It depends whether you are looking at correlation or causation. Say, for example, that men not only die earlier than women, they are also more likely to smoke than women. In this case, smoking is the cause of early death, not being a man. So the answer there is to charge smokers more than non-smokers.
For one thing contributing to a project like that is a massive commitment
Sure, that's totally understandable. But there are people who have enough time to fork entire distros, like Devaun... So while you could make that argument on an individual basis, you can't honestly say that "only the people who like systemd's philosophy have time to contribute to systemd".
but more to the point the poster is fundamentally opposed to the underlying philosophy of Systemd.
That's fair too, but that's life. Sometimes you have to deal with things you are fundamentally opposed to. As long as that's the position someone is going to take, they shouldn't really expect things to change. Again, self-fulfilling prophecy.
But there's a lot of people, at least on message boards, who are extremely skeptical of the change.
Great. But how is someone like me supposed to weigh these posts on message boards against the fact that the major distro I use switched? Skeptics demand to see the evidence. To me, the fact that the major distros have adopted systemd is strong evidence that it is probably better. Is it definitive? Of course not, but when compared to "posts on message boards"... I mean, seriously? There are message boards where people think the world is flat, I'm not throwing out my globe any time soon.
I know it's "argument from authority", but I don't have anything else to work with except my own experience which supports the same conclusion.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you have so many examples that you "don't know where to start", then start anywhere. You don't have to come at me with the best, most perfect example. Any example will do! I'm actually very interested. And I have, out of curiosity, looked a bit. But like you looking for why systemd is better, I came across a similar problem.
Your reply just continues the cycle I spoke of, where people who potentially know better than me, like you, claim there are problems but expect me to go looking for them myself. I don't have the expertise about OS development to make an informed decision about these issues that go way over my head. All I can do is look at my experience as a user, which has been perfectly fine.
I do agree, in principle, that the onus is on the devs of systemd to justify its existence. But Debian switched over to systemd and since I use Debian, so did I. That's it. Who am I to argue with the Debian devs about what's best for their distro? Why would I switch to a less supported distro when I have no reason to? You're probably right in that I'm not using systemd to do much, so I haven't come across the major issues other people have. But that's exactly why you have to tell me what they are.
That's why I made the argument that "the market has spoken". It is about marketing, and the anti-systemd cohort has failed to market its arguments towards people like me. And the fact that major distros who switched to systemd have not seen their usage plummet in favor of ones that didn't proves it. If you're not going to make an effort for people like me to understand your position, then neither should I.
What exactly am I supposed to understand from your story? That people sometimes have technical issues? Great, thanks for that revelation.
Oh, and you, parent poster, are so out of touch [...]
Lol, pretty sure I said as much in my post. I am out of touch. I am not involved in the Linux development process in any way. As I said in my post, it's just a tool.
That's like saying I'm out of touch because I use a Dewalt drill but wasn't involved with designing the motor that went inside it. Well no fucking shit. Meanwhile you're bitching that older Dewalt drills had better motors... Well guess what? I don't care, because it drill fucking drills stuff!
[...] you must be paid to write what you wrote
Are you serious? Who would pay me, and why? I have news for you: systemd has won already. No one needs to pay anyone to do shit. You honestly think someone out there cares enough about your opinion that they paid me to make that post to convince you to use systemd? Get over yourself.
But seriously, if you know someone who would pay, I don't mind making extra money for posts I was going to make anyway.
Also, are you paying by the period? Is that why you use them so sparingly?
Thank you! Finally someone actually outlines specific issues instead of just complaining.
But I have to say, I'm using Jessie and I have not experienced any of the problems you have cited... When I kill a process, it gets killed. When I reboot or shutdown, it reboots or shuts down. When I mount/unmount something, it gets mounted/unmounted. The other stuff I can't speak to.
Just my $0.02 as well. Not a 25-year Linux admin, I've run my own server for ~5 years, so I didn't have that much experience before the changeover happened.
Can I ask, why don't you and other admins/devs like you start to contribute to systemd? Obviously there are huge philosophical differences between the systemd devs and parts of the Linux community, but if people like you never get involved in systemd development because of those issues, can you really expect them to change? It's like people who don't vote because they think their vote doesn't matter... it's a self fulfilling prophecy.
I mean, part of the process of development in general is that different people working on the project have different philosophies, but that tension between them (should) ultimately produce a better result than each individually would. It seems like, from my perspective as a semi-outside observer, that neither side is willing to compromise at all. That just drives the two even further apart as the dev teams become more monolithic in their philosophy... And I'm just left in the middle like, WTF?
I didn't even know systemd existed until I updated from Squeeze to Jessie and found that "service apache2 restart" didn't work. Once I got around the growing pains of learning a few new commands, that was it. It's not like I was like "ZOMG gotta get me some systemd!"
I'm not having any problems with systemd, so why would I switch to a smaller, less supported distro to avoid it? That just opens me up to a huge swath of potential issues that I don't even want to think about. And what's the reason, because people on forums are complaining? Because binary log files break the UNIX philosophy? I don't think you should be that surprised when I say that I really don't care.
I agree. TFA reads like "We are having development issues, therefore systemd sucks."
Welcome to development. I have yet to find a platform, library, language, etc. that doesn't have annoyances and issues, including huge ones. And switching to an updated version of something can be a huge pain in the ass. But that's what we get paid for.
There are tons of examples where being too strongly married to backwards compatibility has been a major issue. Sometimes you just gotta cut the umbilical cord.
Yeah, yeah I know the history of its development and how log files are binary and the whole debug kernel flag fiasco. And I don't care. By the time I used systemd, that had already long passed.
I switched from Squeeze to Jessie a couple years ago, had some growing pains as I learned how to use systemd... but that was it. No stability issues, no bugs. Can't say whether things run better, but they definitely don't run worse.
I had only really been using Linux for a few years before the onset of systemd, and honestly I think that's part of the problem. People who complain about systemd the most seem to have been using Linux for a very long time and just "don't want to change". Whether its nostalgia or sunk-cost fallacy, I can't say, but beyond that it seems much more like a philosophical difference than a practical one. It just reminds me of people's refusal to use the metric system, for no better reason than they are unfamiliar with it.
If systemd is so terrible, then why did a lot of the major distros switch over? If they didn't, it would just be a footnote in the history of open source: "Hey remember when they tried to replace sysV and init with that stupid thing with the binary log files? What was it called? SystemP?" The fact that Devaun has not overtaken Debian in any real way (at least from what I've seen, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) indicates that my experience with systemd is the norm, not the exception. The market has spoken.
I read TFA, there is not one single specific bug or instability mentioned about systemd. What is the "tiny detail" that split the community? I have no idea, because TFA doesn't say what it is. I know that part of the philosophy behind Linux is "figuring it out yourself", but if you don't explain to me these low level kernel details (if that's even what they are; again, I have no idea), then don't expect people like me to be on your side. Linux is just a tool to me, I don't have any emotional attachment to it, so if things are working OK I am not going to start poking around under the hood just because someone posts an article claiming there are problems, but never specifying what those problems are and how they affect me as a user.
Honestly TFA reads like "We are having development problems, therefore systemd sucks." I get that when major changes to the platform happens there are going to be issues and annoyances, but that's the way software development has always been and will always be. Even if systemd was perfect there would still be all kinds of compatibility issues and new conventions that developers would have to adapt to. That's what I would expect to happen whenever any major change is made to a widely used and versatile platform like Linux.
"I don't actually have any particularly strong opinions on systemd itself. I've had issues with some of the core developers that I think are much too cavalier about bugs and compatibility, and I think some of the design details are insane (I dislike the binary logs, for example), but those are details, not big issues."
I'm not saying systemd is "better" or "the right answer". If you want to stick to distros that don't use it, that's up to you. But what I am saying is, get over it.
So I question the plausibility of your conclusion that it's more likely a good person will find them first than bad.
It's borne out by the historical evidence, especially the 2 examples cited by the GP. Many of the examples where exploits are known by bad guys for a long time are in closed source, e.g. the Windows exploits from the Shadow Broker releases that allowed WannaCry to take down the UK's National Health Service.
What the Shellshock and Heartbleed bugs have proven is exactly the opposite of what you are saying. If they occurred in closed source software they would have never been found. Or they may be found but kept secret because it cost money to fix. Or they may be found but only the "currently supported" versions are patched, and people with old versions are just told to fork out more money to upgrade.
The name of the game is not there will never be vulnerabilities in the code. The name of the game is whether those vulnerabilities will be found by good people before they are found by bad people. Since good people outnumber bad people, the more people in general who can look at the code the better the chances are that a good person finds the problem first.
Shellshock, for example, was known by nobody (effectively) until it was discovered, patched, and reported. It was only then that a bunch of bad people started to try to exploit it.
No, but the FTC does in certain cases. Video game reviewers, for example, have very specific and strict rules about what they must disclose. For example, if a review copy of the game was provided by a developer/publisher, they must say so at the beginning of the video. It's a fairly recent development, from what I understand.
Once lost it cannot be recovered. At least cash can be found and used.
If everyone in (e.g.) the United States withdrew all the "cash" in their bank accounts, there would not be enough physical currency to cover them. The entire monetary system would collapse. In other words, there is more "virtual cash" than "physical cash" in existence.
Plus the only people making any money are the ones who got in early. That's a pyramid scheme.
Pretty much how the economy in general works nowadays. That's why all these fat cats at Goldman Sachs, etc. are upset: "How dare other people make shit-loads of money contributing nothing useful to the economy!? That's OUR thing!"
Didn't you hear? Flat Earth Theory was started by NASA and the ATC to keep you from finding the real truth: Great Ice Ball Earth Theory. Get woke sheeples!
So, tell me all about your experiences with small local ISPs and how they aren't at all concerned with federal regulations that prevent them from shaping their traffic.
Please, tell me yours. Because in none of your comments have you actually backed up this assertion. Name the ISP, and provide a source that shows they are particularly concerned about regulations against shaping traffic based on content, not just regulations in general.
Yes, I am entitled to use the bandwidth I have bought from my ISP to access whatever sites I want. Just like I am entitled to use the electricity I buy from the power company to power whatever I want. I'm entitled because I paid for it. That's what Capitalism is, comrade.
What you're basically saying is the power company should be able to cut my electricity because I plugged in a particular brand of toaster.
ISP's can already (and do, obviously) manage network resources by customer. So if all their customers are using 90% of their bandwidth to watch Netflix, then what exactly is the problem?
How dare people use 90% of the internet to do 90% of what they do on the internet!
Slashdot Mirror
It's OK, I already think cops are way better than priests.
It depends whether you are looking at correlation or causation. Say, for example, that men not only die earlier than women, they are also more likely to smoke than women. In this case, smoking is the cause of early death, not being a man. So the answer there is to charge smokers more than non-smokers.
Okay, it was technically a lie.
Most statements 'technically' are...
Water boils at 100degC: True or False?
For one thing contributing to a project like that is a massive commitment
Sure, that's totally understandable. But there are people who have enough time to fork entire distros, like Devaun... So while you could make that argument on an individual basis, you can't honestly say that "only the people who like systemd's philosophy have time to contribute to systemd".
but more to the point the poster is fundamentally opposed to the underlying philosophy of Systemd.
That's fair too, but that's life. Sometimes you have to deal with things you are fundamentally opposed to. As long as that's the position someone is going to take, they shouldn't really expect things to change. Again, self-fulfilling prophecy.
But there's a lot of people, at least on message boards, who are extremely skeptical of the change.
Great. But how is someone like me supposed to weigh these posts on message boards against the fact that the major distro I use switched? Skeptics demand to see the evidence. To me, the fact that the major distros have adopted systemd is strong evidence that it is probably better. Is it definitive? Of course not, but when compared to "posts on message boards"... I mean, seriously? There are message boards where people think the world is flat, I'm not throwing out my globe any time soon.
I know it's "argument from authority", but I don't have anything else to work with except my own experience which supports the same conclusion.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you have so many examples that you "don't know where to start", then start anywhere. You don't have to come at me with the best, most perfect example. Any example will do! I'm actually very interested. And I have, out of curiosity, looked a bit. But like you looking for why systemd is better, I came across a similar problem.
Your reply just continues the cycle I spoke of, where people who potentially know better than me, like you, claim there are problems but expect me to go looking for them myself. I don't have the expertise about OS development to make an informed decision about these issues that go way over my head. All I can do is look at my experience as a user, which has been perfectly fine.
I do agree, in principle, that the onus is on the devs of systemd to justify its existence. But Debian switched over to systemd and since I use Debian, so did I. That's it. Who am I to argue with the Debian devs about what's best for their distro? Why would I switch to a less supported distro when I have no reason to? You're probably right in that I'm not using systemd to do much, so I haven't come across the major issues other people have. But that's exactly why you have to tell me what they are.
That's why I made the argument that "the market has spoken". It is about marketing, and the anti-systemd cohort has failed to market its arguments towards people like me. And the fact that major distros who switched to systemd have not seen their usage plummet in favor of ones that didn't proves it. If you're not going to make an effort for people like me to understand your position, then neither should I.
Except I am, right here, right now.
What exactly am I supposed to understand from your story? That people sometimes have technical issues? Great, thanks for that revelation.
Oh, and you, parent poster, are so out of touch [...]
Lol, pretty sure I said as much in my post. I am out of touch. I am not involved in the Linux development process in any way. As I said in my post, it's just a tool.
That's like saying I'm out of touch because I use a Dewalt drill but wasn't involved with designing the motor that went inside it. Well no fucking shit. Meanwhile you're bitching that older Dewalt drills had better motors... Well guess what? I don't care, because it drill fucking drills stuff!
[...] you must be paid to write what you wrote
Are you serious? Who would pay me, and why? I have news for you: systemd has won already. No one needs to pay anyone to do shit. You honestly think someone out there cares enough about your opinion that they paid me to make that post to convince you to use systemd? Get over yourself.
But seriously, if you know someone who would pay, I don't mind making extra money for posts I was going to make anyway.
Also, are you paying by the period? Is that why you use them so sparingly?
Thank you! Finally someone actually outlines specific issues instead of just complaining.
But I have to say, I'm using Jessie and I have not experienced any of the problems you have cited... When I kill a process, it gets killed. When I reboot or shutdown, it reboots or shuts down. When I mount/unmount something, it gets mounted/unmounted. The other stuff I can't speak to.
Just my $0.02 as well. Not a 25-year Linux admin, I've run my own server for ~5 years, so I didn't have that much experience before the changeover happened.
Can I ask, why don't you and other admins/devs like you start to contribute to systemd? Obviously there are huge philosophical differences between the systemd devs and parts of the Linux community, but if people like you never get involved in systemd development because of those issues, can you really expect them to change? It's like people who don't vote because they think their vote doesn't matter... it's a self fulfilling prophecy.
I mean, part of the process of development in general is that different people working on the project have different philosophies, but that tension between them (should) ultimately produce a better result than each individually would. It seems like, from my perspective as a semi-outside observer, that neither side is willing to compromise at all. That just drives the two even further apart as the dev teams become more monolithic in their philosophy... And I'm just left in the middle like, WTF?
I didn't even know systemd existed until I updated from Squeeze to Jessie and found that "service apache2 restart" didn't work. Once I got around the growing pains of learning a few new commands, that was it. It's not like I was like "ZOMG gotta get me some systemd!"
I'm not having any problems with systemd, so why would I switch to a smaller, less supported distro to avoid it? That just opens me up to a huge swath of potential issues that I don't even want to think about. And what's the reason, because people on forums are complaining? Because binary log files break the UNIX philosophy? I don't think you should be that surprised when I say that I really don't care.
I agree. TFA reads like "We are having development issues, therefore systemd sucks."
Welcome to development. I have yet to find a platform, library, language, etc. that doesn't have annoyances and issues, including huge ones. And switching to an updated version of something can be a huge pain in the ass. But that's what we get paid for.
There are tons of examples where being too strongly married to backwards compatibility has been a major issue. Sometimes you just gotta cut the umbilical cord.
Yeah, but Linux Is Not UniX, remember?
Yeah, yeah I know the history of its development and how log files are binary and the whole debug kernel flag fiasco. And I don't care. By the time I used systemd, that had already long passed.
I switched from Squeeze to Jessie a couple years ago, had some growing pains as I learned how to use systemd... but that was it. No stability issues, no bugs. Can't say whether things run better, but they definitely don't run worse.
I had only really been using Linux for a few years before the onset of systemd, and honestly I think that's part of the problem. People who complain about systemd the most seem to have been using Linux for a very long time and just "don't want to change". Whether its nostalgia or sunk-cost fallacy, I can't say, but beyond that it seems much more like a philosophical difference than a practical one. It just reminds me of people's refusal to use the metric system, for no better reason than they are unfamiliar with it.
If systemd is so terrible, then why did a lot of the major distros switch over? If they didn't, it would just be a footnote in the history of open source: "Hey remember when they tried to replace sysV and init with that stupid thing with the binary log files? What was it called? SystemP?" The fact that Devaun has not overtaken Debian in any real way (at least from what I've seen, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) indicates that my experience with systemd is the norm, not the exception. The market has spoken.
I read TFA, there is not one single specific bug or instability mentioned about systemd. What is the "tiny detail" that split the community? I have no idea, because TFA doesn't say what it is. I know that part of the philosophy behind Linux is "figuring it out yourself", but if you don't explain to me these low level kernel details (if that's even what they are; again, I have no idea), then don't expect people like me to be on your side. Linux is just a tool to me, I don't have any emotional attachment to it, so if things are working OK I am not going to start poking around under the hood just because someone posts an article claiming there are problems, but never specifying what those problems are and how they affect me as a user.
Honestly TFA reads like "We are having development problems, therefore systemd sucks." I get that when major changes to the platform happens there are going to be issues and annoyances, but that's the way software development has always been and will always be. Even if systemd was perfect there would still be all kinds of compatibility issues and new conventions that developers would have to adapt to. That's what I would expect to happen whenever any major change is made to a widely used and versatile platform like Linux.
Even Linus doesn't really care:
"I don't actually have any particularly strong opinions on systemd itself. I've had issues with some of the core developers that I think are much too cavalier about bugs and compatibility, and I think some of the design details are insane (I dislike the binary logs, for example), but those are details, not big issues."
I'm not saying systemd is "better" or "the right answer". If you want to stick to distros that don't use it, that's up to you. But what I am saying is, get over it.
If what you are saying is true, then please explain why major ISPs are in favor of eliminating NN?
So I question the plausibility of your conclusion that it's more likely a good person will find them first than bad.
It's borne out by the historical evidence, especially the 2 examples cited by the GP. Many of the examples where exploits are known by bad guys for a long time are in closed source, e.g. the Windows exploits from the Shadow Broker releases that allowed WannaCry to take down the UK's National Health Service.
What the Shellshock and Heartbleed bugs have proven is exactly the opposite of what you are saying. If they occurred in closed source software they would have never been found. Or they may be found but kept secret because it cost money to fix. Or they may be found but only the "currently supported" versions are patched, and people with old versions are just told to fork out more money to upgrade.
The name of the game is not there will never be vulnerabilities in the code. The name of the game is whether those vulnerabilities will be found by good people before they are found by bad people. Since good people outnumber bad people, the more people in general who can look at the code the better the chances are that a good person finds the problem first.
Shellshock, for example, was known by nobody (effectively) until it was discovered, patched, and reported. It was only then that a bunch of bad people started to try to exploit it.
No, but the FTC does in certain cases. Video game reviewers, for example, have very specific and strict rules about what they must disclose. For example, if a review copy of the game was provided by a developer/publisher, they must say so at the beginning of the video. It's a fairly recent development, from what I understand.
Here is an example.
Once lost it cannot be recovered. At least cash can be found and used.
If everyone in (e.g.) the United States withdrew all the "cash" in their bank accounts, there would not be enough physical currency to cover them. The entire monetary system would collapse. In other words, there is more "virtual cash" than "physical cash" in existence.
Plus the only people making any money are the ones who got in early. That's a pyramid scheme.
Pretty much how the economy in general works nowadays. That's why all these fat cats at Goldman Sachs, etc. are upset: "How dare other people make shit-loads of money contributing nothing useful to the economy!? That's OUR thing!"
So the USA destroyed 12 of its own satellites?
Didn't you hear? Flat Earth Theory was started by NASA and the ATC to keep you from finding the real truth: Great Ice Ball Earth Theory. Get woke sheeples!
There's a Russian pee tape joke in there somewhere...
Yep, that's what I said, totally.
I actually work for a small company who is trying to provide people in rural areas with Internet using distributed WiFi.
So yeah, go fuck yourself, but you'll have to wait for Comcast to pull out first.
So, tell me all about your experiences with small local ISPs and how they aren't at all concerned with federal regulations that prevent them from shaping their traffic.
Please, tell me yours. Because in none of your comments have you actually backed up this assertion. Name the ISP, and provide a source that shows they are particularly concerned about regulations against shaping traffic based on content, not just regulations in general.
Yes, I am entitled to use the bandwidth I have bought from my ISP to access whatever sites I want. Just like I am entitled to use the electricity I buy from the power company to power whatever I want. I'm entitled because I paid for it. That's what Capitalism is, comrade.
What you're basically saying is the power company should be able to cut my electricity because I plugged in a particular brand of toaster.
ISP's can already (and do, obviously) manage network resources by customer. So if all their customers are using 90% of their bandwidth to watch Netflix, then what exactly is the problem?
How dare people use 90% of the internet to do 90% of what they do on the internet!
Yeah, big corporations like Google and Netflix are bad!
I prefer little Mom 'n Pop corporations like Comcast and AT&T!
Thank you, ScentCone, for doing the bidding of two or three giant corporations (Comcast, AT&T, Time-Warner)! You're the best.
Pretty sure this is just a bug on slashdot. If you notice it within a thread, you can click the Parent link on one of the children, FYI.