Yeah, yeah I know the history of its development and how log files are binary and the whole debug kernel flag fiasco. And I don't care. By the time I used systemd, that had already long passed.
I switched from Squeeze to Jessie a couple years ago, had some growing pains as I learned how to use systemd... but that was it. No stability issues, no bugs. Can't say whether things run better, but they definitely don't run worse.
I had only really been using Linux for a few years before the onset of systemd, and hon
Everyone* switched to systemd because everyone* was using something that was much, much worse. Traditional sysvinit is a joke for service startup, it can't even handle dependencies in a way that actually works reliably (sure, it works until a process fails to start or hangs, then all bets are off, and good luck keeping dependencies starting in the right order as the system changes). Upstart is a mess (with plenty of corner case bugs) and much harder to make sense of and use than systemd. I'm a much happier person writing systemd units than Upstart whatever-you-call-thems on the Ubuntu systems I have to maintain.
The problem with systemd is that although it does init systems *better* than everything else*, it's also trying to take over half a dozen more responsibilities that are none of its damn business. It's a monolithic repo, and it's trying as hard as it can to position itself as a hard dependency for every Linux system on the face of the planet. Distros needed* a new init system, and they got an attempt to take over the Linux ecosystem along with it.
* The exception is Gentoo, which for over 15 years has had an rc-script system (later rewritten as OpenRC) based on sysvinit as PID 1 but with real dependencies, easy to write initscripts, and all the features you might need in a server environment (works great for desktops too). It's the only distro that has had a truly server-worthy init system, with the right balance of features and understandability and ease of maintenance. Gentoo is the only major distro that hasn't switched to systemd, though it does offer systemd as an option for those who want it. OpenRC was proposed as a systemd alternative in the Debian talks, but Gentoo didn't advertise it, and nobody on the Debian side cared to give it a try. Interestingly Poettering seems to be *very* careful to *never, ever* mention OpenRC when he talks about how systemd is better than everything else. I wonder why. Gentoo developers have had to fork multiple things assimilated by systemd (like udev) in order to keep offering OpenRC as an option.
The problem with systemd is that although it does init systems *better* than everything else*, it's also trying to take over half a dozen more responsibilities that are none of its damn business.
The only thing it "takes over" that some people seem to take exception to is the system log, and it does it for its own purposes. Yes, it can be argued that it would have been better to work with the generic syslog interface, but that just wasn't going to work. They would have had to rewrite large portions of it anyway that would have broken backwards-compatibility, so they just went with their own logging daemon instead, and they did their best to maintain backwards-compatibility by forwarding the log mess
Kudos for getting Gentoo mentioned for good reasons. I used Gentoo on my old netbook and media server, both of which were 32bit and slow. Except Gentoo made them work great.
Today I simply continued to use Gentoo on my desktop, newish laptop and new media server, all 64bit and running great. Even the dreaded Gentoo Updates are no problem today. I use alternate boot environments to overcome the weird problems. (Orginially my ABEs used BTRFS snapshots, now I use the mu
Excuse me, but the "nobody on the Debian side cared to give it a try" is just plain wrong. First, I was the person that ported OpenRC to Debian, and made it work on kFreeBSD and Hurd. So I did spend a large amount of time on it. Then, the tech committee members, who made the actual decision of making systemd the default, did actually try. It's written in clear text, available for anyone, in the tech committee bug (do your research yourself if you want to check).
The reason why OpenRC hasn't been chosen, is
The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the
expense of it.
-- Josh Billings
I have no problem with systemd (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, yeah I know the history of its development and how log files are binary and the whole debug kernel flag fiasco. And I don't care. By the time I used systemd, that had already long passed.
I switched from Squeeze to Jessie a couple years ago, had some growing pains as I learned how to use systemd... but that was it. No stability issues, no bugs. Can't say whether things run better, but they definitely don't run worse.
I had only really been using Linux for a few years before the onset of systemd, and hon
Re:I have no problem with systemd (Score:4, Informative)
Everyone* switched to systemd because everyone* was using something that was much, much worse. Traditional sysvinit is a joke for service startup, it can't even handle dependencies in a way that actually works reliably (sure, it works until a process fails to start or hangs, then all bets are off, and good luck keeping dependencies starting in the right order as the system changes). Upstart is a mess (with plenty of corner case bugs) and much harder to make sense of and use than systemd. I'm a much happier person writing systemd units than Upstart whatever-you-call-thems on the Ubuntu systems I have to maintain.
The problem with systemd is that although it does init systems *better* than everything else*, it's also trying to take over half a dozen more responsibilities that are none of its damn business. It's a monolithic repo, and it's trying as hard as it can to position itself as a hard dependency for every Linux system on the face of the planet. Distros needed* a new init system, and they got an attempt to take over the Linux ecosystem along with it.
* The exception is Gentoo, which for over 15 years has had an rc-script system (later rewritten as OpenRC) based on sysvinit as PID 1 but with real dependencies, easy to write initscripts, and all the features you might need in a server environment (works great for desktops too). It's the only distro that has had a truly server-worthy init system, with the right balance of features and understandability and ease of maintenance. Gentoo is the only major distro that hasn't switched to systemd, though it does offer systemd as an option for those who want it. OpenRC was proposed as a systemd alternative in the Debian talks, but Gentoo didn't advertise it, and nobody on the Debian side cared to give it a try. Interestingly Poettering seems to be *very* careful to *never, ever* mention OpenRC when he talks about how systemd is better than everything else. I wonder why. Gentoo developers have had to fork multiple things assimilated by systemd (like udev) in order to keep offering OpenRC as an option.
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks, interesting, and thanks for the Gentoo recommendation.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The problem with systemd is that although it does init systems *better* than everything else*, it's also trying to take over half a dozen more responsibilities that are none of its damn business.
The only thing it "takes over" that some people seem to take exception to is the system log, and it does it for its own purposes. Yes, it can be argued that it would have been better to work with the generic syslog interface, but that just wasn't going to work. They would have had to rewrite large portions of it anyway that would have broken backwards-compatibility, so they just went with their own logging daemon instead, and they did their best to maintain backwards-compatibility by forwarding the log mess
Re: (Score:1)
Kudos for getting Gentoo mentioned for good reasons. I used Gentoo on my old netbook and media server, both of which were 32bit and slow. Except Gentoo made them work great.
Today I simply continued to use Gentoo on my desktop, newish laptop and new media server, all 64bit and running great. Even the dreaded Gentoo Updates are no problem today. I use alternate boot environments to overcome the weird problems. (Orginially my ABEs used BTRFS snapshots, now I use the mu
Re: (Score:2)
The reason why OpenRC hasn't been chosen, is