11 ms·

Why Did It Take Devuan Two Years to Replace Systemd?

33 points by buttcake 9y ago

KirinDave 9y ago
I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. The initd-inspired community has resisted the push for declarative and component-based core system infrastructure for so long, and it's causing very strange distortions to the linux ecosystem as solutions get sought for the problems it introduces. Systemd, for all its flaws, fixes some very important problems that init and runit and similar systems left unsolved. It's complicated, but it's hard to argue it's unnecessarily so. We always end up at these tortured bike metaphors or some other garbage. There's a whole website devoted to criticisms and it feels like at least half of the site is devoted to this kind of baseless rhetoric. As far as I can tell, systemd is a holy war. It's the new editor debate. It's vi vs emacs vs sublime vs atom vs ... down throughout time, with people arguing where the tradeoff between simplicity of execution is more important than delivering a system people asked for.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  Those of us who have participated in past debates about systemd, I think, would know that there is more nuance here than talking heads give. I have heard plenty of reasoned thought about why systemd is bad and good, so please stop trying to make a holy war where one doesn't exist. Also, Emacs is clearly supeirior due to GPL license alone. Not to mention it's an OS in itself. GPLv3 is the future
- hackcasual 9y ago
  > complaints about its creator I've read many complaints and analysis about systemd, however it seems if they mention "Lennart Poettering" they are usually valueless rants.
- jjnoakes 9y ago
  I'm a proponent of declarative init systems, and I'm against systemd. I don't think getting into the specifics is going to be productive here, but I just wanted to point out that the debate shouldn't be framed as "systemd" vs "non-declarative init systems".
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    I am happy to consider other equally capable declarative systems, but they're not common.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  You might have missed this: https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/7/6/577 https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/7/6/577 Ted Ts'o: https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/EJrEuxjR65J https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/EJrEuxjR65J "For me a lot of "good taste" is about adding complexity when it's needed, and avoiding it when it's not needed. And if you do have complexity, making sure you have the tools so you can debug things when they break. And for me one of the things that I don't like about systemd is that it has added a lot of complexity, and when it breaks, trying to debug it can be almost impossible." Also: "Heck, I don't even I want to file bug reports, just so I can get abusive messages from Lennart. At least when Linus flames me, it's because I did something wrong which hurts users and which I d*mned well should have known better, given my years of experience in the community. Lennart just flames you because you're wrong, and he's right. By definition." And: "The high bit, in my opinion, is "not being able to admit you are wrong". If someone (such as Lennart) is always right, then it's impossible to have a technical discussion in a post-mortem to avoid similar problems in the future. In a company, if there are personnel issues like that, you can escalate to the person's manager, or use other mechanisms. In the open source world, all you can do is route around the damage. Whether you call the inability for someone to admit that he or she has contributed to the problem a "lie" or just that they were "mistaken" is really beside the point as far as I'm concerned."
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    I have 0 interest in any of their notions of "good taste." But thank you. These are exactly the kinds of complaints I was saying I find less than compelling, because many of the same people who raise them then think the Linux project is okay to run like if UFC was also a papal state.
  - gorkonsine 9y ago
    The problem I see with any complaints about Lennart's behavior is that his behavior is explicitly rewarded. No one is really "routing around the damage", unless they're taking the dysfunctional route of ignoring problems with the software. Lennart has been "crowned" with the position of being the de-facto leader of Linux init systems, since just about every distro that matters at all has adopted systemd. So unless the Linux community is going to adopt something different, or fork it and have some different leadership, I don't think they have much right to complain about Lennart's communication and leadership style. Don't put someone in a position of leadership and power and then whine that they're not doing things the way you want them to, unless you're prepared to back up your criticism with real action. The Linux community has apparently decided they're going to use Lennart's creation (and not fork it away from him), no matter what, so what's the use in complaining? People have been complaining about him for many, many years now, and he's obviously not going to change. This reminds me a lot of everyone complaining so much about Windows 10. If you're not prepared to vote with your feet, your complaints are just wasted breath (or keystrokes) when the vendor obviously doesn't care one iota about your grievances.
- yebyen 9y ago
  I don't think that most people have a problem with systemd itself. Only some people. Usually it's a minor problem. But then you take it to the mailing list, and if it gets all the way to Lennart, he'll treat it like that's a "You" problem. I have not personally experienced this, but I've been in enough of these threads to realize that it's a big problem when, on a regular basis, you can't get these little problems solved because the creator insists it's supposed to work that way, to the bemusement of experts who chime in that know it has never worked that way before (and perhaps with very good reason), never in any other related system of the kind. So we get to have all of the reasoned, technical arguments again. That's how progress works, I guess. In a modern, systemd world, maybe the arguments that led to so many system designers putting their systems together in "this way," for arbitrary values of "this" which are broken in some way by systemd, actually don't fundamentally hold water anymore. Maybe if you drink enough of systemd's kool-aid, you won't try asking these types of questions of Lennart anymore, you can just see it the way he does. "Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong..."
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    Either: Linus's behavior is fine and this is expected in the FSF community OR We burn all those MLs into the ground. Terrible culture in these projects is basically how everyone is conditioned to interact from the top down. We can't pick and choose which assholes are okay and which are not. We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want.
    - falsedan 9y ago
      > We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want. This is a false choice. We can choose our battles as we please.
      - KirinDave 9y ago
        If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can.
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that. The second major issue is it growing way out of the bounds of being just an init replacement, thereby violating the so-called Unix Philosophy of doing one-thing well. For a user app to do that is one thing, but for a core OS component to do that just smells way too much like forcing Linux to be more like Windows, which a lot of hard-core Linux users are ideologically opposed to. The third major issue is that on most major Linux distros, users are not given an easy way to avoid using systemd, no matter how much they hate it or oppose it. The fourth issue is the apparent arrogance of the people responsible for systemd, and their off-hand dismissal of mature and widely respected unix conventions. All of this adds up to a storm of controversy that the systemd people mostly brought upon themselves. Had they just been more humble about their creation and waited until it was mature and well-tested and did all the wonderful things they claim it could and should do instead of stuffing what was widely seen as a broken-by-design piece of garbage down everybody's throat, maybe much of the Linux community wouldn't have been nearly so outraged by it.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    > One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that. I agree this is a big part of the problem, and appreciate it being raised. > All of this adds up to a storm of controversy that the systemd people mostly brought upon themselves I think Systemd comports itself as project exactly like most free software projects do, including Linux. Linus creates a template and then rages about how he doesn't like it.
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    Don't forget security. When there's a problem with systemd shit hits the fan. When there's a problem with a widely used piece of software that only does one job the mess is smaller and easier to clean up.
    - KirinDave 9y ago
- bandrami 9y ago
  My reason may only be applicable to me, but: it requires a change in behavior on my part but solves no problem I face. That's really all there needs to be to it for me not to adopt it. (Though, I'm also a huge proponent of declarative init systems; I like both shepherd and PIES)
- mindcrime 9y ago
  I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. I think @pmoriarty here just nailed it. It's not necessarily that "SystemD sucks" or that it doesn't do what it proclaims to do. But the fact that it's so monolithic (in practice, if not in principle) and subsumes so much of the rest of the system, and introduces so much coupling, is a very real issue. That switching from SystemD to $SOMETHINGELSE is a huge undertaking is, in and of itself, a problem. The "Unix Philosophy" of "do one thing and do it well" isn't just a tagline. That philosophy is cherished because it's been proven to be valuable. Replacing init with something that moves away from that is certainly worthy of questioning, if not outright criticism. Now maybe it's the case that SystemD is really just plain "so much better" that it outweighs all of that. I honestly don't know. But I can understand why people raise these issues.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    > The "Unix Philosophy" of "do one thing and do it well" isn't just a tagline. That philosophy is cherished because it's been proven to be valuable. Replacing init with something that moves away from that is certainly worthy of questioning, if not outright criticism. Systemd is a whole group of small, factored tools that call to each other. This complaint gets trotted out a lot and I lump it in with the "It is different because it has new features."
    - mindcrime 9y ago
      Systemd is a whole group of small, factored tools that call to each other. So, I haven't tried the exercise myself, so maybe it's easier than I've been lead to believe; but I keep hearing that the problem is that those "small, factored tools" talk to each other and pretty much only each other and that it's very difficult to, eg, rip out and replace just one of them. The argument, as I understand it, is that SystemD is "modular" in theory, but is a monolith in all practical terms. Note that I'm not arguing for this position so much as restating it to the extent that I understand it. I'm currently using SystemD and while I have my doubts about it, it doesn't cause me any specific pain ATM, so I haven't bothered messing with it.
- mlinksva 9y ago
  I've purposefully avoided following the holy war, but somehow recently failed and noticed a new to me argument: systemd replaced lots of functionality wtih a memory safe implementation (shell scripts) with a memory unsafe implementation (C).
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    Right, but SystemD also got right of shell scripts, which are Turing complete and very difficult to secure when run in ring 0. But yes, I hate C, too.
- horusthecat 9y ago
  It's not a holy war, but it does have a lot of politics, which engineers like to pretend don't exist. Here is the only solid criticism of systemd I've read that focuses on design (as opposed to bugs that surface from the sprawling throw-it-over-the-wall approach to development): http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ Notably, darknedgy hosted/hosts uselessd, which was a lightweight version of systemd. On the whole i think the idea underlying systemd, of graph-based management of services and system state makes more sense that wonky initscripts garbage. Technical discussion aside, I rarely see mentioned is that, what in my opinion, systemd resembles a lot of "politics-driven-development" i've worked on before. It's sprawling and ambitious--which means bugs--and like a high-politics project there's a certain incentive i perceive to downplay bugs--which also means it's a great way for RHEL to centralize control over things they didn't have say in previously as well as standardize, etc. I'll go ahead and beat up on it more by saying that if the project is going to be used cudgel-like, I wish it would more loudly start talking about stuff like formal analysis, fuzzing etc., because it would be a great opportunity to promote research-y stuff in the "email your patches" world of OSS development. Which is fine, but running Arch workstations for nearly ten years now, there's been a lot of gore with systemd... more than i'd like to see in PID1. Of course, I hate writing C code with a passion so I'm just a whiner really.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    I joke that I'll stop using systenmd if "you" stop writing C. Thoughtcrime for thoughtcrime. ;)
  - rst 9y ago
    To some of us, the "sprawling throw-it-over-the-wall approach to development" is the problem. Particularly when they decide to reimplement services instead of using battle-hardened code, and revive old bugs that haven't been seen in the wild in years. As has happened with their DNS resolver, which was initially shipped missing measures that everyone else had shipped years ago to deter cache poisoning, and had buffer overflow problems on top of that. There are not fundamental design flaws. They don't have to be, to be a problem. And it's a problem exacerbated by the developers' typical response to problem reports -- to try to transfer blame, or treat them as personal attacks, rather than dealing with the issue. An example of that is CVE-2017-1000082 -- a rare example of a real problem that was assigned a CVE number by request of someone other than the developer, because the developers are still insisting, after a week of well-deserved mockery, that it's not a problem (or not their problem, or something)... Refs: Buffer overflow: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/29/systemd_pwned_by_dns_query/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/29/systemd_pwned_by_dn... Cache poisoning: http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q4/592 http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q4/592
- benchaney 9y ago
  > I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors It is interesting that you say that, because I am still waiting for the reasoned technical argument in favor of systemd. Anyway, my main issue with systemd is how difficult it is to get rid of. It doesn't matter how awesome you think your software is, there is always going to be someone who disagrees. The beauty of FOSS is that it is easy to modify your system to suit your preferences. But for some reason systemd makes it difficult to switch. Even GNOME has a dependency on it. That seems completely insane to me. >Systemd, for all its flaws, fixes some very important problems that init and runit and similar systems left unsolved. I don't really know what you mean by this (and I hear people say it a lot). Systemd only rose to prominence in the last few years. Most systems worked just fine before then. What sort of significant open problems were solved by systemd? > As far as I can tell, systemd is a holy war. It's the new editor debate. It's vi vs emacs vs sublime vs atom vs ... down throughout time, with people arguing where the tradeoff between simplicity of execution is more important than delivering a system people asked for. There is a difference between systemd and the other holy wars, and that is that the other holywars were destined to end in a draw. No matter how much you like emacs more than vi, no one harbored the illusion that vi would stop easily installable on an average system. But for some reason a majority of the systemd supporters seem to view using an alternative as a serious crime.
  - jcrites 9y ago
    > It is interesting that you say that, because I am still waiting for the reasoned technical argument in favor of systemd. In that case, you may be interested in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13387989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13387989 and the other resources it links to. The comment reviews Russ Allbery's analysis of systemd [1], which he wrote as part of Debian's evaluation of whether to switch to it. Russ lays out a number of detailed arguments in favor of systemd, and contrasts systemd to alternative init systems. [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2013/12/msg00234.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2013/12/msg00234.html
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
  With Emacs vs Vi it was a way to amuse ourselves, because everyone is free to use their own favourite editor. With Systemd, we are not - we're all forced to use it. Yes, it did solved some SysV init problems, but introduced a few of its own. Most importantly though, it grew into a more complex subsystem with numerous dependencies, and this unfortunately causes problems unheard of in the old days of SysV Init. I don't think so many people would complain that hard if Systemd was easy to replace (which I think is the main point of this unnecessarily lengthy post).
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    That's my biggest issue with it: tendrils branching out into all the other aspects of the system. Systemd won't always be the state of the art, and we'll want to replace it someday. Replacing SysV init? Relatively easy. Replacing Systemd, all the ancillary programs, desktop environments that it ties into, etc? It's a ton of work. One of the arguments I've heard repeated is that it's all very modular, but that doesn't seem to be true in practice.
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      Replacing SysV init is not easy, unless you want to copy the majority of its problems as well.
      - khedoros1 9y ago
        I didn't say that it was easy, I said that it would be easy relative to the effort necessary to replace Systemd.
      - JdeBP 9y ago
        Actually, replacing van Smoorenburg init is easy, because very few softwares actually use /etc/inittab as a mechanism. "On the fingers of one hand" is actually close to the mark: inittab is used by van Smoorenburg rc, the old style startup for things like runit and daemontools, and a couple of private projects that people have not published but to whose users/creators I have had to explain the death of inittab. Replacing van Smoorenburg rc is somewhat harder, but OpenRC does exist. As indeed does Mewburn rc (albeit that that is designed to run under FreeBSD init rather than van Smoorenburg init). Three points to learn for these systemd discussions: - init is not rc. - We do not live in a world where nothing happened in between 1992 and 2011. A lot of things were done, a lot of softwares now exist, and the world did not step from van Smoorenburg init+rc to systemd. (Indeed, in 1992, the AIX SRC already existed.) - van Smoorenburg init+rc are themselves clones of other softwares. These clones over the years added things like parallel startup with startpar, dependency ordering with insserv, faster boot times by switching to a shell with less startup overhead caused by its interactive-mode features, and a distinction between emergency and rescue modes. * http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ * http://jdebp.eu./FGA/inittab-is-history.html http://jdebp.eu./FGA/inittab-is-history.html * http://jdebp.eu./FGA/system-5-rc-problems.html http://jdebp.eu./FGA/system-5-rc-problems.html * http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ * http://jdebp.eu./FGA/emergency-and-rescue-mode-bootstrap.html http://jdebp.eu./FGA/emergency-and-rescue-mode-bootstrap.htm...
- Chyzwar 9y ago
  I think systemd critique is misguided. The real problem is Linux. A lot of things in Linux is either bad or ancient. People are building these solutions: PulseAudio, systemd, NetworkManager, libuv, Xorg, SELinux, OpenSSH because they are forced to do so. It not like Red Hat sponsor a systemd from pure goodwill and love to mankind. Since it is politically incorrect to criticize Linux, people attack projects that try make a positive change...
  - pmoriarty 9y ago
    There are sane replacements for SysV Init, like runit.[1] None of these other init replacements try to absorb the functionality of a ton of other core services like sysstemd does either, so they're a lot easier to swallow. You'll notice there was no holy war against upstart or OpenRC, for instance. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit
  - mdekkers 9y ago
    People are building these solutions: PulseAudio, systemd, NetworkManager, libuv, Xorg, SELinux, OpenSSH because they are forced to do so. How old are you? OpenSSH wasn't built because there was something wrong with Linux per-se, in fact it came out of BSD due to a licensing issue with SSH. SSH was a replacement for the rlogin/telnet type toolsuites due to them being ridiculously insecure. Nothing to do with Linux. Xorg was released, again as mostly a licensing issue (although some architectural improvements) based on XFree86, which was first released in 1991, with UNIX type systems in mind. This fully working windowing system was released around the same time Linus released the first fledgling version of his kernel. XFree86 was an implementation of X, which was around way before Linux was around. > The real problem is Linux I lack the words or intellect to refute such a well-founded and self-evident statement.
    - Chyzwar 9y ago
      OpenSSH was ported from BSB because there was no alternative in Linux. If not for GNU available for Linus, we would have now flame wars Red Hat vs Canonical coreutils. X was fine 20 years ago as a prototype. In the meantime, we could have Linux Foundation to create a modern alternative. Instead, we have two competing solutions MIR and Wayland that still do not work very well. The reason we have such clusterfuck of incompatible distributions is that Linux is one man show. Instead of bringing industry toghether, Linus is doing his own thing. In meantime distributions instead trying to create useful userspace software are repackaging, porting and competing on init systems.... Next pointless war on the horizon snap vs flatpak.
- chronid 9y ago
  Here: http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ For a less politically correct one: http://suckless.org/sucks/systemd http://suckless.org/sucks/systemd For a personal experience: I remember that until systemd 21x (212? 213?) whatever core dump you got was cut off at around 700Mb (arbitrarily chosen by systemd developers due to journald limitations, a bug was left open without comments for 2 years, another person was essentially told that was the limit we're sorry [1], until a big customer of RH was hit by it maybe). Obviously preventing systemd from "intercepting" core dumps was (and it is still, IIRC) black magic. That made for some head scratching moments in our early RHEL7 installs. [1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55613 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55613, https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59623 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59623, https://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/commit/?id=34c10968 https://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/commit/?id=34c1...
- forgottenpass 9y ago
  It's complicated, but it's hard to argue it's unnecessarily so. Does nobody other than my alma mater cover the concept of Coupling and Cohesion? It's not hard to argue the point on those grounds. I just kinda assumed everyone would be familiar enough with them to see that's the main thrust of systemd arguments, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
wirrbel 9y ago
Sure, it might be because System D integrates so tightly with the whole ecosystem that it is hard to replace it. Or: Those folks who write rants about system d are not very active in contributing to a distribution that runs without it. With some discussions, you have that feeling that there are "those who talk, and those who do".
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  It's the latter. It didn't take anywhere near 2 full years to integrate systemd into Debian, so obviously there's a far smaller number of people in Devuan working to undo that. The whole systemd shouting match has been dominated by anti-systemd people who are the extremely vocal majority, happy to blog incessantly about how "evil" systemd is, but apparently not that happy to contribute their time to an alternative that's more to their liking. I'm not a systemd proponent (or detractor), as I'm not a professional sysadmin and just use Mint personally, but throughout that debacle it was fairly obvious which side was the more religious and less rational, and also less willing to put their money (or time) where their mouths were. Consequently, without doing any deep research on it myself, I tend to believe the systemd proponents far more.
- aleksei 9y ago
  Well, people are allowed to have opinions even if they dont' have the time, resources, or know-how to contribute to a solution, so yes, there may very well be "those who talk, and those who do". I don't see what your point is.
  - wirrbel 9y ago
    people are allowed to have their opinions, and after a while, I reserve my right to not listen to certain opinions anymore if they are not backed up.
    - benchaney 9y ago
      If that is the attitude you take don't be surprised when people don't listen to your opinions.
korethr 9y ago
This is why I've not been so enthusiastic about the systemd project. When I first heard of systemd, it seemed like a good idea: A new clean-slate design of an init system and service management that aimed to address shortcomings of the present common init and service management. And had the systemd project stayed just that, I'd have been fine with it, and may well have welcomed it onto my systems with open arms. But then it became necessary to subsume udev and syslog and cron and more parts of the system, and each time, the justifications for this scope creep have been unconvincing to me. It comes across as a bunch of added complexity because it'd be nifty and because they can, without stopping to reflect on whether trying to subsume the rest of the OS or forcing tight coupling and integration is a good idea from a design or architecture perspective.
zlynx 9y ago
The linked page does not actually answer the question. Instead we get a long bicycle analogy that does not really map to systemd in any way that I can tell. It would have been much more interesting to hear about what software had to be rewritten or replaced to support desktop environments like Gnome.
bandrami 9y ago
I mean, it is kind of strange that with one apt-get install, one apt-get purge, one apt-get autoremove, and one pinfile in /etc/apt, you can replace systemd in Debian. You'd think Devuan could just do that and redistribute or something.
- dijit 9y ago
  Gnome and udev have hard dependencies on systemd now, parts of KDE do too (try installing k3b for example, can't be done without systemd). It's not as simple as you think, unless the machine is a minimal deployment, in which case it works (I've got a docker host machine that runs runit instead of systemd)
- smhenderson 9y ago
  It's not systemd that's the problem, it's libsystemd0. Try removing it on Stretch. It's doable [0] but it's a pain and makes future maintenance fragile and error prone. And if I understand correctly once you do so you're not running Gnome on that system anymore... [0] http://lkcl.net/reports/removing_systemd_from_debian/ http://lkcl.net/reports/removing_systemd_from_debian/
  - bandrami 9y ago
    I don't run dbus, let alone Gnome. (getting X11 to work without dbus on Debian is also a pain, though also doable.)
  - catdog 9y ago
    Which is a purely religious problem as libsystemd0 basically does nothing if systemd is not running. Debian is a binary distribution, a lot of stuff is linked against libs you probably never use, that's just how it is.
    - smhenderson 9y ago
      I didn't say it was being used but the Devuan project wants it out of their distro and dependencies on it are much harder to resolve than dependencies on systemd bins.
kazinator 9y ago
Say I want to create an independent, 100% compatible implementation of systemd which can just drop-in to any systemd installation, no matter how it is configured and have it work? Where can I download the precise set of requirements for this, so that I don't have to peek at the systemd source code? What is systemd?
- ilovecookiestoo 9y ago
  Say I want to create an independent, 100% compatible implementation of Linux which can just drop-in to any Linux installation, no matter how it is configured and have it work? Where can I download the precise set of requirements for this, so that I don't have to peek at the Linux source code? What is Linux? Really, this doesn't make sense.
  - kazinator 9y ago
    GNU/Linux implemented Unix without working with proprietary source code from AT&T. Those people documented their stuff thoroughly and even created international standards. A good many of the Linux system calls and glibc functions are documented by POSIX. That doesn't cover 100%. We can start by looking here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/ https://www.kernel.org/doc/ The Linux man pages project covers system calls: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/dir_section_2.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/dir_section_2.html Many of these don't correspond to anything in POSIX, or not directly, so this documentation is crucial to anyone wanting to replicate Linux. Microsoft seems to have done such a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux "WSL provides a Linux-compatible kernel interface developed by Microsoft (containing no Linux kernel code) [...]" However, in all likelihood, they peeked at Linux code here and there.
  - mdekkers 9y ago
    Say I want to create an independent, 100% compatible implementation of Unix which can just drop-in to work on any X86 processor, no matter how it is configured and have it work? FTFY
  - digi_owl 9y ago

33 points by buttcake 9y ago

I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. The initd-inspired community has resisted the push for declarative and component-based core system infrastructure for so long, and it's causing very strange distortions to the linux ecosystem as solutions get sought for the problems it introduces. Systemd, for all its flaws, fixes some very important problems that init and runit and similar systems left unsolved. It's complicated, but it's hard to argue it's unnecessarily so. We always end up at these tortured bike metaphors or some other garbage. There's a whole website devoted to criticisms and it feels like at least half of the site is devoted to this kind of baseless rhetoric. As far as I can tell, systemd is a holy war. It's the new editor debate. It's vi vs emacs vs sublime vs atom vs ... down throughout time, with people arguing where the tradeoff between simplicity of execution is more important than delivering a system people asked for.

arca_vorago 9y ago
Those of us who have participated in past debates about systemd, I think, would know that there is more nuance here than talking heads give. I have heard plenty of reasoned thought about why systemd is bad and good, so please stop trying to make a holy war where one doesn't exist. Also, Emacs is clearly supeirior due to GPL license alone. Not to mention it's an OS in itself. GPLv3 is the future
hackcasual 9y ago
> complaints about its creator I've read many complaints and analysis about systemd, however it seems if they mention "Lennart Poettering" they are usually valueless rants.
jjnoakes 9y ago
I'm a proponent of declarative init systems, and I'm against systemd. I don't think getting into the specifics is going to be productive here, but I just wanted to point out that the debate shouldn't be framed as "systemd" vs "non-declarative init systems".
- KirinDave 9y ago
  I am happy to consider other equally capable declarative systems, but they're not common.
dredmorbius 9y ago
You might have missed this: https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/7/6/577 https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/7/6/577 Ted Ts'o: https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/EJrEuxjR65J https://plus.google.com/+TheodoreTso/posts/EJrEuxjR65J "For me a lot of "good taste" is about adding complexity when it's needed, and avoiding it when it's not needed. And if you do have complexity, making sure you have the tools so you can debug things when they break. And for me one of the things that I don't like about systemd is that it has added a lot of complexity, and when it breaks, trying to debug it can be almost impossible." Also: "Heck, I don't even I want to file bug reports, just so I can get abusive messages from Lennart. At least when Linus flames me, it's because I did something wrong which hurts users and which I d*mned well should have known better, given my years of experience in the community. Lennart just flames you because you're wrong, and he's right. By definition." And: "The high bit, in my opinion, is "not being able to admit you are wrong". If someone (such as Lennart) is always right, then it's impossible to have a technical discussion in a post-mortem to avoid similar problems in the future. In a company, if there are personnel issues like that, you can escalate to the person's manager, or use other mechanisms. In the open source world, all you can do is route around the damage. Whether you call the inability for someone to admit that he or she has contributed to the problem a "lie" or just that they were "mistaken" is really beside the point as far as I'm concerned."
- KirinDave 9y ago
  I have 0 interest in any of their notions of "good taste." But thank you. These are exactly the kinds of complaints I was saying I find less than compelling, because many of the same people who raise them then think the Linux project is okay to run like if UFC was also a papal state.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  The problem I see with any complaints about Lennart's behavior is that his behavior is explicitly rewarded. No one is really "routing around the damage", unless they're taking the dysfunctional route of ignoring problems with the software. Lennart has been "crowned" with the position of being the de-facto leader of Linux init systems, since just about every distro that matters at all has adopted systemd. So unless the Linux community is going to adopt something different, or fork it and have some different leadership, I don't think they have much right to complain about Lennart's communication and leadership style. Don't put someone in a position of leadership and power and then whine that they're not doing things the way you want them to, unless you're prepared to back up your criticism with real action. The Linux community has apparently decided they're going to use Lennart's creation (and not fork it away from him), no matter what, so what's the use in complaining? People have been complaining about him for many, many years now, and he's obviously not going to change. This reminds me a lot of everyone complaining so much about Windows 10. If you're not prepared to vote with your feet, your complaints are just wasted breath (or keystrokes) when the vendor obviously doesn't care one iota about your grievances.
yebyen 9y ago
I don't think that most people have a problem with systemd itself. Only some people. Usually it's a minor problem. But then you take it to the mailing list, and if it gets all the way to Lennart, he'll treat it like that's a "You" problem. I have not personally experienced this, but I've been in enough of these threads to realize that it's a big problem when, on a regular basis, you can't get these little problems solved because the creator insists it's supposed to work that way, to the bemusement of experts who chime in that know it has never worked that way before (and perhaps with very good reason), never in any other related system of the kind. So we get to have all of the reasoned, technical arguments again. That's how progress works, I guess. In a modern, systemd world, maybe the arguments that led to so many system designers putting their systems together in "this way," for arbitrary values of "this" which are broken in some way by systemd, actually don't fundamentally hold water anymore. Maybe if you drink enough of systemd's kool-aid, you won't try asking these types of questions of Lennart anymore, you can just see it the way he does. "Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong..."
- KirinDave 9y ago
  Either: Linus's behavior is fine and this is expected in the FSF community OR We burn all those MLs into the ground. Terrible culture in these projects is basically how everyone is conditioned to interact from the top down. We can't pick and choose which assholes are okay and which are not. We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want.
  - falsedan 9y ago
    > We either push back on all of them to make a more professional environment or we accept this is what we want. This is a false choice. We can choose our battles as we please.
    - KirinDave 9y ago
      If you like being inconsistent and tribal, then yes. You can.
pmoriarty 9y ago
One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that. The second major issue is it growing way out of the bounds of being just an init replacement, thereby violating the so-called Unix Philosophy of doing one-thing well. For a user app to do that is one thing, but for a core OS component to do that just smells way too much like forcing Linux to be more like Windows, which a lot of hard-core Linux users are ideologically opposed to. The third major issue is that on most major Linux distros, users are not given an easy way to avoid using systemd, no matter how much they hate it or oppose it. The fourth issue is the apparent arrogance of the people responsible for systemd, and their off-hand dismissal of mature and widely respected unix conventions. All of this adds up to a storm of controversy that the systemd people mostly brought upon themselves. Had they just been more humble about their creation and waited until it was mature and well-tested and did all the wonderful things they claim it could and should do instead of stuffing what was widely seen as a broken-by-design piece of garbage down everybody's throat, maybe much of the Linux community wouldn't have been nearly so outraged by it.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  > One of the main problems was the speed with which systemd was rolled out on all the major Linux distros, despite it being relatively immature and very controversial at that. I agree this is a big part of the problem, and appreciate it being raised. > All of this adds up to a storm of controversy that the systemd people mostly brought upon themselves I think Systemd comports itself as project exactly like most free software projects do, including Linux. Linus creates a template and then rages about how he doesn't like it.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  Don't forget security. When there's a problem with systemd shit hits the fan. When there's a problem with a widely used piece of software that only does one job the mess is smaller and easier to clean up.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
bandrami 9y ago
My reason may only be applicable to me, but: it requires a change in behavior on my part but solves no problem I face. That's really all there needs to be to it for me not to adopt it. (Though, I'm also a huge proponent of declarative init systems; I like both shepherd and PIES)
mindcrime 9y ago
I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors, complaints about its creator, or protestations that it's different. I think @pmoriarty here just nailed it. It's not necessarily that "SystemD sucks" or that it doesn't do what it proclaims to do. But the fact that it's so monolithic (in practice, if not in principle) and subsumes so much of the rest of the system, and introduces so much coupling, is a very real issue. That switching from SystemD to $SOMETHINGELSE is a huge undertaking is, in and of itself, a problem. The "Unix Philosophy" of "do one thing and do it well" isn't just a tagline. That philosophy is cherished because it's been proven to be valuable. Replacing init with something that moves away from that is certainly worthy of questioning, if not outright criticism. Now maybe it's the case that SystemD is really just plain "so much better" that it outweighs all of that. I honestly don't know. But I can understand why people raise these issues.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  > The "Unix Philosophy" of "do one thing and do it well" isn't just a tagline. That philosophy is cherished because it's been proven to be valuable. Replacing init with something that moves away from that is certainly worthy of questioning, if not outright criticism. Systemd is a whole group of small, factored tools that call to each other. This complaint gets trotted out a lot and I lump it in with the "It is different because it has new features."
  - mindcrime 9y ago
    Systemd is a whole group of small, factored tools that call to each other. So, I haven't tried the exercise myself, so maybe it's easier than I've been lead to believe; but I keep hearing that the problem is that those "small, factored tools" talk to each other and pretty much only each other and that it's very difficult to, eg, rip out and replace just one of them. The argument, as I understand it, is that SystemD is "modular" in theory, but is a monolith in all practical terms. Note that I'm not arguing for this position so much as restating it to the extent that I understand it. I'm currently using SystemD and while I have my doubts about it, it doesn't cause me any specific pain ATM, so I haven't bothered messing with it.
mlinksva 9y ago
I've purposefully avoided following the holy war, but somehow recently failed and noticed a new to me argument: systemd replaced lots of functionality wtih a memory safe implementation (shell scripts) with a memory unsafe implementation (C).
- KirinDave 9y ago
  Right, but SystemD also got right of shell scripts, which are Turing complete and very difficult to secure when run in ring 0. But yes, I hate C, too.
horusthecat 9y ago
It's not a holy war, but it does have a lot of politics, which engineers like to pretend don't exist. Here is the only solid criticism of systemd I've read that focuses on design (as opposed to bugs that surface from the sprawling throw-it-over-the-wall approach to development): http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ Notably, darknedgy hosted/hosts uselessd, which was a lightweight version of systemd. On the whole i think the idea underlying systemd, of graph-based management of services and system state makes more sense that wonky initscripts garbage. Technical discussion aside, I rarely see mentioned is that, what in my opinion, systemd resembles a lot of "politics-driven-development" i've worked on before. It's sprawling and ambitious--which means bugs--and like a high-politics project there's a certain incentive i perceive to downplay bugs--which also means it's a great way for RHEL to centralize control over things they didn't have say in previously as well as standardize, etc. I'll go ahead and beat up on it more by saying that if the project is going to be used cudgel-like, I wish it would more loudly start talking about stuff like formal analysis, fuzzing etc., because it would be a great opportunity to promote research-y stuff in the "email your patches" world of OSS development. Which is fine, but running Arch workstations for nearly ten years now, there's been a lot of gore with systemd... more than i'd like to see in PID1. Of course, I hate writing C code with a passion so I'm just a whiner really.
- KirinDave 9y ago
  I joke that I'll stop using systenmd if "you" stop writing C. Thoughtcrime for thoughtcrime. ;)
- rst 9y ago
  To some of us, the "sprawling throw-it-over-the-wall approach to development" is the problem. Particularly when they decide to reimplement services instead of using battle-hardened code, and revive old bugs that haven't been seen in the wild in years. As has happened with their DNS resolver, which was initially shipped missing measures that everyone else had shipped years ago to deter cache poisoning, and had buffer overflow problems on top of that. There are not fundamental design flaws. They don't have to be, to be a problem. And it's a problem exacerbated by the developers' typical response to problem reports -- to try to transfer blame, or treat them as personal attacks, rather than dealing with the issue. An example of that is CVE-2017-1000082 -- a rare example of a real problem that was assigned a CVE number by request of someone other than the developer, because the developers are still insisting, after a week of well-deserved mockery, that it's not a problem (or not their problem, or something)... Refs: Buffer overflow: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/29/systemd_pwned_by_dns_query/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/29/systemd_pwned_by_dn... Cache poisoning: http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q4/592 http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2014/q4/592
benchaney 9y ago
> I keep waiting for the reasoned, technical arguments against systemd instead of veiled metaphors It is interesting that you say that, because I am still waiting for the reasoned technical argument in favor of systemd. Anyway, my main issue with systemd is how difficult it is to get rid of. It doesn't matter how awesome you think your software is, there is always going to be someone who disagrees. The beauty of FOSS is that it is easy to modify your system to suit your preferences. But for some reason systemd makes it difficult to switch. Even GNOME has a dependency on it. That seems completely insane to me. >Systemd, for all its flaws, fixes some very important problems that init and runit and similar systems left unsolved. I don't really know what you mean by this (and I hear people say it a lot). Systemd only rose to prominence in the last few years. Most systems worked just fine before then. What sort of significant open problems were solved by systemd? > As far as I can tell, systemd is a holy war. It's the new editor debate. It's vi vs emacs vs sublime vs atom vs ... down throughout time, with people arguing where the tradeoff between simplicity of execution is more important than delivering a system people asked for. There is a difference between systemd and the other holy wars, and that is that the other holywars were destined to end in a draw. No matter how much you like emacs more than vi, no one harbored the illusion that vi would stop easily installable on an average system. But for some reason a majority of the systemd supporters seem to view using an alternative as a serious crime.
- jcrites 9y ago
  > It is interesting that you say that, because I am still waiting for the reasoned technical argument in favor of systemd. In that case, you may be interested in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13387989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13387989 and the other resources it links to. The comment reviews Russ Allbery's analysis of systemd [1], which he wrote as part of Debian's evaluation of whether to switch to it. Russ lays out a number of detailed arguments in favor of systemd, and contrasts systemd to alternative init systems. [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2013/12/msg00234.html https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2013/12/msg00234.html
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
With Emacs vs Vi it was a way to amuse ourselves, because everyone is free to use their own favourite editor. With Systemd, we are not - we're all forced to use it. Yes, it did solved some SysV init problems, but introduced a few of its own. Most importantly though, it grew into a more complex subsystem with numerous dependencies, and this unfortunately causes problems unheard of in the old days of SysV Init. I don't think so many people would complain that hard if Systemd was easy to replace (which I think is the main point of this unnecessarily lengthy post).
- khedoros1 9y ago
  That's my biggest issue with it: tendrils branching out into all the other aspects of the system. Systemd won't always be the state of the art, and we'll want to replace it someday. Replacing SysV init? Relatively easy. Replacing Systemd, all the ancillary programs, desktop environments that it ties into, etc? It's a ton of work. One of the arguments I've heard repeated is that it's all very modular, but that doesn't seem to be true in practice.
  - KirinDave 9y ago
    Replacing SysV init is not easy, unless you want to copy the majority of its problems as well.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      I didn't say that it was easy, I said that it would be easy relative to the effort necessary to replace Systemd.
    - JdeBP 9y ago
      Actually, replacing van Smoorenburg init is easy, because very few softwares actually use /etc/inittab as a mechanism. "On the fingers of one hand" is actually close to the mark: inittab is used by van Smoorenburg rc, the old style startup for things like runit and daemontools, and a couple of private projects that people have not published but to whose users/creators I have had to explain the death of inittab. Replacing van Smoorenburg rc is somewhat harder, but OpenRC does exist. As indeed does Mewburn rc (albeit that that is designed to run under FreeBSD init rather than van Smoorenburg init). Three points to learn for these systemd discussions: - init is not rc. - We do not live in a world where nothing happened in between 1992 and 2011. A lot of things were done, a lot of softwares now exist, and the world did not step from van Smoorenburg init+rc to systemd. (Indeed, in 1992, the AIX SRC already existed.) - van Smoorenburg init+rc are themselves clones of other softwares. These clones over the years added things like parallel startup with startpar, dependency ordering with insserv, faster boot times by switching to a shell with less startup overhead caused by its interactive-mode features, and a distinction between emergency and rescue modes. * http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/09/05/0/ * http://jdebp.eu./FGA/inittab-is-history.html http://jdebp.eu./FGA/inittab-is-history.html * http://jdebp.eu./FGA/system-5-rc-problems.html http://jdebp.eu./FGA/system-5-rc-problems.html * http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/ProSystemdAntiSystemd/ * http://jdebp.eu./FGA/emergency-and-rescue-mode-bootstrap.html http://jdebp.eu./FGA/emergency-and-rescue-mode-bootstrap.htm...
Chyzwar 9y ago
I think systemd critique is misguided. The real problem is Linux. A lot of things in Linux is either bad or ancient. People are building these solutions: PulseAudio, systemd, NetworkManager, libuv, Xorg, SELinux, OpenSSH because they are forced to do so. It not like Red Hat sponsor a systemd from pure goodwill and love to mankind. Since it is politically incorrect to criticize Linux, people attack projects that try make a positive change...
- pmoriarty 9y ago
  There are sane replacements for SysV Init, like runit.[1] None of these other init replacements try to absorb the functionality of a ton of other core services like sysstemd does either, so they're a lot easier to swallow. You'll notice there was no holy war against upstart or OpenRC, for instance. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit
- mdekkers 9y ago
  People are building these solutions: PulseAudio, systemd, NetworkManager, libuv, Xorg, SELinux, OpenSSH because they are forced to do so. How old are you? OpenSSH wasn't built because there was something wrong with Linux per-se, in fact it came out of BSD due to a licensing issue with SSH. SSH was a replacement for the rlogin/telnet type toolsuites due to them being ridiculously insecure. Nothing to do with Linux. Xorg was released, again as mostly a licensing issue (although some architectural improvements) based on XFree86, which was first released in 1991, with UNIX type systems in mind. This fully working windowing system was released around the same time Linus released the first fledgling version of his kernel. XFree86 was an implementation of X, which was around way before Linux was around. > The real problem is Linux I lack the words or intellect to refute such a well-founded and self-evident statement.
  - Chyzwar 9y ago
    OpenSSH was ported from BSB because there was no alternative in Linux. If not for GNU available for Linus, we would have now flame wars Red Hat vs Canonical coreutils. X was fine 20 years ago as a prototype. In the meantime, we could have Linux Foundation to create a modern alternative. Instead, we have two competing solutions MIR and Wayland that still do not work very well. The reason we have such clusterfuck of incompatible distributions is that Linux is one man show. Instead of bringing industry toghether, Linus is doing his own thing. In meantime distributions instead trying to create useful userspace software are repackaging, porting and competing on init systems.... Next pointless war on the horizon snap vs flatpak.
chronid 9y ago
Here: http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ For a less politically correct one: http://suckless.org/sucks/systemd http://suckless.org/sucks/systemd For a personal experience: I remember that until systemd 21x (212? 213?) whatever core dump you got was cut off at around 700Mb (arbitrarily chosen by systemd developers due to journald limitations, a bug was left open without comments for 2 years, another person was essentially told that was the limit we're sorry [1], until a big customer of RH was hit by it maybe). Obviously preventing systemd from "intercepting" core dumps was (and it is still, IIRC) black magic. That made for some head scratching moments in our early RHEL7 installs. [1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55613 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55613, https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59623 https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=59623, https://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/commit/?id=34c10968 https://cgit.freedesktop.org/systemd/systemd/commit/?id=34c1...
forgottenpass 9y ago
It's complicated, but it's hard to argue it's unnecessarily so. Does nobody other than my alma mater cover the concept of Coupling and Cohesion? It's not hard to argue the point on those grounds. I just kinda assumed everyone would be familiar enough with them to see that's the main thrust of systemd arguments, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

wirrbel 9y ago

Sure, it might be because System D integrates so tightly with the whole ecosystem that it is hard to replace it. Or: Those folks who write rants about system d are not very active in contributing to a distribution that runs without it. With some discussions, you have that feeling that there are "those who talk, and those who do".

gorkonsine 9y ago
It's the latter. It didn't take anywhere near 2 full years to integrate systemd into Debian, so obviously there's a far smaller number of people in Devuan working to undo that. The whole systemd shouting match has been dominated by anti-systemd people who are the extremely vocal majority, happy to blog incessantly about how "evil" systemd is, but apparently not that happy to contribute their time to an alternative that's more to their liking. I'm not a systemd proponent (or detractor), as I'm not a professional sysadmin and just use Mint personally, but throughout that debacle it was fairly obvious which side was the more religious and less rational, and also less willing to put their money (or time) where their mouths were. Consequently, without doing any deep research on it myself, I tend to believe the systemd proponents far more.
aleksei 9y ago
Well, people are allowed to have opinions even if they dont' have the time, resources, or know-how to contribute to a solution, so yes, there may very well be "those who talk, and those who do". I don't see what your point is.
- wirrbel 9y ago
  people are allowed to have their opinions, and after a while, I reserve my right to not listen to certain opinions anymore if they are not backed up.
  - benchaney 9y ago
    If that is the attitude you take don't be surprised when people don't listen to your opinions.

korethr 9y ago

This is why I've not been so enthusiastic about the systemd project. When I first heard of systemd, it seemed like a good idea: A new clean-slate design of an init system and service management that aimed to address shortcomings of the present common init and service management. And had the systemd project stayed just that, I'd have been fine with it, and may well have welcomed it onto my systems with open arms. But then it became necessary to subsume udev and syslog and cron and more parts of the system, and each time, the justifications for this scope creep have been unconvincing to me. It comes across as a bunch of added complexity because it'd be nifty and because they can, without stopping to reflect on whether trying to subsume the rest of the OS or forcing tight coupling and integration is a good idea from a design or architecture perspective.

zlynx 9y ago

The linked page does not actually answer the question. Instead we get a long bicycle analogy that does not really map to systemd in any way that I can tell. It would have been much more interesting to hear about what software had to be rewritten or replaced to support desktop environments like Gnome.

bandrami 9y ago

I mean, it is kind of strange that with one apt-get install, one apt-get purge, one apt-get autoremove, and one pinfile in /etc/apt, you can replace systemd in Debian. You'd think Devuan could just do that and redistribute or something.

dijit 9y ago
Gnome and udev have hard dependencies on systemd now, parts of KDE do too (try installing k3b for example, can't be done without systemd). It's not as simple as you think, unless the machine is a minimal deployment, in which case it works (I've got a docker host machine that runs runit instead of systemd)
smhenderson 9y ago
It's not systemd that's the problem, it's libsystemd0. Try removing it on Stretch. It's doable [0] but it's a pain and makes future maintenance fragile and error prone. And if I understand correctly once you do so you're not running Gnome on that system anymore... [0] http://lkcl.net/reports/removing_systemd_from_debian/ http://lkcl.net/reports/removing_systemd_from_debian/
- bandrami 9y ago
  I don't run dbus, let alone Gnome. (getting X11 to work without dbus on Debian is also a pain, though also doable.)
- catdog 9y ago
  Which is a purely religious problem as libsystemd0 basically does nothing if systemd is not running. Debian is a binary distribution, a lot of stuff is linked against libs you probably never use, that's just how it is.
  - smhenderson 9y ago
    I didn't say it was being used but the Devuan project wants it out of their distro and dependencies on it are much harder to resolve than dependencies on systemd bins.

kazinator 9y ago

Say I want to create an independent, 100% compatible implementation of systemd which can just drop-in to any systemd installation, no matter how it is configured and have it work? Where can I download the precise set of requirements for this, so that I don't have to peek at the systemd source code? What is systemd?

ilovecookiestoo 9y ago
Say I want to create an independent, 100% compatible implementation of Linux which can just drop-in to any Linux installation, no matter how it is configured and have it work? Where can I download the precise set of requirements for this, so that I don't have to peek at the Linux source code? What is Linux? Really, this doesn't make sense.
- kazinator 9y ago
  GNU/Linux implemented Unix without working with proprietary source code from AT&T. Those people documented their stuff thoroughly and even created international standards. A good many of the Linux system calls and glibc functions are documented by POSIX. That doesn't cover 100%. We can start by looking here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/ https://www.kernel.org/doc/ The Linux man pages project covers system calls: http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/dir_section_2.html http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/dir_section_2.html Many of these don't correspond to anything in POSIX, or not directly, so this documentation is crucial to anyone wanting to replicate Linux. Microsoft seems to have done such a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Subsystem_for_Linux "WSL provides a Linux-compatible kernel interface developed by Microsoft (containing no Linux kernel code) [...]" However, in all likelihood, they peeked at Linux code here and there.
- mdekkers 9y ago
  Say I want to create an independent, 100% compatible implementation of Unix which can just drop-in to work on any X86 processor, no matter how it is configured and have it work? FTFY
- digi_owl 9y ago