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I just want to pre-empt the inevitable bitching about systemd to say I think it’s awesome and incredibly useful and consistent and powerful and I’d take it any

I just want to pre-empt the inevitable bitching about systemd to say I think it’s awesome and incredibly useful and consistent and powerful and I’d take it any day over the mess of stuff that filled systemd’s duties before. Sure it isn’t perfect, but what software is? And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the alternative?

Maursault 5y ago
> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? Won't find systemd in Gentoo, Slackware or Alpine. Also it is a little interesting, just a little, that whatever imperative systemd has to exist is entirely absent in every SysV and BSD, and yet variants of SysV and BSD and thier hybrids still exist, somehow, no worse for the wear.
lmm 5y ago
> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the alternative? Because it's tightly coupled to everything (particularly to the few profitable parts of linux - most open-source is maintained on a shoestring, so it's pretty cheap to take control over development of even vital low-level infrastructure). This is how systemd bypassed the bikeshedding problem of there being half a dozen replacement inits but no clear consensus, with the result that everything relied on a lowest common denominator. But it's toxic for the long term, because it undermines the whole point of using linux if you can't swap out pieces or maintain your own forks of individual components.
- starklevnertz 5y ago
  But no systemd distro is saying “we want to dump systemd but we can’t because it’s too tightly Coupled” are they? Or maybe the maintainers are I don’t know do you have links to show this is the case? Systemd is used by all major linux flavors because it’s the best solution for the problems it solves. The distro maintainers are too smart to be stuck with systemd against their will. And it’s linux …. make a better solution, if it’s truly better it’ll be used.
  - p_l 5y ago
    That's a bit of revisionist history. Systemd was minority pretty much till GNOME 3.8 introduced super-hard dependencies on it through an interface that was supposedly documented (Ubuntu sunk a bunch of money trying to keep alternative implementation running). For many a distro, it became a question - "do we include GNOME, or do we drop it?" and that was impetus to move to systemd
    - esarbe 5y ago
      This is simply not true[0]. To quote: > This is really unfortunate, but GNOME 3.8 does not require logind. I discussed the non-dependency of logind+systemd on #gentoo-desktop and why they thought different. Apparently GDM 3.8 assumes that an init system will also clean up any processes it started. This is what systemd does, but OpenRC didn’t support that. Systemd was adopted because it was (and still is) simply superior in many aspects to previously available process managers, because application developers had it up to here to maintain n different init scripts for n different distributions and distribution packagers didn't want to have to write custom init scripts for each application anymore. As an example, check out the discussion around the adoption of systemd in Debian[1]. [0] https://blogs.gnome.org/ovitters/2013/09/25/gnome-and-logindsystemd-thoughts/ https://blogs.gnome.org/ovitters/2013/09/25/gnome-and-logind... [1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002 https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002
      - p_l 5y ago
        It might be because people did report on in trying to run GNOME 3.8 without logind, and reported massive faults? And no, not in "GDM doesn't clean up after itself", which was given as explanation for the infamous "systemd now defaults to destroying everything in a session on logout" change few years later. (Which GDM could require anyway earlier, but apparently somehow it wasn't enough) There is a lot of good ideas that went into systemd though, and I'd agree that a lot of anger is in how badly they are implemented (the only reason I do not complain more about systemctl is because upstart managed to be even worse). In my copious free time, I've been tinkering at alternative, but even if I disagree at the format of systemd service files, it includes a parser for them.
- 3np 5y ago
  > But it's toxic for the long term, because it undermines the whole point of using linux if you can't swap out pieces or maintain your own forks of individual components. You can, though? And many distros do by default. Don’t like systemd-boot? You can replace it with grub. Don’t like systemd-networkd? You can replace it with networkctl. Want to use it but prefer to handle Wireguard tunnels with wg-quick? Fine! Don’t like systemd-resolved? You can replace it with dnsmasq. Don’t like systemd-cryptsetup? systemd won’t care if some other system takes care of your LUKS partitions. Etc, etc.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd
    - 3np 5y ago
      That’s a short list of other packages (none of which I think are part of a base Linux install, correct me if I’m wrong) that have decided to depend on systemd?
    - IshKebab 5y ago
      Where's the "hard dependency on libc" list? Or "hard dependency on Bash"? It's ridiculous to imagine that no program is allowed to depend on SystemD.
      - lmm 5y ago
        > Where's the "hard dependency on libc" list? There are multiple libc implementations. libc independence is important and valuable. You'll probably find a "hard dependency on glibc" list in the documentation of e.g. Alpine. > Or "hard dependency on Bash"? Ubuntu will have a list from when they switched to ash as /bin/sh. Again, multiple implementations and independence are important, and something the linux community generally cares about.
        IshKebab 5y ago
- kaba0 5y ago
  Why was it chosen by debian multiple times with the most democratic process out there?
  - lmm 5y ago
    It was forced through by breaking the rules of the process and overruling the committee that should have made that decision. Many old-school Debian maintainers quit in disgust at that point, so if subsequent votes have been in systemd's favour then that's probably why.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      Some source would be interesting, because it is just blind words otherwise. Also, Arch and several other distros made the choice independently. I am fairly sure Red Hat is not some evil entity kidnapping the families of maintainers making them switch to systemd..
    - esarbe 5y ago
      No rules were broken.[0] [0] https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002 https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002
Mikhail_K 5y ago
> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If Big Mac is a crappy food, why billions are served with it?
- starklevnertz 5y ago
  - Mikhail_K 5y ago
- pverghese 5y ago
  Or maybe you should questions yourself as to why you are so angry about what others like
  - Mikhail_K 5y ago
    If others enjoy eating garbage, does that obligate me to like it, too?
    - diffeomorphism 5y ago
      Yes, pretty much so. If there is a dish everybody likes but you say it is "garbage" then you are just wrong and an arrogant snob.
      - OJFord 5y ago
        A 'Big Mac' is objectively not nutritious, and cheap meat though. I like systemd.
        diffeomorphism 5y ago
        Then say that instead of "garbage".
toast0 5y ago
> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the alternative? If Windows is crap, why does every system builder ship the majority of their machines with it? Why bother with a different desktop than Windows? Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good. Building a distro is a lot of work already, and avoiding systemd takes a lot of effort these days. Plus, there seems to be a lot of people who like systemd, so if you want curmudgeons like me (well, probably not me, I'm going to FreeBSD instead; I understand there may be some sort of fancy rc replacement in the works there, but I presume it won't break the things I expect to work, and it won't subsume half of base) and people who like systemd, then you've got to do twice the work, and everybody will ask you why you're pushing against the tide.
- esarbe 5y ago
  > If Windows is crap, why does every system builder ship the majority of their machines with it? Because they get incentivized by Microsoft to do so. This is a well document part of their often illegal business practices.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Windows isn't crap though.

Maursault 5y ago

> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? Won't find systemd in Gentoo, Slackware or Alpine. Also it is a little interesting, just a little, that whatever imperative systemd has to exist is entirely absent in every SysV and BSD, and yet variants of SysV and BSD and thier hybrids still exist, somehow, no worse for the wear.

lmm 5y ago

> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the alternative? Because it's tightly coupled to everything (particularly to the few profitable parts of linux - most open-source is maintained on a shoestring, so it's pretty cheap to take control over development of even vital low-level infrastructure). This is how systemd bypassed the bikeshedding problem of there being half a dozen replacement inits but no clear consensus, with the result that everything relied on a lowest common denominator. But it's toxic for the long term, because it undermines the whole point of using linux if you can't swap out pieces or maintain your own forks of individual components.

starklevnertz 5y ago
But no systemd distro is saying “we want to dump systemd but we can’t because it’s too tightly Coupled” are they? Or maybe the maintainers are I don’t know do you have links to show this is the case? Systemd is used by all major linux flavors because it’s the best solution for the problems it solves. The distro maintainers are too smart to be stuck with systemd against their will. And it’s linux …. make a better solution, if it’s truly better it’ll be used.
- p_l 5y ago
  That's a bit of revisionist history. Systemd was minority pretty much till GNOME 3.8 introduced super-hard dependencies on it through an interface that was supposedly documented (Ubuntu sunk a bunch of money trying to keep alternative implementation running). For many a distro, it became a question - "do we include GNOME, or do we drop it?" and that was impetus to move to systemd
  - esarbe 5y ago
    This is simply not true[0]. To quote: > This is really unfortunate, but GNOME 3.8 does not require logind. I discussed the non-dependency of logind+systemd on #gentoo-desktop and why they thought different. Apparently GDM 3.8 assumes that an init system will also clean up any processes it started. This is what systemd does, but OpenRC didn’t support that. Systemd was adopted because it was (and still is) simply superior in many aspects to previously available process managers, because application developers had it up to here to maintain n different init scripts for n different distributions and distribution packagers didn't want to have to write custom init scripts for each application anymore. As an example, check out the discussion around the adoption of systemd in Debian[1]. [0] https://blogs.gnome.org/ovitters/2013/09/25/gnome-and-logindsystemd-thoughts/ https://blogs.gnome.org/ovitters/2013/09/25/gnome-and-logind... [1] https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002 https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002
    - p_l 5y ago
      It might be because people did report on in trying to run GNOME 3.8 without logind, and reported massive faults? And no, not in "GDM doesn't clean up after itself", which was given as explanation for the infamous "systemd now defaults to destroying everything in a session on logout" change few years later. (Which GDM could require anyway earlier, but apparently somehow it wasn't enough) There is a lot of good ideas that went into systemd though, and I'd agree that a lot of anger is in how badly they are implemented (the only reason I do not complain more about systemctl is because upstart managed to be even worse). In my copious free time, I've been tinkering at alternative, but even if I disagree at the format of systemd service files, it includes a parser for them.
3np 5y ago
> But it's toxic for the long term, because it undermines the whole point of using linux if you can't swap out pieces or maintain your own forks of individual components. You can, though? And many distros do by default. Don’t like systemd-boot? You can replace it with grub. Don’t like systemd-networkd? You can replace it with networkctl. Want to use it but prefer to handle Wireguard tunnels with wg-quick? Fine! Don’t like systemd-resolved? You can replace it with dnsmasq. Don’t like systemd-cryptsetup? systemd won’t care if some other system takes care of your LUKS partitions. Etc, etc.
- fsflover 5y ago
  https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Hard_dependencies_on_systemd
  - 3np 5y ago
    That’s a short list of other packages (none of which I think are part of a base Linux install, correct me if I’m wrong) that have decided to depend on systemd?
  - IshKebab 5y ago
    Where's the "hard dependency on libc" list? Or "hard dependency on Bash"? It's ridiculous to imagine that no program is allowed to depend on SystemD.
    - lmm 5y ago
      > Where's the "hard dependency on libc" list? There are multiple libc implementations. libc independence is important and valuable. You'll probably find a "hard dependency on glibc" list in the documentation of e.g. Alpine. > Or "hard dependency on Bash"? Ubuntu will have a list from when they switched to ash as /bin/sh. Again, multiple implementations and independence are important, and something the linux community generally cares about.
      - IshKebab 5y ago
kaba0 5y ago
Why was it chosen by debian multiple times with the most democratic process out there?
- lmm 5y ago
  It was forced through by breaking the rules of the process and overruling the committee that should have made that decision. Many old-school Debian maintainers quit in disgust at that point, so if subsequent votes have been in systemd's favour then that's probably why.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Some source would be interesting, because it is just blind words otherwise. Also, Arch and several other distros made the choice independently. I am fairly sure Red Hat is not some evil entity kidnapping the families of maintainers making them switch to systemd..
  - esarbe 5y ago
    No rules were broken.[0] [0] https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002 https://www.debian.org/vote/2019/vote_002

Mikhail_K 5y ago

> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If Big Mac is a crappy food, why billions are served with it?

starklevnertz 5y ago
- Mikhail_K 5y ago
pverghese 5y ago
Or maybe you should questions yourself as to why you are so angry about what others like
- Mikhail_K 5y ago
  If others enjoy eating garbage, does that obligate me to like it, too?
  - diffeomorphism 5y ago
    Yes, pretty much so. If there is a dish everybody likes but you say it is "garbage" then you are just wrong and an arrogant snob.
    - OJFord 5y ago
      A 'Big Mac' is objectively not nutritious, and cheap meat though. I like systemd.
      - diffeomorphism 5y ago
        Then say that instead of "garbage".

toast0 5y ago

> And let me ask a question, if systemd is crap, why does every major distro use it? If it was truly crap then surely the distro builders would use the alternative? If Windows is crap, why does every system builder ship the majority of their machines with it? Why bother with a different desktop than Windows? Just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good. Building a distro is a lot of work already, and avoiding systemd takes a lot of effort these days. Plus, there seems to be a lot of people who like systemd, so if you want curmudgeons like me (well, probably not me, I'm going to FreeBSD instead; I understand there may be some sort of fancy rc replacement in the works there, but I presume it won't break the things I expect to work, and it won't subsume half of base) and people who like systemd, then you've got to do twice the work, and everybody will ask you why you're pushing against the tide.

esarbe 5y ago
> If Windows is crap, why does every system builder ship the majority of their machines with it? Because they get incentivized by Microsoft to do so. This is a well document part of their often illegal business practices.
IshKebab 5y ago
Windows isn't crap though.