Is Modern Linux Becoming Too Complex?

An anonymous reader writes: Debian developer John Goerzen asks whether Linux has become so complex that it has lost some of its defining characteristics. "I used to be able to say Linux was clean, logical, well put-together, and organized. I can’t really say this anymore. Users and groups are not really determinitive for permissions, now that we have things like polkit running around. (Yes, by the way, I am a member of plugdev.) Error messages are unhelpful (WHY was I not authorized?) and logs are nowhere to be found. Traditionally, one could twiddle who could mount devices via /etc/fstab lines and perhaps some sudo rules. Granted, you had to know where to look, but when you did, it was simple; only two pieces to fit together. I've even spent time figuring out where to look and STILL have no idea what to do."

Comments

So roll your own.

[GloomE]

Just like Linus did.

Re:So roll your own.

[Nate B.]

Actually, there are some that are intent on doing just that despite being labeled "haters" even though their motivations have nothing to do with "hate". Disagreement does not mean hatred. So long as the Linux kernel does not require specific user space software or versions, those of us who prefer a more traditional approach will be fine.

Re:So roll your own.

[morgauxo]

Rolling your own 'Just like Linus did' may be a little extreme. I don't think you need a whole new kernel!

Just install Linux from scratch and don't put all that *kit, etc.. crap in it. I would imagine you could even get rid of udev and all that stuff if you are willing to run mknode yourself. Roll it like it's 1995.

You will lose out on some convenience if you are using a portable device such as a laptop but on a desktop with fairly static hardware everything should work just fine.

If having your own custom simple Linux isn't good enough for you then take it to the next step and start your own distro that leaves all that stuff out.

Re:So roll your own.

[NotDrWho]

Yeah, that's EXACTLY what Linux needs to make it less complex--another 1,000 forked distros.

Re:So roll your own.

[Lodragandraoidh]

I think you're missing the point. Linux is the kernel - and it is very stable, and while it has modern extensions, it still keeps the POSIX interfaces consistent to allow inter-operation as desired. The issue here is not that forks and new versions of Linux distros are an aberration, but how the major distributions have changed and the article is a symptom of those changes towards homogeneity.

The Linux kernel is by definition identically complex on any distro using a given version of the kernel (the variances created by compilation switches notwithstanding). The real variance is in the distros - and I don't think variety is a bad thing, particularly in this day and age when we are having to focus more and more on security, and small applications on different types of devices - from small ARM processor systems, to virtual cluster systems in data centers.

Variety creates a strong ecosystem that is more resilient to security exploitation as a whole; variety is needed now more than ever given the security threats we are seeing. If you look at the history of Linux distributions over time - you'll see that from the very beginning it was a vibrant field with many distros - some that bombed out - some that were forked and then died, and forks and forks of forks that continued on - keeping the parts that seemed to work for those users. Today - I think people perceive what is happening with the major distros as a reduction in choice (if Redhat is essentially identical to Debian, Ubuntu, et al - why bother having different distros?) - a bottleneck in variability; from a security perspective, I think people are worried that a monoculture is emerging that will present a very large and crystallized attack surface after the honeymoon period is over.

If people don't like what is available, if they are concerned about the security implications, then they or their friends need to do something about it. Fork an existing distro, roll your own distro, or if you are really clever - build your own operating system from scratch to provide an answer, and hopefully something better/different in the long run. Progress isn't a bad thing; sitting around doing nothing and complaining about it is.

Re:So roll your own.

[Anonymous Coward]

there are some that are intent on doing just that despite being labeled "haters"

Intent on doing that is fine, but can you stop wasting your day spreading bullshit about how you dislike systemd and do actual work?

Those people who genuinely dislike systemd [because it's work of satan] WILL flock to the distros that don't include it.
Others who only hate it because it's cool will gradually drop off once the benefits of systemd are smeared on their face [not that they're invisible at this time].

The rest of the world, which *drumroll* is the majority, doesn't give a shit about your struggles against systemd or any other kind of toolkit that you hate for whatever reason you came up with.

Re:So roll your own.

[Damouze]

Systemd is a monstrosity that should never have seen the light of day. There is no excuse for closed-mindedness, arrogance. They lead to bad design. However brilliant its creator might be, systemd is flawed by design.

Some highlights (or maybe 'lowlights'?):

* System logs are primarily kept in a binary format, which is a very, -very- bad idea. You wish to store them in a database (which is basically what happens)? Fine, but only as a secondary way to store them, not the other way around!
* Init was built to do one thing and it was built to do that thing very well: run some variant of a shell script called rc. Everything else is superfluous. It is the cardinal rule, the core philosophy UNIX (and Linux nowadays) was created upon.
* Systemd is not very transparent. That in and of itself makes it a security concern to say the least.
* Nearly everything with systemd is done through (binary) modules with XML configuration files. A bad idea. A very, -very- bad idea. The pros of using shell scripts, and maybe, maybe use some (human-readabe) external configuration scripts are many, not the least of which is the fact that they are by far, much more customizable. With a classic init setup you not only control the setup and configuration of your system, you actually control its behaviour at boot time as well. If there is something you don't like about your system's behaviour, all you have to do is modify one or more of those shell scripts.

Your notion that systemd finally puts the dynamic parts in user space does not track at all. The dynamic parts have always (also) been in user space. That is why tools such as ifconfig, route (combined in the iptools ip* commands nowadays), etc. are user space / user land tools; they do not run in kernel space. The kernel provides an API for user space tools to work with. It has done that since the very early Linux days. The rc scripts and the scripts in init.d (in a SYSV like Linux setup) or in rc.d (in a BSD-like Linux setup, not many of those around anymore) in turn then use these userland tools to setup and configure your system.

If your network interface comes up too late during boot, before something that depends on it comes up, the problem is with the boot sequence, not with init itself. It's something you can fix yourself. You don't need some black box to do that for you. Moreover, if it succeeds at all at doing it, it will do it very badly. There is no excuse for a bad system setup. That goes both for the maintainers of a software distribution (in this case Linux) and you yourself as the individual who operates that software.

One thing I do agree with you about is the serious case of bad documentation. Moroever, I think that bad, incomplete or even missing documentation is the source of many a Linux user or admin's woes. But it is something that everyone can contribute to. Linux is after all, Open Source.

Yes

[drinkypoo]

Yes, yes it is. We have too many redundant frameworks. Sadly, systemd is the only effort to unify them that seems to have traction.

There should be one facility for each function on the system. I don't need my network interfaces being diddled by bizarre and obscure programs. Example, libvirt doesn't use /etc/network/interfaces, this is stupid and complicates firewalling scripts and so on. And it insists on running its own copies of dnsmasq, rather than just dropping some files in /etc/dnsmasq.d. What a PITA. Use the goddamned operating system, that's what it's there for.

Re:Yes

[rastos1]

Sadly, systemd is the only effort to unify them

I don't know about "unify them". As far as I can see, it is trying hard to hide the complexity under one umbrella. And if the complexity is hidden completely, then there is little you can do to fix a problem that happens to be complex. Without this unifying effort I can easily plug in myself somewhere in the middle, track down what's going on and fix it. Or at least work around it. Ah, yes, I'm a Slackware user. Is that relevant?

Re: Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Systemd has been the most divisive force in the Linux community lately, and perhaps ever. It has been foisted upon many unwilling victims. It has torn apart the Debian community. It has forced many long-time Linux users to the BSDs, just so they can get systems that boot properly.

Systemd has harmed the overall Linux community more than anything else has. Microsoft and SCO, for example, couldn't have dreamed of harming Linux as much as systemd has managed to do, and in such a short amount of time, too.

Re:Yes

[Zeromous]

I have a new verb to describe this type of useless abstraction: I call it, "Poettering-around".

Re: Yes

[arth1]

Amen. It's sad, but a single person has managed to kill the momentum of GNU/Linux as an operating system. Microsoft should give the guy a medal.

People are loath to publish new projects because keeping them running with systemd and all its dependencies in all possible permutations is a full time job. The whole "do one thing only and do it well" concept has been flushed down the drain.

I know that I am not the only sysadmin who refuses to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, but install new systems with RHEL 6 (or CentOS or ScientificLinux 6) and use 3rd party repos to get new stuff.

And that Red Hat sales go down is not just due to the turn in economy. It's people looking elsewhere, for something that lets people do their jobs. Systems that let you write simple scripts where you don't have to look up layers upon layers of abstractions to find out things. Where things are in plain text in known locations and names. Where you can copy configuration files from one machine to another without having to rewrite them or assemble a package of ten files from five different places.
Where the assumption isn't that when you install something, you want to run it (setting up HA on systems with systemd is a big pain, and failing over is an even bigger pain).
Binary logs without even forced flushing? Config changes that require reboots? No sane concept of runlevels? And I can go on and on.
Systemd is made for the convenience of single programmers on single laptops. It's anathema to system administration where you need to keep control.

Re:Yes

[morgauxo]

How about an example?

One of the things I love about Linux is all the old and esoteric hardware it supports. I don't want to throw away something that suites me just fine only because it isn't popular anymore.

I do agree that costs and benefits shoudl be weighed. But where is all this old hardware support complicating scripts that you speak of? The place I am used to seeing hardware support is in the kernel. It's a dropdown... build it in, make it a module or don't support it. I'm guessing that 90% or so of users don't even see that anyway! They are probably running kernels that came with their distros.

I don't even mind if distros chose not to build in modules for ancient hardware. So long as I am free to compile my own kernel who cares? But.. where are these scripts that will be oh so better if only we flipped the bird to the few people still using some hardware and told them they can't have their toy anymore?

Also.. even if removing support for one piece of hardware only alienates a few people... If you really clean house then that's a few people per each device you condemn to obsolesence. Don't you think they might add up?

Re: Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

SystemD has put in jeopardy the entire presence of Linux in the server room:

1: AFIAK, as there have been zero mention of this, SystemD appears to have had -zero- formal code testing, auditing, or other assurance that it is stable. It was foisted on people in RHEL 7 and downstreams with no ability to transition to it.

2: It breaks applications that use the init.d mechanism to start with. This is very bad, since some legacy applications can not be upgraded. Contrast that to AIX where in some cases, programs written back in 1991 will run without issue on AIX 7.1. Similar with Solaris.

3: SystemD is one large code blob with zero internal separation... and it listens on the network with root permissions. It does not even drop perms which virtually every other utility does. Combine this with the fact that this has seen no testing... and this puts every production system on the Internet at risk of a remote root hole. It will be -decades- before SystemD becomes a solid program. Even programs like sendmail went through many bug fixes where security was a big problem... and sendmail has multiple daemons to separate privs, unlike SystemD.

4: SystemD cannot be worked around. The bash hole, I used busybox to fix. If SystemD breaks, since it encompasses everything including the bootloader, it can't be replaced. At best, the system would need major butchery to work. In the enterprise, this isn't going to happen, and the Linux box will be "upgraded" to a Windows or Solaris box.

5: SystemD replaces many utilities that have stood 20+ years of testing, and takes a step back in security by the monolithic userland and untested code. Even AIX with its ODM has at least seen certification under FIPS, Common Criteria, and other items.

6: SystemD has no real purpose, other than ego. The collective response justifying its existence is, "because we say so. Fuck you and use it." Well, this is no way to treat enterprise customers. Enterprise customers can easily move to Solaris if push comes to shove, and Solaris has a very good record of security, without major code added without actual testing being done, and a way to be compatible. I can turn Solaris 11's root role into a user, for example.

So, all and all, SystemD is the worst thing that has happened with Linux, its reputation, and potentially, its future in 10 years, since the ACTA treaty was put to rest. SystemD is not production ready, and potentially can put every single box in jeopardy of a remote root hole.

Re: Yes

[Dragonslicer]

3: SystemD is one large code blob with zero internal separation... and it listens on the network with root permissions. It does not even drop perms which virtually every other utility does. Combine this with the fact that this has seen no testing... and this puts every production system on the Internet at risk of a remote root hole. It will be -decades- before SystemD becomes a solid program. Even programs like sendmail went through many bug fixes where security was a big problem... and sendmail has multiple daemons to separate privs, unlike SystemD.

Because of course it's been years since anyone found any security holes in well-tested software like Bash or OpenSSL.

What do you mean, modern?

[Kokuyo]

Look, you can joke all about how I'm just too stupid to use it but the fact is I am an IT professional and I'm not incompetent at what I do. Which means that technical concepts do not leave me in the dust by default.

And yet, every few years when I try to get into the swing of all things Linux, it ends in utter frustration.

Make of that what you will. And when you tell me I am at fault because I am unwilling or incapable of hurdling that learning curve, I will throw back in your face that a good product is also defined by usability considerations.

Linux is a pain in the ass. It is good at a broad variety of tasks, but so are other OSs that make my life less of a living hell.

Re:What do you mean, modern?

[johnlcallaway]

Make of that what you will. And when you tell me I am at fault because I am unwilling or incapable of hurdling that learning curve, I will throw back in your face that a good product is also defined by usability considerations.

HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!!

When Linux was less 'usable', it was simpler.

Increased usability means more scripts and automation, meaning more things are abstracted.

You can't have it both ways.

I know what the real problem is. I stepped away from Linux/UNIX for about 5 years because of a new job (Went from a Sun/Unix/Oracle shop to a Windows/SQLServer shop). When I got back to Linux, I didn't understand a lot of things, it had changed so much. It took a while to dig into it.

But .. know what??? It was all there. All I had to do was understand how it started up to find all the scripts and then read them. It wasn't that hard.

It just took a little effort. And enough intelligence to actually read scripts and Google things I didn't understand.

If you don't get it .. it is you.

Re:What do you mean, modern?

[cyber-vandal]

Burn the witch!

Re:What do you mean, modern?

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple for the desktop != simple for the admin != simple for the programmer.

Desktop users want to click on a mac'ish interface on obvious icons and do stuff. Make a slide show, print a document, send an email, connect the wireless.

Admins want to quickly understand the state of the system, analyze problems and fix them.

Programmers want hookers, blo and the newest widgets and functions, abstracted to hookers and blo.

These are orthogonal, but they don't have to be contrary. Userland can have a nice interface that does wireless shit while interfacing with simple core functionality. Programmers can have the libraries. They don't have to break each other. However, that's a significant management challenge, which our bazaar model is failing at.

Re:What do you mean, modern?

[bouldin]

This.

I would personally like to see three flavors of Linux:

Server - lean, NO systemd or plug-and-play crap, focus on security

Desktop - includes whatever bells and whistles people need for a modern, useable desktop; focus on productivity

Mobile - similar to desktop, but with a focus on low power consumption and small screens

I don't need a tablet GUI on my desktop, and I don't need hotplug support for webcams and printers on my server.

Perspective

[MikeRT]

Traditionally, one could twiddle who could mount devices via /etc/fstab lines and perhaps some sudo rules. Granted, you had to know where to look, but when you did, it was simple; only two pieces to fit together. I've even spent time figuring out where to look and STILL have no idea what to do.

On the other hands, mounting USB storage "just works" now on Linux.

Re:Perspective

[jedidiah]

USB storage has "just worked" on Linux for a very long time now. Whatever has been added recently to "fix it" clearly isn't making it better. Meanwhile, it's also more complex apparently.

Again, Linux has gotten mature enough that things that really aren't broken are being fixed by bored children that need some sort of distraction.

Re:Why does John shut down all systemd talk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because, as experience shows time and again, systemd discussions tend to get out of control. Note that I don't like systemd (I don't like most of things FreeDesktop either), but I'm with John on this one.

> I also don't get why he'd label somebody who points out the real problem as being a 'troll'.

Read again:

> The systemd and GNOME 3 communities (theyâ(TM)re pretty much one and the same) are the problem here. Theyâ(TM)re killing the Debian project.

This *is* trollish. It's finger-pointing. There are people out there that *like* systemd and GNOME3 (gasp!) and they deserve all the respect each of us deserves. Live and let live. Find ways to cooperate.

Me, I won't install systemd on my machines or those I'll be responsible for -- but I won't insult systemd developers (or assume bad intentions on their part). They're working on free software after all, dammit.

That's all user space.

[tlambert]

That's all user space.

Honestly, I thought this was going to be a kernel rant, and I came loaded for bear: there's a lot that needs fixed about the Linux kernel and the processes and relationships between stakeholders.

But let's address the subject of the blog post instead, because there's a lot of fodder there too.

Everything complained about in the blog post is not a Linux problem, it's a Linux distribution problem, since the distributions are what add the user space components that are doing things like automatically mounting his phone so that something else in user space can't talk to the second control channel on the USB interface (because the phone uses the primary command channel to switch to the second command channel, and it's in use by the mount).

This is basically the problem you are going to face on a distribution without an overall architectural design for the user/kernel interaction, and interaction between user space components that allow for layered access.

For the "It's a camera! It's a phone! It's a mass storage device!" problem, I don't have a specific answer; I'll note that uugetty solved the contention for typed use of a resource problem for modems ("It's an inbound modem! It's an outbound modem!") in the 1980's in HoneyDanBer UUCP. And they did it by having an integrated model that all the consumers used. IT's called a layered approach to software development.

I think the big driver for user space problems is that a lot of Open Source people believe that *their* program is the most important thing your computer can possibly be running, and if it interferes with someone else's use of something, so what? The computer is still performing it's *most* important function, which is to run *their* work product.

Even Apple is not immune from these problems; there are third party phone tools that can do nifty things with pretty much any cell phone and come with all sorts of USB cable ends that plug into this USB cable adapter, but the OS grabs the phones out from under the software, and you have to hack the device ID list in a plist to get it to work like it's supposed to (then iPhoto, etc., can no longer see the phone). But at least on Apple systems, there's one place to go to to fix it, the fix is well known, and when Apple is informed of the problem, they generally fix their software to "get out of the way" (or tell the third party how to do it temporarily so their software will work).

What's really missing for Linux distributions, honestly is...

(1) An architect with a holistic vision
(2) A project manager for the components
(3) Productization - people in Open Source only want to work on fun stuff, not on boring stuff that makes stuff actually usable
(4) Usability engineering
(5) Interface contracts which don't change over time
(6) A way to shunt third party installed software (i.e. "apt get", etc. stuff) off into an isolated hierarchy so it doesn't screw with normal operation
(7) Documentation that doesn't have to change over time ...in other words, if you want it to look like a commercial OS distribution, you have to approach it as one. And that's not happening.

Some clarification for the recently arrived.

[nimbius]

In case you're recently joining us in Linux after a long hiatus, or are coming from the sanity that is BSD, its worth clarifying a few points and I as a formal neckbeard am here to help

The kids: this has been a problem since Subversion but it rears its ugly head now and again with the sun mircosystems crowd that insists the network is the system. These kids dont want to be bothered by man pages or perldoc, so instead they ship a stub with a reference to their CSS/HTML5/Web 5.0 project discovery special snowflake site. The page includes a full colour mascot, links to all the social sites for the project, and videos of the latest con/talk/pep speech the kid with the most pogs/pokemon badges for the project gave with ample references to cats, cheeseburgers, and memes. Loading it up in links gets you a neat scrabble game. Let me be clear: linking your webpage in the absence of man is a waste of time. it is literally the Unix ethos equivalent of "check out my mixtape"

2. The god damn pottering man:
Hes controversially steamrolled most major distros into giving up everything from competent init scripts to non binary logs and even the bootloader in favour of 1 single process capable of doing everything, forever. The backlash was delayed but as of recent, its been pretty consistent. The root of the problem is new developers with a raging hardon for Apple design philosophy. At its peak, this madness turned gnome into a screaming hell-mouth of fades, pans, jiggles, wiggles, and performance tests for even the beefiest video cards. Everything comes with a widget now, and even the console eats 30 megs of ram. configuring gnome or kde with simple text files is now totally impossible, because modern developers have created a MacOS UI managed by a Windows XP system of registry values and control touples. What we gained from this is a frustrating ecosystem of security-questionable user switching and a network stack thats controlled by the user with the mouse. Perfect if you're about to load up team fortress, but crazier than a shithouse rat if you need to, say, run a production firewall.

that having been said ive had enough and you should too. Come join Gentoo, or Arch, or any BSD with more sanity than Unity (Ubuntu.) Gain back that big goose egg we all remember as freedom 0: to run the application the way you want. And on behalf of the POSIX community, the Unix geezers and the hackers, get these goddamned kids off my lawn.

Re:Some clarification for the recently arrived.

[Barsteward]

"2. The god damn pottering man: Hes controversially steamrolled most major distros into giving up everything from competent init scripts to non binary logs and even the bootloader in favour of 1 single process capable of doing everything, forever. " - Poettrering steamrollered the major distros????? i've got a tin foil hat for sale, you sounds like you need a double layer version.

Re:Some clarification for the recently arrived.

[DuckDodgers]

I agree on your first point, and would add that if your application runs on the command line then you will increase your chance of popular use and recommendations by a factor of ten by giving useful error messages and ending with "for more information, run 'man foo'" so that a complete newbie gets help.

On your second point, I emphatically disagree. Read Poettering's blog, starting with "Rethinking Pid 1", then "Biggest Systemd Myths". The backlash against systemd is 90% people who don't even understand systemd and have been too lazy to RTFM and 10% people who understand the technical tradeoffs and think differently, all spurred on by Slashdot, Phoronix, and a dozen other sites making a mint off the advertising revenue from people visiting the flame war. And the documentation for systemd, both at the official website and from the man pages, is outstanding.

Re:Oblig. XKCD

[DuckDodgers]

I know that post, but while I think he has a point, I also think it's too defeatist. If everyone took that attitude, nothing would ever get done.

Re:Why does John shut down all systemd talk?

[Junta]

Of course some of the vagueness is precisely because things happen mysteriously, and systemd has a habit of doing unexpected mysterious things. Of course it's not alone, you have quite a few subsystems all deciding to be a bit 'automagic', with systemd and associates just being the most prominent. As a consequence, if you manually do something like reconfigure a network device using the underlying tools, something can mysteriously redo them later when it thinks something has happened like a lease expiry, even though dhclient no longer runs. Or a time change event at boot causes dhclient and some mysterious third party to disagree about when lease goes away. dhclient isn't renewing lease, but some third party decided that a lease wasn't renewed and deconfigures the adapter. It makes no sense, but someone in some random component thought something wasn't proper and decided to 'help' take care of something that wasn't their business.

Re:Why does John shut down all systemd talk?

[Kagetsuki]

Every time I've played with it I had things like weird locking issues - but this was maybe a year ago when I last tried it.

What bothers/worries me about it are the devs behind it. Poettering was bitching about how hostile the community was before but he completely deserved every bit of criticism. All the major devs on that project are known to have abandoned other projects. Several times they made mainline commits which completely broke things. They constantly pushed barely tested and poor quality code (which is why Linus got angry at one of them and banned them from making pull requests till they got their sh*t together). On top of that the design of systemd is not very *nix like so it does seem an odd fit. All this makes me uneasy, and I don't think I'm the only one, because from this I am expecting a big lump of poorly tested experimental play code that the lead devs will just abandon once they get interested in another project.

Re:Why does John shut down all systemd talk?

[gweihir]

You either have not looked or you are trolling. Try google("systemd sucks"). There really are very few unsubstantiated rants about systemd, most comments are fact-based and explain what is wrong with it. The systemd proponents are waging a war against a large part of a whole community.

Whatever you're used to seems simple

[nine-times]

I used to be able to say Linux was clean, logical, well put-together, and organized.

You would only say that because you were used to the previous organization. It has always been a mess of "catering to old UNIX paradigms" while also "trying to squeeze in the latest new thing." Old UNIX guys have always complained whenever the GNU tools had a different behavior from what they were used to, including changes that you take for granted. Bash was once new, and some people still don't like it.

Do you remember the first time you saw a UNIX filesystem? Think back. You have directories like etc, usr, and var. "usr" doesn't really contain user information. "etc" doesn't include miscellaneous files. "var"? WTF is "var"?

None of that shit ever made sense. It's what you were used to. If we set out today to make a sensible, orderly, logical, clean system, it would not look like modern Linux, and it would not look like old Linux.

Re:Oblig. XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

You're creating a false dichotomy though. It is possible that none of the competing standards are adequate, but people create a new standard for the wrong reasons. Some people are motivated to create new standards or solutions simply motivated by, "There are too many standards, we need to unify them," without actually addressing the inadequacies. That seems to be the attitude the comic is addressing (whether intentional or not), not that we shouldn't ever make new standards.

Re:Why does John shut down all systemd talk?

[gweihir]

When vague anecdotes start to pile up (and they do for systemd unreliability), they become facts in themselves. Add to that that systemd problems are exceptionally hard to debug (you have to look into complex C source code for many) and the development team is unhelpful, and you get a pattern: The reason many, many people are reporting vague anecdotes about their system being unstable from systemd is not that they are lying, or fantasizing or on drugs, the reason is that systemd does indeed break reliability and on top is very hard to debug and fix.

Some very old engineering failure analysis wisdom applies here: To really break things, you have to screw up in two major aspects. Systemd manages to do this easily by being unreliable and so hard to debug that most people fail at it. People are scared of it and angry at it, because they cannot master this complexity. And they are right to fight it: A decent OS has no business at all being complex in any place where it is avoidable and in particular, it has no business at all replacing simple things that work with complex ones, regardless of whether they work or not. If Linux is not kept free of high complexity in core components, it will implode.

Not just Linux

[tverbeek]

It isn't just Linux; it's the nature of modern systems to become "too complex". Back in the days of my youth, it was possible for one person to grok an entire operating system, but it simply isn't possible anymore, unless it's a tightly-focused and built-to-purpose system.