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Systemd-Free Artix Linux OS is Looking For Packagers (artixlinux.org)

MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) writes: Artix Linux, the young systemd free OS based on arch, is reaching a critical point in it's development and calling for new packagers.
Here's more from the ongoing thread on the project's forum: You don't have to be an expert in the occult arts for that; an elementary grasp of Linux in general and how PKGBUILD works should be enough for basic contributions. Help and training will be provided, free of charge!

209 comments

  1. "Help and training will be provided" by quonset · · Score: 2

    Most likely it will be the usual, RTFM!

    1. Re:"Help and training will be provided" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As long as there actually is a FM, that's good enough for me.

    2. Re: "Help and training will be provided" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What more do you need?

    3. Re:"Help and training will be provided" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Kiss my piss! Kiss MY piss! Kiss my PISS!!!

    4. Re: "Help and training will be provided" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My cock jackhammering your pooper and then painting it with my nut butter.

    5. Re: "Help and training will be provided" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd rather RTFM.

    6. Re: "Help and training will be provided" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh come on, his micropeen is just the right size to tickle your prostate.

    7. Re:"Help and training will be provided" by Q-Hack! · · Score: 1

      In the early days of Linux, there were no manuals. You had to read the source code. Surprisingly good comments back then.

      --
      Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
    8. Re:"Help and training will be provided" by MrBrklyn · · Score: 1

      No, there were HowTos - tons of them Source code is never good documentation

      --
      http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
    9. Re:"Help and training will be provided" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Honestly though in many cases it was quicker to read the source. At least the source was most likely up to date, whereas with how-tos... who can tell.

    10. Re:"Help and training will be provided" by pnutjam · · Score: 1

      Someone's never heard of man pages.

    11. Re:"Help and training will be provided" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There were man pages for the GNU tools, sure. But the kernel was wild west territory.

    12. Re:"Help and training will be provided" by KingBenny · · Score: 1

      yea, RTFM and then wonder why no one joins the fight :p

      --
      Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
  2. Void Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Void Linux's package system is similar enough to Arch's, and Void isn't using systemd and you can choose either glibc or musl based installs. I think I'd rather throw my weight behind Void than try to fork Arch.

    1. Re:Void Linux by Artemis3 · · Score: 1

      As much as i love Void, and I use it in a netbook, I find the limited amount of packages a problem. Artix uses all the Arch packages, except those that break without systemd and must be recompiled or replaced, and that's what this call for packagers is all about.

      Artix linux started with OpenRC, but now also offers Runit, the same init used in Void.

      If you like Arch but hate systemd, go Artix.

      --
      Artix
      Your Linux, your init.
    2. Re:Void Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you like Arch but hate systemd, go Artix

      What if I like musl ?

  3. Phrasing by MSG · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That's a weird way to say "There aren't really that many developers or other technically skilled users who don't want systemd."

    1. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      ... but also want to run Arch you mean. There are already a few systemd-free Linux distros.

    2. Re:Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are enough, but it has been years now. Many people who don't want systemd already switched to something else, and if Artix is new, then it probably wasn't Artix.

    3. Re: Phrasing by sg_oneill · · Score: 0

      Not all of us sysadmibs and developers base our technical decisions on geek dummyspit of the week. Systemd is a weird duck, but if you can't evolve your not a scientist, your not even an engineer, just a technician. And hey, that's OK. Technicians keep the world turning, but my attention spans far too short to keep chained to conventions that got unchallenging 20 years ago

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    4. Re:Phrasing by ArchieBunker · · Score: 1

      We all run Slackware.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    5. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep you are right. Your bosses make those decisions for you, you have no say. You use what they tell you to use.

      Get off your fucking high horse.

    6. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      the two people that met those specific criteria are already involved.. but three of them want to quit.

    7. Re:Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's a weird way to say "There aren't really that many developers or other technically skilled users who don't want systemd."

      No doubt, and sadly most of us won't be coming back to Linux despite this.
      After spending the time and effort migrating our systems over to a completely different OS just to retain the feature of "it can boot up", there is little to be gained by switching back.

      Once it was declared that Debian 8 would require systemd and would no longer boot a system inside a non-3d-accelerated virtual machine, even without wanting or installing X, it was clear that Debian 7 was the last major version that would be possible to run using todays technology and best practices.

      It is fortunate Debian has a very long stable release life cycle, so security updates continue for some time, but the writing was on the wall. Eventually those would stop without upgrading to the next release, which doesn't boot.

      I'm not going to go out and buy a bunch of 3d accelerated video cards to put in our servers, or stop using virtualization and hypervisors.
      Six whole months this stupidity lasted before allowing a text only console to not require Nvidia gear or the like.

    8. Re: Phrasing by Uecker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I am scientist. I have to learn new stuff every day. I develop new stuff every day. But I have no sympathy for people wasting my time by breaking standard tools or conventions with no good reason. And the "you are just to lazy to learn new things" argument is just BS. I want to spend my time learning interesting things and not have to relearn how to do basic stuff with my computer because some random dude at Redhat thinks the ideas he has are so important that he can waste the time of everybody else.

    9. Re:Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sure there are, but preferring debian we are just using devuan linux

    10. Re: Phrasing by gweihir · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Funny, I am a scientist and an engineer, and I can evolve. But since I am a good scientist and a good engineer, I will not evolve in a bad direction, and hence I will not use systemd. Live is just to short to use crappy unnecessary improvements made by people with small skills and huge egos.

      Mindlessly running after a really demented hype is not "evolution". The correct term is "devolution" and it is not a good thing.

      Incidentally, if you cannot recognize and build on things that are in a finished state and are more than good enough, then you are most definitely not a scientist or an engineer. Then you are just a hack.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    11. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're

    12. Re: Phrasing by merky1 · · Score: 1

      Sounds more like a Debian issue. Iâ(TM)ve had headless systemd based RHEL 7 running under KVM for years.

      --
      --WooooHoooo--
    13. Re:Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Roger that...

    14. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not all of us sysadmibs and developers base our technical decisions on geek dummyspit of the week.

      Too true, some of us base our technical decisions on years of experience..

      Systemd is a weird duck,

      You said it, pal...so fucking weird I only suffer it to exist on one of my systems..and it still can't fucking handle the networking properly (in fact, since the last update, it's gotten worse to the point the wired network interface now randomly drops for no discernible reason..small mercy though, if I use a USB WLAN dongle it's stable...feh!)

      but if you can't evolve your not a scientist, your not even an engineer, just a technician.

      Ah, a wild nonsensical jibe appears...having worked in both Engineering and Physics I'd like to regale you with stories about equipment and software still being used by the first two of those groups you mention despite the protestations of the third group decades after the outside world moved on to later 'oooh shinies', I said I'd like to, but compressing decades into a couple of paragraphs is hard work..
      Besides, systemd isn't, as you'd have it, a positive example of 'evolution'...if you want to go down that path and if you'll excuse a wild detour into Stargate bulshittery, the best equivalent of systemd on the Stargate evolutionary tree is the Goa'uld, a horrible wormy parasite that takes over its host and pretends it's a god, or, if you want a real world equivalent of where systemd is on an evolutionary tree, try Ophiocordyceps unilateralis..

      And hey, that's OK. Technicians keep the world turning,

      And don't you forget that fact boyo!, in my varied career I spent a number of years as a Technician, guess who got to evaluate all the new equipment and certify it was 'fit for purpose' before the Scientists and Engineers got their grubby paws on it? Years later, being an ex-technician stood me in good stead as
      being once 'of their ranks', I had no 'grief' from the technicians I worked with..

      but my attention spans far too short to keep chained to conventions that got unchallenging 20 years ago

      Ah, short attention spans...explains a lot, that does...
      This isn't about being chained to anything (do you seriously think we've not at least evaluated running our stuff on systemd based hosts?) , this is all about tools we trust 100% to perform the tasks we require of them, for a lot of us out here systemd and it's unholy spawn are not the tools we'd trust to use for anything we'd regard as being critical.

    15. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some random dude at RedHat. Oh and also a bunch of random dudes Debian, Ubuntu, etc. And a whole lot of other random 'dudes' who now support systemd.

    16. Re: Phrasing by MSG · · Score: 0, Troll

      I hear a lot of ad hominem attacks, and characterizations. I don't see a single example of a "bad" change.

      I usually recognize scientists and engineers by their use of evidence.

    17. Re:Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm technically skilled enough. Why bother? I run Debian with systemd swapped out for sysvinit.

    18. Re: Phrasing by virtualXTC · · Score: 0

      I hear a lot of ad hominem attacks, and characterizations. I don't see a single example of a "bad" change.

      I usually recognize scientists and engineers by their use of evidence.

      ^^ THIS ^^

    19. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You, sir, are neither and you know it. You clean toilets.

    20. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your not a scientist, your not even an engineer

      My *what*, nìgger?

    21. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if you can't evolve your not a scientist, your not even an engineer, just a technician

      You'd think Redhat would have just gotten Upstart to work...

    22. Re: Phrasing by VonSkippy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're absolutely right. When I went from Centos 6x to Centos 7x I had to learn nothing to make the box go from 100% uptime to crashing 2-3 times a week. Systemd is great, for no known reason it took a perfectly working system and turned it into a metal case full of steaming shit. Systemd only helps DIstro builders, it does NOTHING for any System Admin or Server wrangler. I have real work to do on my computers, so fixing a distro's fatal flaw isn't (and never will be) on my todo list.

    23. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good thing you aren't a network engineer/ analyst.

      All vendors have different cli syntax. If you understand the concepts, the way you configure and execute commands are secondary importance imo.

    24. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And that is just half of it. Systemd breaks a lot of existing systems, and most importantly, its direction promises to waste ever more time breaking things that have been working smoothly for decades by using a completely new paradign. That means that for older users, instead of being able to rely on establed and well learned paradigns that took years to do a deep learning, and to move forward with more important and newer skills, that they have to double back and relearn the basics again, and for no good reason other than twisted egos of people 15 years younger.

      For younger people what it means is that they will never learn what a truly open system that is well designed is like. Everything is now tied in and held close to the breast in one hog of a binary that only understands a top down approach to OS design. But hey, you never miss what you never had.

      As for the post itself, it speaks plainly and doesn't need a malicious rewording. Like any other distro, they are less than a year old and working on building a community. It says nothing about how many developers or other technically skilled users who don't want systemd. How ever many that there are, and there are probably millions, as usually only a few have the time and financial independence to dedicate to writing an OS for free. So if you are interest, and this is a great way to learn about packagementment and OS design, then hrere is a chance to get in while the ceiling is still low. If you are not interest... really who cares. Don't volunteer then. You are just a noise maker.

    25. Re: Phrasing by gweihir · · Score: 1

      You must be new to /. (Yes, I have seen your ID.)

      My impression is that you are unable to actually recognize scientists and engineers.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    26. Re: Phrasing by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Funny. The last time somebody ID'd me, they claimed I was the janitor breaking onto my own office and posting as me because they just could not believe what they found. Really amused me, same as this.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    27. Re: Phrasing by MrBrklyn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Like the intern who wrote the Linux kernel. I've heard dishonest critism like that for decades and it always comes from some deep seated basic misunderstanding of how the world work. Most init scripts are not written by interns, but those that are, that is OK as well.

      It is better than trusting everything to a single development team .... one I am not particularly trustful of.

      --
      http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
    28. Re: Phrasing by MrBrklyn · · Score: 4, Informative

      The previous standard interactions with init, including the use of shell scripts in /etc/init.d, and the chkconfig and service commands still work. You don't actually need to learn anything new unless you want to take advantage of the new features that systemd offers.

      So you might be able to see why your argument rings hollow.

      That is not true on both fronts. The standard init stuff does not work with systemd. Not the login scripts, the X scripts, sound scripts, and more.

      Secodnly, you do need to learn how systemd does weird stuff, unless you want a system where systemd allows any password to work with sudo - and other weird stuff that has leaked into the distros.

      The distros that adopted systemd didn't just keep using the same init scripts. They adapted to it. In order to get around it, everything is affected from udev on up the food chain. The borad change in the distros since adaptation can not be avoided because of a smug comment on slashdot.

      --
      http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
    29. Re:Phrasing by MrBrklyn · · Score: 2

      That's a weird way to say "There aren't really that many developers or other technically skilled users who don't want systemd."

      And that is just half of it. Systemd breaks a lot of existing systems, and most importantly, its direction promises to waste ever more time breaking things that have been working smoothly for decades by using a completely new paradigm. That means that for older users, instead of being able to rely on established and well learned paradigms that took years to do a deep learning to master, and to move forward with more important and newer skills, that they have to double back and relearn the basics again, and for no good reason other than twisted egos of people 20 years younger.

      For younger people what it means is that they will never learn what a truly open system that is well designed is like. Everything is now tied in and held close to the breast in one hog of a binary that only understands a top down approach to OS design. But hey, you never miss what you never had.

      As for the post itself, it speaks plainly and doesn't need a malicious rewording. Like any other distro, they are less than a year old and working on building a community. It says nothing about how many developers or other technically skilled users who don't want systemd. How ever many that there are, and there are probably millions, as usually only a few have the time and financial independence to dedicate to writing an OS for free. ***So if you are interest, this is a great way to learn about package management and OS design, and here is a chance to get in while the ceiling is still low. If you are not interest... really who cares. Don't volunteer then. You are just a noise making troll pissed of to see someone else enjoying the party.***

      --
      http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
    30. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As an admin of a substantial number of Linux environments, my experiences have been substantially contrary to yours. Systemd is a big step in the right direction, although you wouldn't know it from the small number of very noisy detractors who have obviously never managed large environments and are unqualified to comment.

    31. Re:Phrasing by MrBrklyn · · Score: 1

      That's a weird way to say "There aren't really that many developers or other technically skilled users who don't want systemd."

      That is just the way to turn every linux distribution discussion into a systemd argument in the hopes to wear everyone out and to drive everyone away.

      Nasty... reason enough to not want a systemd OS.

      --
      http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
    32. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny you should say that, because it is clear that you can't recognise the science from the forest of degrees that never contribute to the actual evolution of science.

    33. Re: Phrasing by MSG · · Score: 0

      systemd doesn't interact with sudo authentication *at all*. I don't know what you're on about.

      Distros that adopted systemd updated their init scripts to unit files because they *could*, and because there were advantages to doing so. It wasn't because they *had to*. Not every init script in Fedora has been updated. The old "network" service still has a standard SysV-type init script, and that service still works, for example.

      Can you provide any examples?

    34. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      10-4

    35. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dumb deflection, there are tons of things bad with systemd you can read some of it on this very thread, starting with how it got pushed for testing to users by three main distros

    36. Re: Phrasing by snapsnap · · Score: 1

      True, but not logging stdout and stderr means it's much harder to troubleshoot problems. Logging with systemd sucks.

    37. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet your writing outs you beyond question to anyone with an ounce of common sense. I don't think I'll ever understand people like you, who are so obviously nobodies, yet spend most of their lives trying and failing to convince everyone around them that they're actually someone great.

      Not that you'll believe me, such is the nature of your illness, but everyone sees right through you.

      Why don't you put more of that effort into actually doing something great, rather than lying about the things you haven't done.

    38. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tag/systemd/

    39. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Plenty of evidence here. Repeating it over and over, year after year, is tiresome: https://nosystemd.org

    40. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually smells like BS. Headless systems work fine with systemd.

    41. Re: Phrasing by MSG · · Score: 1

      One legit bug, and one bug in a related project that isn't used by any distros (AFAIK). Neither of which support the wild assertions in the comment I replied to.

    42. Re:Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Me three.

    43. Re: Phrasing by MSG · · Score: 1

      One of us is confused. systemd logs stdout and stderr by default. Older init systems did not.

    44. Re: Phrasing by Baki · · Score: 1

      Redhat is the main source of money and thus power in the linux world. That does not automatically mean that they got it right all the time. In fact, sometimes I think Redhat might have an interest to make Linux less simple and easy to understand, in order to sell their services and enterprise stuff.

      Most other distributions have gone along with systemd because it is the path of least resistance.
      Arch has resisted for a while, but caved in last year.
      Arch's philosophy is to take upstream as plain-vanilla as possible, which makes sense.
      As more and more upstream packages rely on systemd, using an alternative is getting harder and harder.
      We'll see how long that holds.

      I think it is a sign of Linux open-source vitality that some people try alternatives, and a bad sign for the original Unix philosophy, that systemd is so deeply engrained that it is hard to replace and is getting ever more deeply engrained in Linux distributions.

    45. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As an admin of several datacentres full of servers, systemd is a steaming heap of crap. See? You're not the only one who can play the "unsubstatiated claim with dick waving" game. It truly is, though. One significant problem we had to handle was that it often gets dependency chains wrong, and out of the box configurations from Redhat, the progenitors of systemd, in many cases are incorrect. It's turned systems management into a black box crapshoot, and the attitude of the systemd developers is pure shit.

    46. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Spoken like someone who has never had to use that CLI abomination, MegaCli.

    47. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quick! Look! Over there! A True Scotsman! Hilarious argument, "all these scientists and engineers aren't scientists and engineers, only my personal opinion of who is and isn't matters", thanks, it gave me a chuckle.

    48. Re: Phrasing by thegarbz · · Score: 0

      But I have no sympathy for people wasting my time by breaking standard tools or conventions with no good reason.

      As a scientist you would spend your time looking an analysing data. It's a shame you can't apply your appeal to authority rigor to a religious discussion on software. If you want to claim there's no good reason you need to first refute the many reasons given during the very public discussions on the mailing lists on the distribution. Closing your eyes and declaring there are none is not science, it's childish.

    49. Re: Phrasing by thegarbz · · Score: 0

      Funny, I am a scientist and an engineer, and I can evolve. But since I am a good scientist and a good engineer, I will not evolve in a bad direction, and hence I will not use systemd.

      Let's get to that in a second.

      Live is just to short to use crappy unnecessary improvements made by people with small skills and huge egos.

      Well given the necessity of the improvements were publicly discussed on various mailing lists and then adopted across a range of projects, let's just assume that you don't know or care about them and are too busy with ad hominem attacks on the project author to actually form a rational arguement.

      Incidentally, if you cannot recognize and build on things that are in a finished state and are more than good enough, then you are most definitely not a scientist or an engineer. Then you are just a hack.

      Indeed. What we needed to do was use evolution to build stronger horses, not throw away the concept entirely on the slow and noisy combustion engine.

      Now where was I...

      Funny, I am a scientist and an engineer, and I can evolve. But since I am a good scientist and a good engineer, I will not evolve in a bad direction, and hence I will not use systemd.

      No the funny thing here is how certain you are of you post, but you have demonstrated to be is a good example of an appeal to authority along with a red herring. You are an amazing person achieving a perfect trifecta of logical fallacies without actually ever making a point.

      I weep for science and engineering.

    50. Re: Phrasing by Barsteward · · Score: 0

      oh keep up.... you are way out of date as most anti-systemd troll posts are

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    51. Re: Phrasing by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      you want to put a "out of the box" config into a live system? tut tut

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    52. Re: Phrasing by Barsteward · · Score: 0

      unfortunately you will just bang your head against the wall. detractors of anything always expect something to be 100% correct 100% fully featured overnight - they are very unrealistic when it comes to having to learn something new

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    53. Re: Phrasing by Barsteward · · Score: 0

      "Incidentally, if you cannot recognize and build on things that are in a finished state and are more than good enough, then you are most definitely not a scientist or an engineer. " so we should still be using coal fired power stations etc etc - you don't seem to recognise that better ideas come along all the time and replace the old ideas in all fields including software even if the "old ideas" were good enough for their time.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    54. Re:Phrasing by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      " Systemd breaks a lot of existing systems, " - maybe hire someone who knows what they are doing and can unpick the hacks you put into in your current systems to workaround its limitations. Bad workmen always blame their tools and look daft when other people using the same tools work fine.

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    55. Re:Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For younger people what it means is that they will never learn what a truly open system that is well designed is like.

      Sure they can: just run BSD (any variant).

    56. Re:Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can confirm, switched my Linux computers to Devuan a good while ago, it's really solid. Not quite BSD-solid but still.

    57. Re:Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To name just one, Slackware is one of the oldest Linux distributions. It is still free of the systemd infection and there a large number of users and developers using Slack.

    58. Re: Phrasing by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      You show your ignorance making such a statement, even some of the distros (sles, ubuntu, redhat) init.d scripts fail in the upgrade to systemd version. You find systemd nice for your home PC or laptop, that's nice. Meanwhile those of us who admin hundreds of systems find it an unstable and time consuming bloatware that tries to solve a problem we didn't have.

    59. Re: Phrasing by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      The "reasons" for systemd are given by those who don't admin hundreds of systems, but rather are immature idealists engaging in mental masturbation. No serious system admin I know thinks it provides any useful thing. It is contrary to the Unix way, adds immense time to troubleshooting, doesn't solve any problem an Enterprise server has. And ironically at my employer, I also have to waste hours fixing systemd issues for our data scientists as it is an impediment to the operation of common services developed for other groups to use. In short, systemd is a distraction and time waster

    60. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Same here - I'm another scientist. I learn, and enjoy learning, new things that are actually new to us, because they reflect our improved understanding of the real nature of the universe. When I learn that some aspect of my computing environment is being deprecated, and I'll have to learn its replacement, I feel the same way as I do when (for example) my university changes its procurement policy, and I'll have to get a different set of signatures each time I need a new widget: I feel that it's a pointless piece of bureaucracy implemented so some asshole can pretend they've accomplished something.

      For science, it would be really useful if we had standard computing environments that were stable over a long timescale (like 20-30 years), so we could publish our code alongside our papers and someone else would actually be able to run it. In pursuit of this, for example, I expect that Python 2 will keep be used by scientists for decades after the rest of the world has standardised on Python 3 (or 4, or 5).

    61. Re: Phrasing by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Yes, me too. Oh, sure, there are quite a few people that are engineers and scientists by title only. But there are almost no scientists and engineers without the title, despite what some failures with big egos like to claim.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    62. Re: Phrasing by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Hehehehehe, more missing the mark. Nice.

      You see the problem here is on your side. Because I do know what I can do and have done and am doing, your attack does not work even one bit. What you are doing is trying to play on the insecurities most more capable people have (see, for example, the Dunning-Kruger effect: those on the right side are, on average, a lot less sure of their skills than the nil-whits on the left side). Your problem here is that I am far-right in that graph, and I know it. Some random AC cowardly sniping from the shadows is not going to land any shots. But go ahead, you hostility brings a big smile to my face, because you are assuredly a big looser. And yes, I am trolling you and you are falling for it.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    63. Re: Phrasing by MSG · · Score: 1

      I also run hundreds of servers, running a *wide* variety of services. systemd isn't one of the applications I've found to be problematic.

    64. Re: Phrasing by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Well, on the plus side, the only situation where they need to claim "no evidence" is when the evidence is so strong that admitting its existence makes them automatically lose their case, because they cannot refute it. In a sense the continued claims of "no evidence" just confirm the evidence is very strong indeed.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    65. Re: Phrasing by gweihir · · Score: 1

      Still missing the mark. Pathetic.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    66. Re: Phrasing by gweihir · · Score: 1

      You are missing the mark. The root-cause for that is lack of independent insight on your part.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    67. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing to do with evolving. It has to do with security. I for one do not want to trust an overlaying system(d) on top of my OS. Especially one who's head developer is in his twenties (and a little tyrant too).

    68. Re: Phrasing by snapsnap · · Score: 1

      You're correct, but at least you saw the output on the screen. It sucks when, for example, "/usr/bin/mongod --config /etc/mongod.conf" clearly outputs the problem (like I saw last week when /var/lib/mongo/mongod.lock wasn't writable by the mongod user since someone else accidentally started it as root before), but there's nothing logged in the journal when you do "systemctl start mongod"

    69. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And that is just half of it. Systemd breaks a lot of existing systems, and most importantly, its direction promises to waste ever more time breaking things that have been working smoothly for decades by using a completely new paradign. That means that for older users, instead of being able to rely on establed and well learned paradigns that took years to do a deep learning, and to move forward with more important and newer skills, that they have to double back and relearn the basics again, and for no good reason other than twisted egos of people 15 years younger.

      For younger people what it means is that they will never learn what a truly open system that is well designed is like. Everything is now tied in and held close to the breast in one hog of a binary that only understands a top down approach to OS design. But hey, you never miss what you never had.

      As for the post itself, it speaks plainly and doesn't need a malicious rewording. Like any other distro, they are less than a year old and working on building a community. It says nothing about how many developers or other technically skilled users who don't want systemd. How ever many that there are, and there are probably millions, as usually only a few have the time and financial independence to dedicate to writing an OS for free. So if you are interest, and this is a great way to learn about packagementment and OS design, then hrere is a chance to get in while the ceiling is still low. If you are not interest... really who cares. Don't volunteer then. You are just a noise maker.

      systemd is the common core mathematics for computers.
      ever seen your kids math papers today? unreal. reinventing the wheel, just like systemd.

    70. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not being required to edit init scripts out of the box to get them to work versus being required to override unit files just to have the things start correctly is not an improvement, but I guess systemd zealots don't see that.

    71. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The closest I've come to characterising systemd is that it's not intended for servers, or even desktops. The whole design has been based around assuming the administrator can only be an unskilled laptop GUI user whose idea of troubleshooting is to reboot, and seriously hinders everything and everyone else. Why else attempt to reimplement features so completely out of scope, like time and dns, very badly? (dangerously so)

    72. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For better or worse, we have lots of usernames with a "." in them. systemd unilaterally decided to hardcode their own username standard rather than just pass it on to the OS to deal with (where it could previously be configured), when challenged they doubled down. So now the username standard is controlled by the hardcoded systemd binary (a bit like the DNS root key, which those muppets also hardcoded, seriously what kind of technical idiot does that?)

    73. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For sufficiently small values of "fine"....

    74. Re: Phrasing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One legit bug, and one bug in a related project that isn't used by any distros (AFAIK). Neither of which support the wild assertions in the comment I replied to.

      Wait until the bug creeps into other distros. If a bug exists and systemd doesn't (or can't) fix it, then there is a chance that someone found a way to exploit it in a different way on other distros (as it happened in many occurrences in the past for many old bugs). Got it?

    75. Re: Phrasing by Sarten-X · · Score: 1

      No, I meant that quite literally. We had interns write the init scripts for our product (a multi-million-dollar system of embedded Linux-based components), because the "real developers" were writing "real software".

      In our product, the exact capabilities of each component depend on what other components are available. Through a "interesting" architecture, that discovery happens at startup, with a command-line constructed in the init scripts which were, as noted, written by interns with all of the real-world experience you'd expect from interns.

      If a component didn't boot in the right order, it effectively doesn't exist. If the external network is down, you may as well not have one. If you reboot a component after a failed startup, that component will expect behavior in other components that won't actually be provided. If a service or a component crashes, other components will simply hang.

      Usually, the recommended solution for any problem is "try rebooting everything again, and pay close attention to the 3-page startup procedure".

      Now, I'm not suggesting that systemd will solve these architecture problems on its own, but the few components that have been upgraded are much easier to trace and manage dependencies on.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    76. Re: Phrasing by Uecker · · Score: 1

      If I have to first go to a mailing list of my distribution to learn about some random "reasons" to why some change is supposed to be good than this is almost by definition "no good reason". Is an actual improvement noticeable to the user too much to ask for?

  4. Moved to meta distribution. Not looking back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Having a different distribution for every little difference us as stupid as the app ecosystem.
    It ends up being a huge mess of ALL permutations of ever possible choice.

    Just use a meta distribution, and pick whatever combination of kernel, init system, graphical interface, "desktop" system etc you want.

    1. Re:Moved to meta distribution. Not looking back. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      in other words: +1 for gentoo.

      I fear most people don't understand that gentoo is a meta distribution--while it can be used stock as-is as a distro, it's true power lies in creating your own repositories, configs, and being able to easily splash that across hundreds of servers. Or easily scale it down to a live cd or PXE-boot image.

      And of course, the built-in profiles include numerous choices as a starting point both with and without systemd.

      We don't need yet-another-distro. There's already hundreds bit rotting. Divide-and-conquer works both ways after all.

  5. Grab Linux by the pussy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where pussy is Systemd.

    1. Re: Grab Linux by the pussy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're trying too hard, and no she didn't say it.

      Systemd is more like a poopy butthole with chronic explosive diarrhea.

      There are much better actual pussys to grab elsewhere.

    2. Re: Grab Linux by the pussy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My poopy butthole takes that as an insult, sir!

  6. Why is there no preview on mobile?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Soeaking of messes: I oresent to you;: My commebz. A Slashcode and AC joint-venture.

  7. "Free of charge"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Help and training will be provided, free of charge!"

    I get to work for free for them and I'm not even charged for it?! What a dream deal! Sign me up!

  8. I'll make the logo. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    t. 4chan /g/,

  9. Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    I don't know what it replaced, what it unified, what it extended, and what it does. I'd be curious to learn

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
  10. Introducing RaceRelationsDot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coming soon to SlashDot, a new service: RaceRelationsDot

    We will be providing a new service to SlashDot users by posting RaceRelationsDot threads in existing stories as a forum to discuss issues of race. We at RaceRelationsDot understand that these topics are very important to SlashDot users and represent a need not currently served here. Look for RaceRelationsDot discussion areas on SlashDot, coming soon. We are very excited to be rolling out this valuable service to SlashDot users very soon!

  11. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It replaces SysV init.

    Basically, SysV init meant there was a lot of duplicated code involved in starting system services, as every service had to write its own SysV init script, and didn't provide a dependency mechanism (this service requires this other service be running first) so that most distros ended up hacking on a solution to provide that. (Basic example is "web server requires network running before it can start.")

    systemd solves those problems and then introduces a whole host of brand new problems. Whether or not you want to deal with the brand new problems systemd adds defines whether or not it's "better" than SysV init. It does legitimately solve some issues, but it also makes the boot sequence unpredictable and way more complicated, along with other issues there's no good reason for it to have, like logs that aren't human-readable and moving random system functions into init for no good reason.

    Or, in short:
    Good idea: replacing SysV init
    Bad idea: replacing SysV init with systemd

  12. *You* are implying "technically skilled" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    Anyone who is skilled, and looks at systemd, will lose his hair very quickly, at the insane "framework" shit, that only the worsr "enterprisey consultant" of the iHipster generation could come up with.

    No, the traditional systems aren't great.
    But suggesting systemd instead, is like suggesting somebody should try ass rape by a horse because she thinks nipple pinching hurts a bit.

    How about *a sane new system*??
    Neither the old clunker, NOR systemd cancer!

    1. Re:*You* are implying "technically skilled" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "But suggesting systemd instead, is like suggesting somebody should try ass rape by a horse because she thinks nipple pinching hurts a bit."

      Fucking nerds man...

    2. Re:*You* are implying "technically skilled" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I and plenty of other 'skilled' people manage to use systemd just fine. Maybe you're inadequately skilled? That wouldn't be a shock to me, there's lots of people working in IT without a shred of skill or knowledge.

    3. Re: *You* are implying "technically skilled" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe you're not skilled enough to have developed a sense of taste?

  13. SystemD maintainer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    I'd volunteer to maintain the SystemD package and help them move to the future.

    1. Re: SystemD maintainer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Go home Lennart, the adults are talking.

    2. Re:SystemD maintainer by MrBrklyn · · Score: 1

      I'd volunteer to maintain the SystemD package and help them move to the future. >>

      My future is watching my grandchildren play in the sand in the beach and continuing research on computational applications to biological and genetic problem....mostly using C++ and R.

      It is not chasing Pottering garbage down a rabbit hole and wondering why X won't start up after 40 years of stability because systemd broke it.

      --
      http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
    3. Re: SystemD maintainer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      X won't start up because it was a piece crap to begin with and has little to do with systemD.

    4. Re: SystemD maintainer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yet X started up just fine so far, for the last couple decades. Even better so since it autodetects most stuff, eliminating the need to write an xorg.conf.

  14. Which logfile editor by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

    I want to know which logfile editor to use to read the journal.d or /etc/logs. Vim or Emacs?

    Thanks

    1. Re:Which logfile editor by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite · · Score: 1

      For the systemd log you use journalctl, but afaik no distribution has removed the oldschool textlogs available as usual under /var/log/. I use nano :-)

    2. Re:Which logfile editor by geoskd · · Score: 0

      I want to know which logfile editor to use to read the journal.d or /etc/logs.

      That would be journalctl. I don't know what the hot-key combo for emacs is, but you can be relatively sure there is one

      For vi or emacs, you could do:

      journalctl > foo
      vi foo

      but I'm not sure why you wouldn't just look at the output of journalctl directly. Its output can be piped through your favorite parsing and sorting programs just the same as if it you were directly reading from a file.

      If you are talking about writing to the logs, then you should use the existing logging mechanisms in your programming language of choice, they still work the way they always did.

      If you are talking about altering existing system logs, then I am going to say with all due rudeness, that you are talking about the Linux equivalent of altering official documents, and are either up to something nefarious, or are a blithering idiot, either way I see no reason to make your task any easier than it has to be.

      At the end of the day, this is all about the fact that the world is not text based, it is based in far more complex and subtle data types, and it is time that the Unix/Linux weenies got with the program and dealt with the fact that \0 can and should be used for things other than the end of a string of text.

      --
      I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
    3. Re: Which logfile editor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linux and Unix are all based on "everything is a text file". But the world isn't text based right? You are a fucking idiot.

    4. Re: Which logfile editor by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      does that mean Databases too?

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    5. Re:Which logfile editor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You'd use journalctl, but if you get large amounts of logs (say when running a busy mail server) then you're basically out of luck, the only thing that journalctl can actually do fast is a tail -f of sorts, so the MTA problem you're analysing better happens *right now* instead of a few hours ago so you actually get a glimpse of it.

      Or you let it write text files, but at that point you have to wonder what value systemd actually provides, if in order to get the system usable you have to effectively turn off parts of it.

  15. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by gweihir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't agree that replacing sysIV init is a good idea. All the arguments for that boil down to "not invented here".

    Why is it that so many tech people cannot let things that work well the fuck alone?

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  16. Systemd is Bad right? by geoskd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Around 2014, with the switch to Systemd, Debian started to decline in popularity. This was followed by the equally stunning change in Ubuntu to the same init system. By 2018, it was apparent that both distributions were headed to the scrap heap of history as they had lost nearly 80% of their user base in the 3 intervening years.

    Oh, wait, that didn't actually happen? Debian/Ubuntu still has the same userbase in the Linux Desktop and Server markets it had before the Systemd change?

    I guess the markets have spoken, and the predictions of doomsday were nothing more than the echo chamber effect of a very small and very vocal minority of people who do not appear to represent either Linux users or Linux developers as a whole. That is the only explanation that fits the facts.

    --
    I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
    1. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ubuntu changing to systemd is only stunning if you are unaware that Ubuntu is downstream of Debian.You might be shocked to learn Linux Mint also switched to systemd after Ubuntu did.

    2. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by DeHackEd · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I disagree.

      The hate is real (and has been discussed to death already), but the list of alternatives is depressingly small. Linux Distros are a necessary component of the Linux ecosystem with updates and fixes. If the options are between a distro with an init system you don't like, or some obscure/niche distro which doesn't have extended support options, the decision has been made for you. And unfortunately systemd has reached that level of penetration.

      And THAT is why additional distros coming along without systemd is newsworthy... (Well, by slashdot standards I guess).

    3. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by telek83 · · Score: 1

      Your post makes little sense, I work in a mostly Linux dev environment, and I can tell you, people don't care about the init system, they don't even know anything about it, they care about getting their work done, they don't even know what kernel they are running, let alone what init system they run, at the end of the day, a shell with ssh and a email client is all they care about. Now since Ubuntu is mostly a "Bring the windows users to Linux" Distro I very much doubt that any Ubuntu user cares or even knows what SystemD is, which pretty much makes your analysis shot. The people who hate SystemD (I am one of them) moved away, or were already on a distro that never used it to began with, that doesn't mean I haven't worked with it, I do all the time and wish the dumpster fire that is SystemD would die!

    4. Re: Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I left Ubuntu because of systemd. The argument that people don't care about systemd because they are ignorant is not a good one.

    5. Re: Systemd is Bad right? by DCFusor · · Score: 1

      They don't hate systemd because they haven't tried to do anything out of the ordinary that used to work fine and is now broken. If you're using linux as a chromebook and text editor it's probably fine. Data acquisition/analysis, it's a joke, it breaks everything.

      --
      Why guess when you can know? Measure!
    6. Re: Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The average user shouldn't need to know what is going on under the hood. All they want is their applications to run in a responsive manner. Personally I don't give a crap which init system my computer is using as long as I can do the work I want to do on it.

    7. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Himmy32 · · Score: 1

      Your comment is only stunning if you are unaware that Ubuntu was using Upstart rather than init before switching to systemd.

    8. Re: Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Debian, and especially Ubuntu, user numbers are propped up by corporate mandates rather than legitimate user preference. The idea and motivation behind systemd is good, but itâ(TM)s implementation is junk.

    9. Re: Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Linux users are NOT by definition average. We are the ones who broke out of the matrix.

    10. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      I guess the markets have spoken, and the predictions of doomsday were nothing more than the echo chamber effect of a very small and very vocal minority of people who do not appear to represent either Linux users or Linux developers as a whole.

      There's no doom. It, like the system before, mostly works but it's a little bit shit, less transparent and harder to debug the more obscure cases. But it seems more convenient for distro packagers who seemed constitutionally unable to write decent shell scripts.

      Mostly, it's just realy mediocre.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    11. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most debian users I know are still using debian without systemd, and debian runs without systemd.

      http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Debian/openrc-conversion.html

      Admitedly, I know very unsual people as a whole.

    12. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      The idea is to keep supporting code that can do one thing and do it well.
      With logs, that people can see working and find errors.
      Thats what would be good to return to.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    13. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is like your wife getting a boob-job you don't like, and then someone using the fact that you do not dump her to claim you do in fact like the boob-job, completely ignoring that there is more to women than just boobs.

    14. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The systemd cancer spread far enough that for most people it is impossible to avoid.
      If Redhat insists in forcing us to adopt a windows approach to linux, I mighth as well be using windows. At least it has no systemd.

    15. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The hate is real

      He didn't say the hate wasn't real. He said the hate is a vocal minority.

      And THAT is why additional distros coming along without systemd is newsworthy... (Well, by slashdot standards I guess).

      Nope. Slashdot's standards being a group of that vocal minority is why they consider this newsworthy and the editors know it. Clicks baby Clicks. This story has more comments on it than most others on the front page.

      Feed the outrage!

    16. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, wait, that didn't actually happen? Debian/Ubuntu still has the same userbase in the Linux Desktop and Server markets it had before the Systemd change?

      No, the userbase actually grew. We migrated from freebsd and openbsd installations to ubuntu and we are very happy with stability and degree of control we have now. systemd's process management and containerisation capabilities (exposing kernel security features through easy to use ini style config files) are far superior.

      Because systemd is not just init replacement that most systemd haters seem to think. init is just one small part of it. when you stop treating it as a "modernized sysv init" that "broke all the things you're used to" and so stop expecting it to do exactly the same thing as sysv did, and start looking at it as a whole range of APIs neatly exposed through simple to use interfaces, you see the true power of it.

    17. Re: Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Total crap. If your non-existant "data acquisition/analysis" system worked great before, and is broken by systemd, you did it wrong, horribly fucking wrong. No data acquisition/analysis is entirely reliant upon specific implementations of an init system. You're simply making shit up, and I'm calling you on it.

      Don't bother replying unless it's with very specific examples and appropriate citations, not more generalisations and wordy rationalisations for your imaginatively complex systems. You're not fooling anyone, there's plenty of us who actually do work on real complex systems, and even do implement some unique corner-cases in systemd without problem. Very slightly better, in-fact than before systemd.

    18. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      He said the hate is a vocal minority.

      The most competent users are never the majority.

      Come to think of it, this applies to everything even outside the realm of computers.

    19. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Among (distro) developers, clearly there aren't many no-systemd people.
      If there were more, for sure they'd be able to produce more alternatives than a "depressingly small" list.
      All the software is free to change/fork/maintain, so there really aren't any artificial barriers to do so.

      It's possble the users (non-developers) are more anti-systemd than the developers, well that sucks of course.
      That is the downside of everyone being free to (not) code and/or use, whatever they want.
      If they don't create what you want, create something better yourself, or pay someone else to.
      Exactly that is how this whole free software thing was born.

    20. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You could make about the same argument for Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office.

    21. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by tlhIngan · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The hate is real (and has been discussed to death already), but the list of alternatives is depressingly small. Linux Distros are a necessary component of the Linux ecosystem with updates and fixes. If the options are between a distro with an init system you don't like, or some obscure/niche distro which doesn't have extended support options, the decision has been made for you. And unfortunately systemd has reached that level of penetration.

      If as many people as you imply hate SystemD so much, then there should be an extensive amount of alternative distributions. It's that simple - if so many people hate it, then those "so many people" (who I might add are people who know Linux in and out extensively, and less so users with no technical mastery) should offer plenty of development resources to the alternative distributions.

      There are only a few out there, so development resources can be relatively concentrated, and a call for help should be fulfilled within days .

      And yes, that includes stuff like extended support and all that.

      So it's either general griping by the Linux crowd who just wants to gripe for the sake of griping, a few vocal people who are angry at SystemD for whatever reason, or people really hate learning something new and would rather keep to their old ways of doing things but otherwise have no problem with SystemD.

      If so many technically minded people really have issues with SystemD, then manpower for these alternative distributions shouldn't be a problem. And neither should money - since these technically minded people are often the ones that control the money spending as well, so they can also contribute to the development of alternative distributions.

    22. Re:Systemd is Bad right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like the Markey speaks that Windows is better than Linux? What a BS means of ending a rational discussion.

  17. Exactly. I'm open to all metas though. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I do not like systemd, but I would fight for their right to choose ... ehrm .. suffering from ... it! :)

    I'm afraid most "people" today do not want to be people. They do not want to be individuals and to "have to" decide. It makes them so afraid, they run to abusive environments like Apple's, or obsess over minimalism (which is also harmful since they limit the extend of their existence).

  18. This is a self-inflicted problem by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 5, Funny

    This issue is only for Luddites who are stuck in the past. Once systemd achieves its ultimate goal of moving every available service and user application into a single executable, distros aren't even going to need "packages" anymore.

    1. Re: This is a self-inflicted problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. Packages are obsolete anyway. What Linux needs is a good App Store. If Linux had an App Store I guarantee we'd see the year of Linux on the desktop. Mark my words.

      App stores are the cornerstone of modern computing. Without app stores you don't have access to curated highly rated and developed apps.

      I can tell you this from first hand experience by being a manager of highly skilled engineers for nearly 30 years, developers don't want to waste time compiling apps. They'd rather download an app and be done with it.

      I'm a neck beard but I embrace change. I used to be like the rest downloading source code and compiling. No more, no I just download finished executables that have been vetted for me. It takes the frustration out of coding.

  19. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by DCFusor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    SysVInit worked fine for me, and no it doesn't boot slower. See what systemD does if you've got stuff waiting for network and for whatever reason there's no network or it's flakey. No warning at all - just no boot, or eventually a boot with no warning.
    How helpful.
    See what systemd does about share mounting in fstab or even the .share way. Why do I have to learn it's log and status tools after already having had to learn the other way of just using a text editor and knowing some filenames? I have other stuff to learn.

    --
    Why guess when you can know? Measure!
  20. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by kbrannen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't agree that replacing sysIV init is a good idea. All the arguments for that boil down to "not invented here".

    Why is it that so many tech people cannot let things that work well the fuck alone?

    +1 Wish I had mod points for that. It seems like so many people think mature software is bad or something. Sure, Sys-init/Upstart/whatever had its issues at times (and usually in very small ways), but there were solutions to those warts; it's just that no one really put all the parts together, or so it seems to me.

    I've had Systemd fail me in mysterious ways where the system refused to come up (1 I never figured out and solved by backing Systemd out), but I've never had Sys-init/Upstart/whatever fail to boot far enough I couldn't do something with it (and it fails me even in tiny ways so infrequently it's been years since that happened).

    To me as a *user*, Systemd feels like a solution in search of a problem. I know the distro/package maintainers like it because it creates less work for them, but I think this is a case where the distro/package maintainers have forgotten at least 1 of their goals: to make it easier on the user.

  21. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by MSG · · Score: 1

    One example:

    systemd keeps services (including user login sessions, which it treats the same way) as a group of processes, which the previous systems did not. When I stopped a service under SysV init, it would terminate the "main" process, but if that process had started children, they might not receive that signal. Thus, SysV init might leave some resources used, and attempting to start the service later might fail. systemd can reliably terminate a service and all its descendant processes.

    Furthermore, systemd can report the status of all of those processes in its "status" command, which SysV did not.

    systemctl can capture all of the output to stdout and stderr and collect those in logs that can be associated specifically with the service they came from, which SysV did not do. Troubleshooting services in SysV was sometimes more difficult because errors *were* printed by the service, but they were lost.

    systemd has so many advantages that when I try to describe one advantage, I describe three.

  22. If only systemd stopped there by raymorris · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The original purpose of systemd was to replace System V init.

    They did replace System V init, in a very non-Unix-like way, with a monolithic blob full of binary interfaces, Windows-style.

    They then continued to merge in more and more stuff, like a friggin DNS server. Had they stopped before replacing Network Manager with yet another integrated blob, systemd would just be a poorly thought out init system which is the opposite of the UNIX way of doing things. Since they didn't stop, but rather continue to merge more and more unrelated stuff, it's a real problem.

    1. Re:If only systemd stopped there by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      The original purpose of systemd was to replace System V init.

      No it wasn't. People just think it was because that's the first place they see it. Systemd's original purpose was the manage the system, with an event driven model. When you realise that you may actually understand the project a bit better.

    2. Re:If only systemd stopped there by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      "They did replace System V init, in a very non-Unix-like way, with a monolithic blob full of binary interfaces" - aaahhh... the old redefinition of the word "monolith" ploy to suit an incorrect assertion

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    3. Re: If only systemd stopped there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      False, systemd's primary purpose was indeed to provide a replacement Linux init system. The rest of it is just a tangle of rabid feeping creatures.

    4. Re:If only systemd stopped there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How are there so many morons making these and "ad hominem" comments today?

      Did you never look up the definition of monolithic software? Let alone Unix design principles?

    5. Re:If only systemd stopped there by strikethree · · Score: 1

      The fact that "they" think SystemD should be a package manager too kind of tells you their thought processes on all of this: The Unix way is not their way so they will eventually make EVERYTHING their way and there will be no more Unix.

      Not that I particularly care about the Unix way, but it is arguably more "philosophically" correct than the SystemD way. Furthermore, if I disagreed so vehemently in the underlying logic of an environment I was in, I would go create my own environment rather than try to subvert the current environment. To me, SystemD is disgusting on many levels.

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  23. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by gweihir · · Score: 4, Informative

    I had systemd run maybe for a combined 10h so far, in a number of new installations. Nothing but problems. Even the one where I originally thought I could leave it in (Orange Pi zero), it caused serious problems and ripping it just out for sysIV init was far easier than to track down and solve its obscure issues.

    It is like Windows: Unless you do exactly what the "developers" ("cretins" would be a more appropriate term...) expect, it falls flat on its face and it is maximally unhelpful when you try to find out what is wrong. That is not anything I will tolerate in a Linux installation.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  24. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by gweihir · · Score: 2

    +1 Wish I had mod points for that.

    Thanks!

    It seems like so many people think mature software is bad or something.

    It does indeed. Must be some deranged idea about "old"="bad".

    To me as a *user*, Systemd feels like a solution in search of a problem. I know the distro/package maintainers like it because it creates less work for them, but I think this is a case where the distro/package maintainers have forgotten at least 1 of their goals: to make it easier on the user.

    This often happens when the original creators move out and the 2nd rated people take over: They think they can do better than the original creators and usually they mess it up because they completely overlook fundamental things like this. "Linux is about freedom" very much means it lets you tinker with it and all things that can reasonably be made relatively easy to change, are. sysIV init has that. The systemD people do not even seem to be aware of the idea.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  25. packaging system by Spazmania · · Score: 1

    Okay, great for ditching systemd but why did we need yet another packaging system? Was something wrong with dpkg or rpm? Maybe you wouldn't need so many packagers if you could leverage the scripts already written for rpm and deb derived systems?

    --
    Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    1. Re:packaging system by Artemis3 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Artix Linux is an Arch Linux derivative, and it uses the same package system as Arch does. If you want the Debian derivative, that's called Devuan.

      --
      Artix
      Your Linux, your init.
  26. Y E S by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    M a k e
    L i n u x
    G r e a t
    A g a i n

  27. Why? Because systemd is bad. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    https://systemd-free.artixlinux.org/why.php

  28. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow. NIH? You really know nothing at all about three whole init system and the drive to change it. I mean we knew that before to a degree but we had no idea your ignorance runs so deep.

    NIH! Guess we better replace it... With something else NIH. Up above you said you're a scientist. How did you manage that when your brain comes up with these though processes?

  29. sadly slashdot isn't working in firefox by MrBrklyn · · Score: 1

    I can't read on the comments any longer accept in chrome. I thought it might be noscript, evidently there is something more fundamentally wrong. I only see about 3 comments, and nothing else is coming down. It is now unusable,

    --
    http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
    1. Re:sadly slashdot isn't working in firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, like many sites Slashdot is designed for users who have accounts and who login with cookies and javascript enabled.

      To get around this, in Noscript, allow "slashdot.org" and "fsdn.com," and a slider will appear on the right side of the "Post/Load All Comments" bar. Click on "Load All Comments" and move pointers on the slider all the way to the right. All comments should be fully visible now.

  30. Just port NetBSD's pkgsrc. by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

    NetBSD's pkgsrc collection has been designed to be portable. I believe it's already been ported to Slackware, and Solaris and other OSes.

    The tools exist to just import it into this new Linux flavor.

    Or if you're just trying to escape systemD madness, just use NetBSD. Or one of the other freenix choices that already has a package system built for it.

  31. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by MrBrklyn · · Score: 2

    >>It replaces SysV init.

    No - it replaced all the core OS functionality. If it just replaced SysV there would have been some grumbling, but not all the outright hostility.

    --
    http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
  32. systemd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Looking at the comments I can see why, I guess choice is just to much for some people.

  33. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by MrBrklyn · · Score: 1

    systemd keeps services (including user login sessions, which it treats the same way) as a group of processes, which the previous systems did not. When I stopped a service under SysV init, it would terminate the "main" process, but if that process had started children, they might not receive that signal. Thus, SysV init might leave some resources used, and attempting to start the service later might fail. systemd can reliably terminate a service and all its descendant processes.>>

    Systemd did not invent that, and it doesn't do it very well. Cascade affects like that usually screw users, like when you're database is turned off by a failed webserver, and then your LDAP, which also might depend on the database service doesn't work and you can't then log in.

    Regardless, this kind of dependency was not invented by systemd, and is capable of being done by a variety of system, no of which also take over logins, counsels, and journals.

    My favorite of course, is logind, which is totally broken in systemd.

    --
    http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
  34. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by MSG · · Score: 0

    More ad hominem attacks on developers. I don't think you're going to sway any opinions today.

  35. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > easier than to track down

    Since systemd swallows log messages, it's very hard to trackdown problems. It just sucks when you run something by hand and see a clear error message while systemd logs nothing. systemd makes it much harder to trackdown problems.

  36. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by MSG · · Score: 1, Insightful

    like when you're database is turned off by a failed webserver

    I'm not talking about dependencies, I'm talking about process groups. Your database is almost certainly not started by your web server, or by the web server service. It's not part of the same process group.

    I'm starting to get the impression that you don't understand how these things work.

  37. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by greenwow · · Score: 1

    > like logs that aren't human-readable

    I don't have a problem with journalctl and binary logs since they're more efficient and easier to filter by unit. My problem is when you have log messages that don't make it to the journal. That makes it much hard to troubleshoot problems.

  38. Re: This is a self-inflicted problem by MrBrklyn · · Score: 1

    What Linux needs is a good App Store. >

    Shirly you Gest

    --
    http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
  39. How to donate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I haven't used Artix-Linux, but I truly appreciate what they are doing.

    I am willing to donate and I hope my donation can encourage them (and others) to continue what they are doing, and that it further.

    So, is there a place I can donate to those wonderful folks?

  40. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The systemd "developers" and dishonest systemd "marketers" have wasted millions of hours of other people's time for very little in return. Being pissed off is an entirely appropriate response.

    e.g. I just love the way they dishonestly claim shell scripting is messed up compared to the systemd configuration language. Hundreds of arbitrary new keywords and file names to replace what the command line already does. Bizarre and arbitrary syntax (no true line continuation? ExecStartPre?). Arbitrary, undocumented timeouts everywhere. Not to mention the hand-wavy, thoughtless and largely undocumented dependency management that is so easy to break. Systemd configuration even has the direct equivalent of "come-from" as well as "go-to". I never expected to see that in a serious, recent, real-world language.

    Please understand, I like structured dependency management (I use "make" and similar tools all the time) but the systemd implementation is awful. I suspect that the developers were out of their depth. Probably not formally trained.

    And to add insult to injury they create voluminous documentation that superficially looks good but is actually of low value. It's similar to Microsoft documentation - written by documentation specialists who aren't developers and don't don't really understand what they're writing about. It's missing key information eg. the way systemd will *silently* kill running daemons after a while (ie. after you've checked to make sure they're running ok).because a traditional daemon doesn't behave precisely the way egotistical systemd developers think it should. So much for declarative process management. These are just some of the hundreds of problems I've had with systemd.

    I have no connection with the OP. I just agree with them.

  41. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    All the arguments for that boil down to "not invented here".

    So you are very clearly ignorant of the arguments then. Especially since many of the systemd replacements which by your assertion were NIH were actually replaced by something else NIH.

    Why is it that so many tech people cannot let things that work well the fuck alone?

    When you show us something that works well we will. But I understand why you are unable to comprehend this question given your total ignorance of why sysvinit was replaced (not just by systemd but by various attempts by various projects over the years).

    gweihir: Claims to be a scientist, but turns out to be just a knight who saaaaaays NIH!

  42. Re: This is a self-inflicted problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just wait until Redhat or Pottering have another of their brilliant ideas to fuck up the linux ecosystem in their sole benefit.

  43. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    SysVInit worked fine for me, and no it doesn't boot slower.

    Lets leave aside that this wasn't the reason for getting rid of it, but given your assertion that it doesn't boot slower is actually easily proven false in any benchmark and even when you conceptually think about the approach of sysvinit vs all the other systems that attempted to replace it, why did you decide to post this? Why make the opening sentence of your argument not only irrelevant but something very easily proven false? Anyway lets look at the rest:

    See what systemD does if you've got stuff waiting for network and for whatever reason there's no network or it's flakey. No warning at all - just no boot, or eventually a boot with no warning.

    "Dear user: I'm still working on this problem" I guess you prefer a completely dumb senseless warning compared to waiting for the boot order to complete? Or maybe you prefer the sysvinit approach where half the services end up in a failed or various other states.

    See what systemd does about share mounting in fstab or even the .share way.

    The perfectly sane thing. Boot to emergency console when a core system partition failed to mount. Worried about something non-core or network related? Why would you automount it through fstab rather than listing a mount requirement in the systemd unit file?

    Why do I have to learn it's log and status tools after already having had to learn the other way of just using a text editor and knowing some filenames? I have other stuff to learn.

    Well if learning a single command is hard for you ... you don't. You can simply install syslog and go back to the way you were doing it years ago. The only downside is that you actually get more information in syslog now since it will show logs from before syslogd actually starts. Did I say downside? I meant upside. Do you know how to use apt to install a syslog daemon or do you want that spoon fed to you too?

  44. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    I had systemd run maybe for a combined 10h so far

    Wow we have an expert here!

    Nothing but problems.

    Given your inability to get it working vs the literally countless cases where it works just fine as a scientists and an engineer I am beginning to see a common trend in all your systemd installations.

    It is like Windows: Unless you do exactly what the "developers" ("cretins" would be a more appropriate term...) expect

    Funny most people don't have problems with Windows either. I was about to say maybe this Linux thing is too complicated for you, but really maybe you should stop using computers altogether.

  45. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    It seems like so many people think mature software is bad or something.

    No one thinks that. People who don't see problems and are affected by solutions will often refuse to understand the problems experienced in the first place.

    Sure, Sys-init/Upstart/whatever had its issues at times (and usually in very small ways), but there were solutions to those warts

    The solution was bolting together a frankenstein's monster of a mess that didn't solve the underlying issue. You wouldn't be talking about the benefit of bandaids and patchwork while shitting on Windows, so why do you think it's a good idea on a piece of linux software? Biased?

    it's just that no one really put all the parts together

    People have put these parts together in the past and they have broken in some horrible ways. Fundamentally shoehorning a modern event based requirement into the linear mishmash of scripts that is sysvinit didn't work. (not didn't work well, just flat out didn't solve the problems).

    I've had Systemd fail me in mysterious ways where the system refused to come up

    Yes that happened a lot in the early days of people setting up systems by treating systemd as something that executes a mishmash of scripts rather than actually using the features it has to solve a problem, distribution packagers have long since gotten past this. If your system is failing to boot then it's a good time to bust out the manual and find out what you've done wrong.

    but I've never had Sys-init/Upstart/whatever fail to boot far enough I couldn't do something with it

    Define something, if your kernel is up, systemd will at the very least get you to a console. Are you expecting a fully functional system after a failed boot?

    To me as a *user*, Systemd feels like a solution in search of a problem.

    A user of what? Users come in various flavours. A user of a server that boots up and then hums away in a corner for the next year would come to that conclusion. A user of a laptop who's system is in a completely broken state due sleeping and waking on different networks on the other hand will likely have a different conclusion. If you want a list of problems with sysvinit go to the debian mailing list. They were discussed in great detail along with why systemd was chosen.

    forgotten at least 1 of their goals: to make it easier on the user

    Funny, I find it much easier to work with systemd than I ever did with long list of initscript, symbolic links, PID files, and the inevitable orphaned processes.

  46. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Barsteward · · Score: 1

    "I had systemd run maybe for a combined 10h so far, in a number of new installations. Nothing but problems. " ROFL, bad workman blames his tools - there are plenty out there who have working systems.

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  47. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Barsteward · · Score: 1

    ROFLMAO - it you are going to troll, find something that is vaguely true

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  48. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Barsteward · · Score: 0

    "I'm starting to get the impression that you don't understand how these things work." - this is the case for ALL anti-systemd posters, they regurgitate clueless old posts from trolls most of the time

    --
    "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
  49. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More ad hominem attacks on developers. I don't think you're going to sway any opinions today.

    Well, rational arguments didn't work so he might just as well try.

  50. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by DCFusor · · Score: 1
    An apologist, I see. Good for you and your use case. I don't care what your benchmarks say on your config, I have my own. Did it occur to you that the corner cases handled poorly by systemd might vary from setup to setup, or to read my multiply stated contention that it's good for one big deployment of the same thing, but horrible for those who customize machine by machine (eg not RH's $upport income providers)? Evidently not.
    .

    Work on the problem BEFORE you release something that'll be shoved down my throat and break things, please. Arrogant much?
    .

    Why should I have to write different error detection and fallback code every release of this crap?
    .

    No, it doesn't boot the console for me when a share (for example a NAS) didn't come up in time. It just hangs for quite some time, then fails (which is all it can do). If it did go to console it'd be kind of a mess for a physically hard to get to headless box (say a raspberry pi in the fusion lab).
    .

    Learning a single command? I count at least systemctl, journalctl, a few new directory layouts for service spec files, the formats of those which vary between some daemons and some mounts and it seems, on and on. As for a single command, I'd bet you can't even quote what all the options to rsync do...or know every file spec you'd put into it to backup a config without just doing every file on the box and failing because of the odd special file. Give me a break, single command.
    .

    Hint - I've been programming longer than IC's and most modern languages have existed- from the metal on up, including realtime embedded opsys when necessary as they didn't exist yet. These are the complaints of a newbie who only knows one system or language.

    --
    Why guess when you can know? Measure!
  51. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    systemd keeps services (including user login sessions, which it treats the same way) as a group of processes, which the previous systems did not.

    pgroups are manipulated with simple commands, and this could have been done in the init script includes. This does not justify systemd.

    systemctl can capture all of the output to stdout and stderr and collect those in logs that can be associated specifically with the service they came from, which SysV did not do.

    What? Who told you that? Of course you can do that with sysvinit. You do it in the init scripts.

    systemd has so many advantages that when I try to describe one advantage, I describe three.

    Get back to us when you come up with something you can't do in an init script.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  52. Re: This is a self-inflicted problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What Linux needs are good GUI tools for journalctl and systemd.

  53. systemd: the good stuff by emil · · Score: 2

    I agree with you that far too little effort has been extended in pushing systemd concepts as standards outside Linux, and the scope has been distressingly ambitious.

    Still, systemd is a great improvement over the respawn behavior of inittab, allowing me to drop root privilege, set environment variables, chroot(), all combined with restart supervision. Yes, there are likely many other programs that do this, but respawn is SysV's job, and it should be more flexible. As it stands, when I have to do this, I write a bunch of shims either with shell scripts or custom C, and I've had do it on a wide variety of legacy operating systems.

    The inetd.conf also benefits from most of these new features, although I uncovered a bug with socket activation and chroot() that I was able to work around that has since been fixed.

    Improvements to respawn and inetd are the killer features for me, and give me things that simply cannot be done with standard tools on other POSIX-focused operating systems.

    SysV init should be extended to cover these uses, and I would feel more nostalgic for it were new versions to emerge.

    1. Re:systemd: the good stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry for arriving late at the party.

      ... Yes, there are likely many other programs that do this, but respawn is SysV's job, and it should be more flexible. ...

      This is a common mistake. Respawning is and never was SysV's job.

  54. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by gweihir · · Score: 1

    I suspect that the developers were out of their depth. Probably not formally trained.

    Same here. Or they failed to learn anything from their formal training. They are clearly inexperienced and have no business working on such a critical component. Now, I would not mind if systemd had remained their obscure hobbyist project. I do mind that the most efficient way to deal with their crap is to rip it out and that I have to do that on basically any new Linux installation I make.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  55. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Nice. And empty, probably much like your head. Makes it easy to just discount anything you say as less than worthless.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  56. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Oh, I am using good tools. And I do insist on good tools. After some evaluation I just found that systemd was not a good tool from available evidence. Not that this was any surprise, that it is pretty bad was clear from a purely theoretical appreciation.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  57. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by gweihir · · Score: 1

    Funny how so many people run into things in actual reality that according to you are "not true". You are just a liar.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  58. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by MSG · · Score: 1

    Well, one of the problems with init scripts is that they weren't consistent, so while it's possible to capture all output to the logs using "2>&1 | logger", I never actually saw an init script do that.

    So, a) common init scripts didn't do what you're saying they "could", and b) even if some of them did, it wasn't something you could rely on as a standard. Logging output is standard under systemd.

    The same applies to process groups. Under bash, you could probably "(set -m; exec $daemon) & echo $! > /var/run/pids/$service" or something, but have you ever seen that? Not to mention that you still wouldn't make use of cgroups, and your login processes wouldn't be grouping user sessions.

  59. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He swayed me. I will continue to shun systemd.

  60. Re:This is a self-inflicted problem by sconeu · · Score: 1

    Now that systemd needs to be complete is a good init system.

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  61. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by thegarbz · · Score: 1

    Funny. My empty head can use systemd without problems. Maybe it's just too complicated for you :-P

  62. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    SysVInit worked fine for me, and no it doesn't boot slower.

    Lets leave aside that this wasn't the reason for getting rid of it, ...

    You are simply talking Scheiße here. It was one of Lenny's favorites.

  63. Re:This is a self-inflicted problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Once systemd achieves its ultimate goal of moving every available service and user application into a single executable, distros aren't even going to need "packages" anymore.

    The system should be called SystemDOS.

  64. mmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    mmmm yes, fragmentation. me rikey!

  65. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

    Could you describe some of the problems you've run into? I've been steadily migrating all our many dozens of VMs to Centos 7 and I can't say that I've run into one single problem that was caused by systemd.

    I've had far more problems getting sssd working right than I have systemd.

  66. Right or wrong, if you want MS Office, use Office by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > Not that I particularly care about the Unix way, but it is arguably more "philosophically" correct

    I suppose the UNIX way works really well for some things and the Windows way works well for some things.

    The UNIX way scales very nicely from IOT to supercomputers h all, or almost all, supercomputers use Linux or another *nix. Most corporate desktops use Windows. So it seems they each have a niche or two.

    The thing is, if you want to do things the Windows way, to have a 2GB or 4GB piece of software that has a thousand different functions, there is an operating system designed for people who like the Windows way. That OS is called Windows. Microsoft makes plenty of applications, such as MS Office, that have hundreds or thousands of different functions buried three levels deep in menus and two levels of dialog boxes. That's how Windows programmers and users like things to be done.

    On UNIX, we have wc, which is separate from sort, from grep, from cat, from cut. If you want to count how many entries have the word "Slashdot" in them, on Unix you pipe grep (search) into wc (count). One program searches, a different program counts. That's the UNIX way. We don't build a separate program for "count how many URLs are from Slashdot", we combine the two small existing tools with a pipe.

    If you want a system where you have to download a "count how many of the URLs are from Slashdot" program, you want Windows. That's not how *nix works.

  67. Re:Right or wrong, if you want MS Office, use Offi by strikethree · · Score: 1

    Not that I particularly care about the Unix way, but it is arguably more "philosophically" correct

    The UNIX way scales very nicely from IOT to supercomputers h all, or almost all, supercomputers use Linux or another *nix.

    That is a very nice illustration of the Unix Way being arguably more correct. Thank you. :)

    --
    "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  68. Certainly more flexible. Different learning curve by raymorris · · Score: 1

    That's certainly an example of how it's more flexible.
    On the other hand, menus allow an inexperienced user to keep exploring until they find what they're looking for (assuming the function exists). Combining small programs means you kinda have to learn what the building-blocks are and figure out how to combine them.

    One big app with all the functions built into menus is probably the right choice for the UI of an ATM. To withdraw money you'd rather have a wizard than type commands. That works well when there are a limited number of options (withdrawal, deposit, check balance) and the user uses it infrequently. On the other hand, on a system you use all day, every day, it's worthwhile learning some commands and how to combine them to do whatever you want.

  69. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The EL6 SysV init scripts use cgroups by default, via the standard daemon() init script shell function. What you're describing is not something that is not possible or hard to do with SysV init, but something that was already the standard on Redhat's SysV init before systemd came along. Basically, every argument I have seen for systemd seem to boil down to claiming "init didn't do X / couldn't do X / it was too hard to do X" when it did by default.

    "Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it, poorly"

  70. Re:This is a self-inflicted problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > The system should be called SystemDOS.

    Or "Poetterix"

  71. Re:Educate me: What does systemd provide/do by MSG · · Score: 1

    Spot-checked a CentOS 6 system, and here's what I found:

    No services appear to log stdout and stderr to logger. Anything output is printed on the console. If you're not physically at the console, that output is lost.

    The "daemon" function does call cgexec if it is installed, but cgexec is not installed by default.

    Numerous services don't use the "daemon" function, including mysqld, postfix, and sshd.

    So, as I said: systemd does things *by default* that the older init system didn't. Not couldn't. It's possible to do some of those things, but making a large collection of shell scripts consistent is hard, and keeping them consistent over time is harder.