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> The people who keep complaining about it seem more and more like children who just refuse to learn something new and better because they've already stumbled t

> The people who keep complaining about it seem more and more like children who just refuse to learn something new and better because they've already stumbled through all the holes it fills. Systemd apologists always seems to think that anyone not completely in love with systemd, is just refusing to learn something new. Please stop with the stupidity, people have real reasons to hate that shit. I had no problem with switching to WireGuard, after learning about it, because this is so much better in both use and design than OpenVPN that I have used for 20 years. I had no problem with learning about systemd either, but that is just badly designed software to me.

kreetx 6y ago
For those not in the know, what's wrong with systemd's design?
- fsflover 6y ago
  There were hundreds of comments about it on HN. One typical complain is it's not implemented according to the Unix philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_way#Do_One_Thing_and_Do_It_Well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_way#Do_One_Thing_and_Do_I...
  - kreetx 6y ago
    Sure, but that's like saying my coffee machine also makes latte and hot chocolate. I guess what I'm asking is: do any of these taste bad, and how? Perhaps the parent had a few of these on his/her mind that could have been listed.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      Unix philosophy has a reason. It allows to easily replace components and simplifies testing. AFAIK it's not easy to replace various parts of systemd, it's very monolithic and it does too many things.
      - kreetx 6y ago
        I know the philosophy. What I'm trying to get at is that perhaps the thing that came before was a set of things that didn't quite work together, so now they made something that does. (And was just wondering if there was any specific thing the original parent wanted to replace.)
        fsflover 6y ago
        Some relevant old comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12652071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12652071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23065830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23065830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8672887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8672887
        kreetx 6y ago
        Did you just search for "unix philosophy" and found some links? Again, was just interested if you had any specific thing you could point to, but elsewhere in the comments I see now a few concrete issues.
      - crazy_hombre 6y ago
        > AFAIK it's not easy to replace various parts of systemd, it's very monolithic and it does too many things. You can easily replace timesyncd with any NTP daemon. You can easily replace networkd with any other networking manager. You can easily replace timer units with cron. You can easily forward log messages to a syslog daemon. You can easily replace systemd-boot with grub or any other boot manager. It should be pretty obvious how baseless the monolithic arguments against systemd are.
  - raziel2p 6y ago
    Which isn't even correct because systemd consists of many individual parts that do their thing and are replacable. But because they all share the "systemd-*" naming pattern people think they're the same piece of software. Would be funny if people made the same complaint about the various GNU core utils because those are all installed from the same package on most (all?) distros.
    - fsflover 6y ago
      Please show independent working implementations of those "replaceable individual parts". AFAIK people who tried to do it found too many obstacles like undocumented or inconvenient API.
  - JdeBP 6y ago
    There's also a perennial lack of understanding of the computer science. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23057364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23057364
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      As a nitpick, I think "cohesion" and "coupling" are terms coming more from software engineering, I'm not sure they are objects of study in the computer science branch of mathematics.
      - JdeBP 6y ago
        You'll have to take that up with Harlan D. Mills, erstwhile professor of computer science and one of the pioneers in structured programming.
- unionpivo 6y ago
  For me: Systemd is good init replacement, ok ntp replacement, so-so logging deamon replacement , and shitty DNS resolver replacement. I like the init part, i could do without everything else. But the thing I hate the most about it is that if you question any part of it like DNS, you are labeled as a systemd hater.
  - raziel2p 6y ago
    Just disable the parts you don't like on your system. I disable resolved everywhere I can and don't feel the need to go complaining about it. Where are you being labeled a systemd hater? Possibly it's more tone of voice than what you're complaining about.
    - unionpivo 6y ago
      I do, where I can. But with our clients It's often impossible (due to politics) to control all of the clients on the network, so I can't disable parts I don't like. So I have to find workarounds, like intercepting DNS queries on network level, to fix what used to work before. And if dnssec ever gets implemented, that wont work either.
      - eptcyka 6y ago
        Why do you need to intercept DNS queries on the network level? Can't you configure systemd-resolved to do what you need it to do? Also, dnssec is implemented, and it works.
        unionpivo 6y ago
        Sure if I have access to the host, which I often don't[1]. I wrote whole wall of text but at the end of the day, its not that big of a deal, It's more annoying explaing to customers that they have to talk to their other vendors to fix their configs, so sometimes just network level hack is easier. [1] In enterprise environment and even some SMB environment its somewhat common (at least here in South EU) that big vendors just drop black boxes to you (usually in a form of vmware image, lately sometimes Docker containers). A lot of them are just stock RH, or Ubuntu with their software. ANd that comes with default fallback to goolge or cloudfalre DNS's

kreetx 6y ago

For those not in the know, what's wrong with systemd's design?

fsflover 6y ago
There were hundreds of comments about it on HN. One typical complain is it's not implemented according to the Unix philosophy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_way#Do_One_Thing_and_Do_It_Well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_way#Do_One_Thing_and_Do_I...
- kreetx 6y ago
  Sure, but that's like saying my coffee machine also makes latte and hot chocolate. I guess what I'm asking is: do any of these taste bad, and how? Perhaps the parent had a few of these on his/her mind that could have been listed.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Unix philosophy has a reason. It allows to easily replace components and simplifies testing. AFAIK it's not easy to replace various parts of systemd, it's very monolithic and it does too many things.
    - kreetx 6y ago
      I know the philosophy. What I'm trying to get at is that perhaps the thing that came before was a set of things that didn't quite work together, so now they made something that does. (And was just wondering if there was any specific thing the original parent wanted to replace.)
      - fsflover 6y ago
        Some relevant old comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12335783 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12652071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12652071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23065830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23065830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8672887 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8672887
        kreetx 6y ago
        Did you just search for "unix philosophy" and found some links? Again, was just interested if you had any specific thing you could point to, but elsewhere in the comments I see now a few concrete issues.
    - crazy_hombre 6y ago
      > AFAIK it's not easy to replace various parts of systemd, it's very monolithic and it does too many things. You can easily replace timesyncd with any NTP daemon. You can easily replace networkd with any other networking manager. You can easily replace timer units with cron. You can easily forward log messages to a syslog daemon. You can easily replace systemd-boot with grub or any other boot manager. It should be pretty obvious how baseless the monolithic arguments against systemd are.
- raziel2p 6y ago
  Which isn't even correct because systemd consists of many individual parts that do their thing and are replacable. But because they all share the "systemd-*" naming pattern people think they're the same piece of software. Would be funny if people made the same complaint about the various GNU core utils because those are all installed from the same package on most (all?) distros.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Please show independent working implementations of those "replaceable individual parts". AFAIK people who tried to do it found too many obstacles like undocumented or inconvenient API.
- JdeBP 6y ago
  There's also a perennial lack of understanding of the computer science. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23057364 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23057364
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    As a nitpick, I think "cohesion" and "coupling" are terms coming more from software engineering, I'm not sure they are objects of study in the computer science branch of mathematics.
    - JdeBP 6y ago
      You'll have to take that up with Harlan D. Mills, erstwhile professor of computer science and one of the pioneers in structured programming.
unionpivo 6y ago
For me: Systemd is good init replacement, ok ntp replacement, so-so logging deamon replacement , and shitty DNS resolver replacement. I like the init part, i could do without everything else. But the thing I hate the most about it is that if you question any part of it like DNS, you are labeled as a systemd hater.
- raziel2p 6y ago
  Just disable the parts you don't like on your system. I disable resolved everywhere I can and don't feel the need to go complaining about it. Where are you being labeled a systemd hater? Possibly it's more tone of voice than what you're complaining about.
  - unionpivo 6y ago
    I do, where I can. But with our clients It's often impossible (due to politics) to control all of the clients on the network, so I can't disable parts I don't like. So I have to find workarounds, like intercepting DNS queries on network level, to fix what used to work before. And if dnssec ever gets implemented, that wont work either.
    - eptcyka 6y ago
      Why do you need to intercept DNS queries on the network level? Can't you configure systemd-resolved to do what you need it to do? Also, dnssec is implemented, and it works.
      - unionpivo 6y ago
        Sure if I have access to the host, which I often don't[1]. I wrote whole wall of text but at the end of the day, its not that big of a deal, It's more annoying explaing to customers that they have to talk to their other vendors to fix their configs, so sometimes just network level hack is easier. [1] In enterprise environment and even some SMB environment its somewhat common (at least here in South EU) that big vendors just drop black boxes to you (usually in a form of vmware image, lately sometimes Docker containers). A lot of them are just stock RH, or Ubuntu with their software. ANd that comes with default fallback to goolge or cloudfalre DNS's