Lennart Poettering's long story short: "`su` is really a broken concept
Declaring established concepts as broken so you can "fix" them.
Su is not a broken concept; it's a long well-established fundamental of BSD Unix/Linux. You need a shell with some commands to be run with additional privileges in the original user's context.
If you need a full login you invoke 'su -' or 'sudo bash -'
Deciding what a full login comprises is the shell's responsibility, not your init system's job.
Poettering is so very wrong on many things, having a superficial and shallow understanding of why Unix is designed the way it is. He is just a hobbyist, not a hardened sys admin with years of experience. It's almost time to throw popular Linux distros in the garbage can and just go to BSD
I tried a bunch of them a few years ago. I found that FreeBSD was the best one, even though it doesn't come with a GUI by default, and so you have to install it afterwards. (Seems kind of ridiculous to me, but that's how they package it for some reason.) I don't know if they've changed the documentation since then, but note that you don't have to compile X11 and your window manager, as there is a system that can install pre-compiled packages that they don't bother to mention until after they tell you how
I do plan to give it another go some day when I have a lot more time to spend learning it
I'm sorry to break this to you, but it is very unlikely that sometime in the future you'll have more free time than now, at least not before retirement.
That post is dated, but significant parts of OS X's kernel constructs are *BSD derived. Please note while the link is focused on FreeBSD code in OS X, that isn't the only BSD code Apple drew from.
We're closing in on almost 15 years since OS X forked various FreeBSD subsystems. Equating OS X to FreeBSD is like equating FreeBSD circa 2000 with BSD circa 1985. The code is _drastically_ different.
OS X is very much a BSD derivative from the perspective of systems software using traditional Unix APIs. But the OS X application stack has been going in the opposite direction, and dragging the kernel and other subsystems along for the ride. When the decision was made to unify iOS and OS X, they basically made
Poettering is very productive and he brings a lot of new code to the Linux ecosystem. That's why his often controversial projects remain so successful: at the end of the day, he is the guy who delivers.
I for one, would be glad if he'd instead join in programming the next candy crush or angry birds installments. Just think for a moment how much good that would do!
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Saturday August 29, 2015 @12:53PM (#50416235)
He bring new code, but brings nothing new. That's called re-inventing the wheel, and in Poettering's case, the old wheels worked better and didn't go flat as often, and were easier for average people to fix.
He bring new code, but brings nothing new. That's called re-inventing the wheel, and in Poettering's case, the old wheels worked better and didn't go flat as often, and were easier for average people to fix.
Oh come on, admit it. Unix always had the reputation that the "average person" couldn't do anything with it.
What we're dealing with now is something that neither "average person" nor "master geek" find easy to fix.
What we're dealing with now is something that neither "average person" nor "master geek" find easy to fix.
This is the best summary I've seen of the whole systemd thing. They try to Apple-ize linux but it's half-baked and neither more user-friendly or more reliable than the stuff they replace.
``They try to Apple-ize linux but it's half-baked and neither more user-friendly or more reliable than the stuff they replace.
I've had the same complaint about CUPS -- Apple's screwball replacement for simple lpd -- for years. (And it's not just the Linux version that, IMHO, sucks. I recently had to live through using CUPS in an Apple shop and getting hard copy of anything was a real time sink.) I have a hard time figuring out what problem CUPS was intended to solve. All I can come up with was that it was shiny and new whereas lpd was old (but reliable). For my trusty, rock-solid HP LaserJet, I keep an old Linux distribution running so I can set it up using LPRng. A couple of lines in a text file and -- Voila! -- I have a print queue. Time spent^Wwasted in CUPS' GUI never seemed to make anything work.
Systemd and well, just about anything Poettering touches is more obtuse than what it replaces, has commands that are difficult to remember, require more typing (making them prone to typos), and don't make much sense. Am I looking for the status of "servicename" or am I looking for the status of "servicename.target"? What's the difference? The guy's pushing me back to Slackware. Or, as someone above mentioned, BSD.
Nothing that Poettering is doing now addresses "The problem".
That's any of the usual FUD that are claimed to be problems for actual consumer end users. That is perhaps the single most frustrating aspect of his current nonsense. He's insisted on making sweeping changes to the parts that don't need fixing and are the least relevant to "the problem".
LP's previous fix was done to the sound system pulseaudio. Similarly with majestic scope and intentions. Has it changed what I can do with sound? No, not really.
Its still not complete.... at least from the user perspective looking inward. I have an audio slider on my Fedora Desktop. there are still several audio mixer devices that not found/detected. How about we ask LP to finish that work (realized by a finished product in redhat desktop product) rather than "fixing" everything else.
Yeah, I work with a guy like this. He delivers stuff all the time too. Broken stuff. Half-assed stuff that other people have to fix and still more people have to put up with using. Management loves him. Meanwhile, the people who actually deliver stuff that works properly or have to fix his stuff after the fact can't stand him and can't stand management for falling for all the crap.
In the long run, he's not going to be satisfied until he's created his own OS, kernel and all because he calls anything he didn't write a "broken concept," whatever that is, and does his best to shove his version down everybody's throat. And, since his version is far more complex, far more pervasive and much, much harder to use or maintain, the community suffers. I do wish he would get off the pot and start developing the One True (Pottering) kernel so that the rest of the world can go back to ignoring him.
In the long run, he's not going to be satisfied until he's created his own OS, kernel and all because he calls anything he didn't write a "broken concept," whatever that is
How about we get someone to fork the Systemd that distros have adopted and start working on fixing it,
paring it down, and removing unneeded functionality into separate optional related projects?
Systemd out of the box is modular and optional. You can replace the modules with other modules of your choosing. The people complaining about systemd however don't want modules that communicate they want loosely integrated commands which use the command line. You could write a module that also had a solid command line interface but then that looks a lot like systemd.
Yes, systemd is included, but my understanding is that as of right now, OpenRC is the only fully supported init system on Gentoo. Many packages will pull in systemd as a dependency, but it will not be forced to run as PID 1. If you do wish to do so, there is documentation that will walk you through the process of switching, but, IIRC, it is not officially supported. Package maintainers are encouraged to write both init scripts and systemd service files, which leads me to believe that there may be a switc
I was under the impression that Gentoo still had OpenRC as default while allowing the selection of systemd as an alternative.
systemd is available as an option, but (as you noted) it's not the default and you're not forced into using it. (Except maybe if you want GNOME, later versions of which depend on systemd? I've never used GNOME, so I'm not 100% positive on that.)
YMMV, but I never encountered that issue. Generally I've only encountered persistent blockers as a result of mixing arch and ~arch, or trying to build GNOME, which I gave up on some time ago (and just as well, given my distrust for systemd, since, for all practical purposes, it requires systemd). Keep in mind that Gentoo is less a distribution than a meta-distribution: it is a set of tools to help you build your *own* distribution, and when upstream folks make questionable design or architectural decision
Don't confuse a shallow understanding with a desire to change things to suit his needs. I have no doubt he knows in great detail the hows and whys of the Unix world. He does doesn't agree with them and wants to change them.
The only problem I have with him at all is the incompatibility he is introducing along the way. If systemd were optional then we should all be praising it as just another option in the wide and highly customisable world that is Linux. But alas....
Slackware still gives you a reasonable Unix with BSD leanings with all the compatibility you'd expect from a decent Linux. I've not heard of any intention for it to adopt systemd. The day Slackware goes to systemd, is the day I move to FreeBSD for everything.
And still, Linus says JACK SHIT ABOUT THIS POS. That's the part I don't understand _at all_. "Sure, the midwife is slowly killing my only child, but I don't want to say anything; that would be rude."
He had a mouthful to say to Poettering and rest of the systemd committers when they contributed code to the kernel. They were even banned from contributing to kernel, if I remember correctly.
Linus doesn't and shouldn't interfere with things out of his scope - systemd is emphatically outside of his scope. Kernel and git are definitely within his scope and he hasn't minced words to defend them.
The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the
expense of it.
-- Josh Billings
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Lennart Poettering's long story short: "`su` is really a broken concept
Declaring established concepts as broken so you can "fix" them.
Su is not a broken concept; it's a long well-established fundamental of BSD Unix/Linux. You need a shell with some commands to be run with additional privileges in the original user's context.
If you need a full login you invoke 'su -' or 'sudo bash -'
Deciding what a full login comprises is the shell's responsibility, not your init system's job.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Poettering is so very wrong on many things, having a superficial and shallow understanding of why Unix is designed the way it is. He is just a hobbyist, not a hardened sys admin with years of experience. It's almost time to throw popular Linux distros in the garbage can and just go to BSD
Re: (Score:2)
doesn't even require right-click context menus.
Weird. Which OS 'requires' right-click context menus? OS X, just like Windows and Linux, has functionality that may be reached by either
OS X has context menus, just like everyone else. I truly don't understand what you might mean.
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong, they came from same code base and have certain shared API and user space commands
Re: (Score:2)
PC BSD [pcbsd.org]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I tried a bunch of them a few years ago. I found that FreeBSD was the best one, even though it doesn't come with a GUI by default, and so you have to install it afterwards. (Seems kind of ridiculous to me, but that's how they package it for some reason.) I don't know if they've changed the documentation since then, but note that you don't have to compile X11 and your window manager, as there is a system that can install pre-compiled packages that they don't bother to mention until after they tell you how
Re: (Score:2)
I do plan to give it another go some day when I have a lot more time to spend learning it
I'm sorry to break this to you, but it is very unlikely that sometime in the future you'll have more free time than now, at least not before retirement.
Re: (Score:3)
But the are distros based on FreeBSD such as PC-BSD that have the UI and other desktop features and apps canned and ready to go
Re: (Score:2)
MacOS, which is FreeBSD based.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Um, no.
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipe... [freebsd.org]
That post is dated, but significant parts of OS X's kernel constructs are *BSD derived. Please note while the link is focused on FreeBSD code in OS X, that isn't the only BSD code Apple drew from.
Re: (Score:1)
We're closing in on almost 15 years since OS X forked various FreeBSD subsystems. Equating OS X to FreeBSD is like equating FreeBSD circa 2000 with BSD circa 1985. The code is _drastically_ different.
OS X is very much a BSD derivative from the perspective of systems software using traditional Unix APIs. But the OS X application stack has been going in the opposite direction, and dragging the kernel and other subsystems along for the ride. When the decision was made to unify iOS and OS X, they basically made
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Change for change's sake (Score:2, Insightful)
"Delivering" the wrong thing is not an asset, it's a liability.
And that's why Poettering is a liability to the Linux community.
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't be glad if he died, but I would be glad if he disappeared.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of programmers who can spew out hundreds of lines of crap code in a day.
The problem is that others then have to spend years fixing it.
It's even worse when you let the code-spewers actually design the system, because you'll never be allowed to go back and redo things right.
Re: (Score:1)
Are you defending or attacking Poettering?
Re: (Score:1)
Are you a bot?
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
He bring new code, but brings nothing new. That's called re-inventing the wheel, and in Poettering's case, the old wheels worked better and didn't go flat as often, and were easier for average people to fix.
Re: (Score:2)
He bring new code, but brings nothing new. That's called re-inventing the wheel, and in Poettering's case, the old wheels worked better and didn't go flat as often, and were easier for average people to fix.
Oh come on, admit it. Unix always had the reputation that the "average person" couldn't do anything with it.
What we're dealing with now is something that neither "average person" nor "master geek" find easy to fix.
Re: (Score:1)
Why did you AC this? It's right on and you should be getting credit...
Re: (Score:3)
What we're dealing with now is something that neither "average person" nor "master geek" find easy to fix.
This is the best summary I've seen of the whole systemd thing. They try to Apple-ize linux but it's half-baked and neither more user-friendly or more reliable than the stuff they replace.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
I've had the same complaint about CUPS -- Apple's screwball replacement for simple lpd -- for years. (And it's not just the Linux version that, IMHO, sucks. I recently had to live through using CUPS in an Apple shop and getting hard copy of anything was a real time sink.) I have a hard time figuring out what problem CUPS was intended to solve. All I can come up with was that it was shiny and new whereas lpd was old (but reliable). For my trusty, rock-solid HP LaserJet, I keep an old Linux distribution running so I can set it up using LPRng. A couple of lines in a text file and -- Voila! -- I have a print queue. Time spent^Wwasted in CUPS' GUI never seemed to make anything work.
Systemd and well, just about anything Poettering touches is more obtuse than what it replaces, has commands that are difficult to remember, require more typing (making them prone to typos), and don't make much sense. Am I looking for the status of "servicename" or am I looking for the status of "servicename.target"? What's the difference? The guy's pushing me back to Slackware. Or, as someone above mentioned, BSD.
Re: (Score:2)
Might not be an important point, but CUPS existed for years before Apple bought it.
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing that Poettering is doing now addresses "The problem".
That's any of the usual FUD that are claimed to be problems for actual consumer end users. That is perhaps the single most frustrating aspect of his current nonsense. He's insisted on making sweeping changes to the parts that don't need fixing and are the least relevant to "the problem".
How about previous work.. Is that done? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, I work with a guy like this. He delivers stuff all the time too. Broken stuff. Half-assed stuff that other people have to fix and still more people have to put up with using. Management loves him. Meanwhile, the people who actually deliver stuff that works properly or have to fix his stuff after the fact can't stand him and can't stand management for falling for all the crap.
That's what all this reminds me of.
Re: (Score:2)
And unlike your guy from Germany, the guy I know didn't lose (and that's how his name ends).
The way this should end (Score:4, Insightful)
In the long run, he's not going to be satisfied until he's created his own OS, kernel and all because he calls anything he didn't write a "broken concept," whatever that is, and does his best to shove his version down everybody's throat. And, since his version is far more complex, far more pervasive and much, much harder to use or maintain, the community suffers. I do wish he would get off the pot and start developing the One True (Pottering) kernel so that the rest of the world can go back to ignoring him.
Re: (Score:2)
In the long run, he's not going to be satisfied until he's created his own OS, kernel and all because he calls anything he didn't write a "broken concept," whatever that is
How about we get someone to fork the Systemd that distros have adopted and start working on fixing it, paring it down, and removing unneeded functionality into separate optional related projects?
Re: (Score:2)
Systemd out of the box is modular and optional. You can replace the modules with other modules of your choosing. The people complaining about systemd however don't want modules that communicate they want loosely integrated commands which use the command line. You could write a module that also had a solid command line interface but then that looks a lot like systemd.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe we should arrange a meet between Poettering and Terry A. Davis (TempleOS!)
Re: (Score:2)
...or you could just switch to one of the many Linux distros that haven't been contaminated with systemd. Gentoo, perhaps?
Re: (Score:2)
Woot, Slackware.
I upgraded from 10.something to 14.1 a while back and I'm loving the changes.
Re: Bullshit (Score:1)
Wrong....
Re: (Score:2)
I was under the impression that Gentoo still had OpenRC as default while allowing the selection of systemd as an alternative.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
systemd is available as an option, but (as you noted) it's not the default and you're not forced into using it. (Except maybe if you want GNOME, later versions of which depend on systemd? I've never used GNOME, so I'm not 100% positive on that.)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm waitin on Devuan for this exact purpose
https://devuan.org/ [devuan.org]
Re: (Score:1)
So, I did this after a debian 'unstable' upgrade of kcachegrind (!) pulled in systemd and rendered my workstation unbootable.
How?
Re: (Score:2)
Don't confuse a shallow understanding with a desire to change things to suit his needs. I have no doubt he knows in great detail the hows and whys of the Unix world. He does doesn't agree with them and wants to change them.
The only problem I have with him at all is the incompatibility he is introducing along the way. If systemd were optional then we should all be praising it as just another option in the wide and highly customisable world that is Linux. But alas....
Re: (Score:2)
that phrase 'you used the only problem with him at all is the incompatibliity he is introducing' is the very proof he doesn't understand the Unix way
Re: (Score:2)
Slackware still gives you a reasonable Unix with BSD leanings with all the compatibility you'd expect from a decent Linux. I've not heard of any intention for it to adopt systemd. The day Slackware goes to systemd, is the day I move to FreeBSD for everything.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
He had a mouthful to say to Poettering and rest of the systemd committers when they contributed code to the kernel. They were even banned from contributing to kernel, if I remember correctly.
Linus doesn't and shouldn't interfere with things out of his scope - systemd is emphatically outside of his scope. Kernel and git are definitely within his scope and he hasn't minced words to defend them.