorrect term; maybe stating it as an alternative would have been better, which I think Pottering though still intended systemd to be unfortunately, a replacement and not just an alternative.


The Tragedy of Systemd - Benno Rice

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I don't think it was ever how it was sold by the developers. I think this is because users used it, saw the speed increase, and then started talking about how fast systemd can boot the system. This is even #2 on their frequent myths about systemd.

dmesg does not provide everything you see while booting. It does provide most of it, but there have been things I've searched for (I saw something specific come up during booting and then went to look for it in the dmesg output and it didn't exist).

Pretty much everything systemd implemented existed in some way or another, but nothing offered everything combined. The list I provided in my post were things that didn't exist in Slackware, even if some of those features existed in other init systems.

What is unique with systemd is they are trying to get all these separate components and have it all included in one program, which does cause a disruption, especially when the older program providing that service is effectively EOL and doesn't implement features that systemd's version does and new programs start relying on that feature (like with login1).

Do you really expect most people in the Slackware forum to watch a 45 minute long video on a subject they are not fans of? I certainly have a lot better things I could do in the 45 minutes than listen to someone talk about something I hope never comes to Slackware. It's painfully obvious you haven't spent any detailed amount of time looking into systemd if you're still asking similar questions to what you asked 4 years ago.

I know some people don't care about respecting others choices, but for those who just weren't aware of the proper case of systemd, I wanted to point it out. You can continue to use whatever case you desire, but it may come across to others that you don't know what you're talking about if you can't use the right case of the program. And where is it common to capitalize the last letter of a word?

Considering how many distros use systemd, it is obvious people were forced into it and many probably grew to realize its benefits since those distros are still extremely popular. We've seen a few people come to Slackware because of this, but there's still plenty who are sticking with the default init. But asking this in the Slackware forum was pointless, because these threads always lead to issues and you have an extremely small pool of people who have the expertise and experience to dive into "intelligent assessment" (and no, I don't consider myself one who as the expertise and experience as I've never used a distro with systemd for much of anything).

The community wouldn't really include the Slackware forum except for those few who like to distro hop or are forced/required to use it for work. Maybe you should PM Niki Kovacs since he chose to switch to a systemd distro for his business. Surely he would be able to provide you more insight than many of us Slackware users.

You're annoyed that many of us can't be bothered with a 45 minute video, but your ignorance on the systemd subject seems to persist after 4 years (except now you have a little more understanding after watching a 45 minute video years later). You knew many people wouldn't watch it, but you posted it anyway... Guess it's time to pull out some popcorn until this thread eventually gets locked.

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I watched the video back when it was published and wrote a little about it here:

http://www.ciar.org/ttk/blog/index.c...uttal_D90F74AA

Beyond what is mentioned in that post, systemd continues to be problematic. My Ubuntu-using friends still complain about it hanging on system shutdown. At work we use CentOS7 and systemd frequently poses problems our sysadmins have to spend hours or days working around. "Dammit systemd" is something I hear around the office a lot. Since its behavior is hard-coded, you can't just tweak a shell script when it's doing something stupid.

It doesn't help, either, that the dev team refuses to admit that bugs are bugs, and will lock a bug report if too many people comment that something is indeed a problem. Developers should fix bugs, not stick their fingers in their ears and pretend bugs don't exist.

We have seen a steady march of security vulnerabilities reported for systemd, while vulnerabilities in sysvinit are few and far between. That right there should tell you systemd is a non-starter.

It's 2019, and I am more convinced than ever that systemd is a technology to avoid. Every year brings more evidence supporting that conviction.

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someone take -v away from bassmadrigal

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Instead you can just tl;dr. His posts are generally well written and often helpful.

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+1 from me.

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Well, I tried systemd on Slackware and posted about it some 5 years ago. I didn't have problems with it on Fedora, Ubuntu or OpenSUSE. It just works. IMO technologies like systemd, pulseaudio, pipewire, PAM, kerberos have been developed to solve real life problems. And they have been widely adopted not because they are the best technical solutions, but because someone developed them and they work and they solve real life problems. Having strong opinions about them based on nothing but the abstract concept of "Unix philosophy" is utterly stupid. In the case of Slackware Inc. the PAM=SCAM and alike mentality led to marginalization and the company is basically out of business.

My


Cheers

Unfailingly so on both counts.

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You're not required to read them. I don't typically have a --short option I can enable

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A little kindling, the fire was burning too low:
https://skarnet.org/software/systemd.html

Maybe Twitter is a more suitable medium for you.

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geez people, lighten up, it's a another one of those threads