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Phoronix reports the systemd developers are having their first conference. Here is a direct link to the YouTube video channel.
Whether you love systemd or hate it, it looks like it's not going away. If you dislike it maybe one of these videos might change your mind.
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'systemd' Developers Have First Conference
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If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to invent it.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:31AM
Jesus systemd.
If you dislike it maybe one of these videos might change your mind.
Uhm yeah about that.... [memeshappen.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by KiloByte on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:42AM
It's like watching the "Triumph of the Will" would sway me to join the Nazi party.
Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:33PM
Ein PID, ein Initialisierungssystem, ein Distro! Heil Poettering!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @02:40PM
卐 Heil Poettering! 卐 - reichd
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @03:45PM
"We're planning to integrate the codebase of polandd into systemd as systemd-lebensraumd."
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:07PM
It's like watching "Girls gone wild on each other's naked bodies" would sway me to.... ummmm... back in a minute...
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @01:18PM
Je suis systemd.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:34AM
Is this the biggest missed opportunity in the history of Linux?
eg, an opportunity to rid linux of this systemd cancer...
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:39AM
If only we could have nuked it from orbit.
Its the only way to be sure.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Funny) by BasilBrush on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:16PM
There's only amateur coders still arguing about systemd. Real programmers moved to OSX years ago.
Hurrah! Quoting works now!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:39PM
Back in 2006, a lite version was spun off of MEPIS.
This became antiX (pronounced "Antiques").
In recent years, MEPIS' chief developer abandoned his distro and DistroWatch currently has it labeled Dormant.
Since then, the antiX guys have spun a distro that is bigger[1] than their own distro and which has a MEPIS legacy.
If you would like to try it, MX-15 Beta1 was just released.
MX-14 is also available.
Like antiX, MX uses sysVinit by default.
After installation, those who want systemd can find that in the repos.
[1] The antiX ISO can still fit on a 700MB CD.
(They tried a larger ISO once and got a bunch of complaints.)
antiX is compatible with Debian Testing repos.
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:42AM
It's Balrog! Evil from the most ancient times and the depths of hell, or at least the depths of Moria. I just wanna say, like, dudes and dudettes, thou shall not pass, m'kay? Systemd shall not pass ("Fly, you fools!" "I am trying to buy you time! Run! No, seriously, run!" ) Nope, not gonna happen! Go back to the RedHat of which you were made! You shall not pass! Why are you making me repeat myself? Hey, what is the boot dependency that is coiling around my feet. Oh, crap. Time to go all Gandalf the White on their asses. BSD!
Sorry for all of the Lord of the Rings channelling, it seemed appropriate.
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:49AM
addendum: I was so scared of the Balrog, I said BSD when I meant "Slackware". My bad. Apologies.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:09AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday November 10 2015, @11:16AM
Devuan's working pretty well for me on my personal laptop currently. (Apart from the lack of control I have over the HDMI using xrandr.)
There's an update on the Status of the Devuan Project [youtube.com] presented by VUA Alberto Zuin and another VUA. It was made recently at the 2015 OpenNebula conference in Barcelona. They've made a lot of progress in a short time and have built up a more modern development infrastructure than what Debian had. They are very clearly in it for the long game and aiming for servers, embedded devices, and desktops.
Though it will be ready when it's ready, it's reached Alpha 2. I plan to finish my migration when vdev is done.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 10 2015, @11:48AM
I will also give a hat-tip here to Gentoo, a distribution which I've tarred perhaps unfairly over the last decade (but that is because they do attract too many inane ricers), but as I was looking for a systemd-less distro earlier this year, the IRC channels were *awesome*. I went in there humbly, knowing very little about how to get things done in Gentoo, and pretty much every question got a quick, accurate, useful, and non-condescending answer. At the moment, I'd say it's the best community I've seen. I may well keep one of my machines on Gentoo, just so I don't lose what I've learnt. (My experiences with Slackware were quite the opposite, unfortunately.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday November 10 2015, @01:29PM
As somebody who has never had much distro loyalty (as in, used SuSE, CentOS, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch, Linux From Scratch, Slackware, and a few others), I have to say that Gentoo is extremely handy for personal use. I wouldn't run it on a server, because updates are too complicated for that, but for a desktop it's really easy to just start up an update run just before you go to bed, wait 5 minutes to make sure it's starting OK, and then come back in the morning and it's done. They also have one of the more elegant solutions to the problem of updating config files - far too many distros just clobber any customizations you've made.
And, as you note, they did a bunch of work to avoid systemd when to do that made them a lonely voice in the crowd.
So yeah, it's worth giving a try.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:09PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:17PM
Enable Javascript. Make sure you're using systemd. View the whole thing on a 30" monitor consisting of s single Gnome3 window that is 94% empty space... :-)
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:24PM
fatphil, AC: It also works if you enable Javascript, purge systemd from your half-Wheezy half-Jessie system, and view it on a screen controlled by LXDE :-)
The article itself is interesting and well-written, I found.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:29PM
He (Jude) also explains the design a bit, I'm not going to copy his article, but the three main points are:
- the ( /dev ) filesystem is the API (*)
- the shell is the glue
- there are multiple device event sources
he says vdev should work without DBus as well, and multi-platform not just Linux.
(*) but, he also says that the /dev filesystem alone is not enough to represent the notions of "seat", "login session" and "container".
(Score: 2) by zeigerpuppy on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:14AM
Ha, gotta love the wheezy Jessie!
apt-get install -t unstable
Is my friend.
I would jump ship to BSD if there were any distro that supported Xen and ZFS
but until then it's bastard hybrid Debian all the way!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:48AM
The core is very competent and robust, and it actually runs pretty fast, but the interface is ghastly, and the software engineers and project managers are some of the most divisive pricks in the industry. It's only normal for them to surround themselves with complete sycophants at their dog-and-pony show.
One of the key differences is that while Windows 10 is surrounded by a fortress of proprietarity to guard its incompetence, there's more influence able to shape systemd into something remotely sanely manageable. It's true that Red Hat is Pöttering's employer, and they, along with Canonical and Debian, are the major distro forces circling their wagons around the systemd camp, but it doesn't mean that us Linux users and coders are supposed to "accept things the way they are, because this is the world we live in." Save that talk for Microsoft's Windows 10 Defense Force (while the project manager of Windows 10 "spends more time with his family" [infoworld.com], similar to (but not exactly like the departures of) his predecessors Steven Sinofsky, Bill Veghte, and Jim Allchin. (Anyone noticing a pattern here?)
Personally, I prefer distros that run rsyslogd alongside journalctl, and I sigh at how byzantine the whole dot-file hierarchy is. The last time we had an object-oriented programmer create a shell, we got PowerShell (complete with gratuitously hyphenated commands, complete with an asinine moniker of "commandlets"; someone doesn't understand how nauseating Java's smarm-fest lingo had become in the early-2000's, let alone the late-2000's).
I can't wait to see the intersection of systemd and a half-decade of practical application, complete with a heaping helping of utter contempt for any of the freedesktop.org BS.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:05AM
Not that you're old, but being able to comment about early 2000's Java means your at least older than LP. We need more insight from the older coders, because the kids nowadays are growing up with shiny tools that make them spoiled and want to build systems that do the work for them. Nothing inherently wrong with that attitude, but caution is needed because they may just run everything into the ground. Older coders generally have a better understanding of efficiency and how easily an elaborate tower can be infiltrated...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @06:21AM
There are those that are his age that also question his actions.
The difference perhaps, is that some learned early on the difference between "can do it" and "should do it".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:19AM
I suspect that there are some real advantages in using Systemd, but only a very small number of people actually want or need those features. The problem is that it is being shovelled down the throats of all Linux users.
I have had arguments (mostly on the other site) about the usefulness of systemd and, I don't think anyone has been able to show an advantage of systemd that can withstand my criticisms. But I accept that there are use models that I don't consider, where there are possible advantages.
Supporters will say things like "It manages and automatically restarts services", my answer: "services don't die and if they do, there is probably something more serious wrong and re-starting the service is likely to make things worse", etc.. For me, Systemd fixes a bunch of non-issues. It fixes problems that simply don't exist. People point to its speed starting up network interfaces, but gloss over the fact that the delay in traditional init systems is usually due to performing checks not done by systemd: checking that the same MAC address or the same IP address do not exist on the network (and, like systemd, these checks can be bypassed in traditional init systems also).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:18AM
Oh, there are many. Just as many as there are real advantages in using IOS.
But for whom those advantages outweigh the disadvantages, Apple and Microsoft already offer everything you could want.
Where as for those of us that want the flexibility of a system where you can replace any piece, consisting of small tools coupled together with shell scripts, the choice until now was only Linux or *BSD. And of RedHat and Pottering get their way, soon only *BSD.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Alias on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:41AM
I have, in the past, made the argument that systemd doesn't do anything that couldn't be done before. In fact, I know that many of the things it does, (dependency-based setup, sequential logging, etc..) have in fact been done before. There are numerous other ways to start and maintain processes on Linux. All of them are less monolithic and less risky than systemd. One of the biggest technical problems with systemd is the amount of functionality it tries to cram into PID1, which is a special process that really needs to be protected from complex interactions with other code for reliability and security reasons. PID1 is about as close as you can get to the kernel on the OS side without being part of the kernel. There are even kernel modules that are more well-sandboxed away from being able to break the system than PID1.
Many things now have Mono and systemd dependencies, and are therefore possibly subject to patent suits and definitely subject to lock-in problems. The way the open source community typically deals with contentious changes is to fork and let the results of the two forks speak for themselves. The fact that this has been very strongly discouraged and that project leaders have been pressured into accepting Mono and systemd into the mainstream distros is strong evidence, in my opinion, that whomever is responsible for that pressure is up to no good and should be dealt with in a prejudiced manner. Note that I didn't even mention the technical pros and cons of systemd and Mono. Those pros and cons are irrelevant if their presence in mainstream distros enables the torpedoing of the Linux community and related OSS communities. To project leaders who are being faced with pressure to break compatibility with non-Mono or non-systemd systems: a better answer to those pressuring you is: "Go make your own fork."
Realistically, the biggest problem here is that the Linux community has allowed commercial distributions to be the most mainstream ones. This was bound to happen eventually. Luckily, this has left a big opportunity for someone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @09:38AM
More and more it seems the main benefits are not to end users, but to upstream devs and distro maintainers.
To upstream devs systemd offers a unified user space to target.
To distro maintainers it offloads the burden of setting up various things.
All in all, it appeals directly to the laziness of both groups.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:55AM
Worst of all for me though is the massive missed opportunity for a fully modular version of systemd as a standalone system init process accompanied by a collection of tightly integrated and individually optional core system daemons that only deliver the 20% of features that are all 80% of the users will need. "systemd-whateverd" doesn't have all the features you need, is particuarly buggy, or has some other issue? Fine! Turn it off via a config file and install a full-fat replacement daemon that does. We could have had the best of both worlds in a single package (or, better yet, a set of packages); a closely integrated set of daemons for those that like the systemd approach, and the full modularity and ability to pick and mix daemons that most of systemd's detractors want, and almost everyone would have been happy. That's what happens when you don't think things through properly before you start hammering out the code, I guess...
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 10 2015, @01:55PM
Hmmmmm. Now where have I had to use that method before?
(Score: 1) by Alias on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:53AM
"That's what happens when you don't think things through properly before you start hammering out the code, I guess..."
I would love to agree with you, but I believe they did think of this and decided against giving users the freedom to do that easily. Anyone who understands enough about how Linux works to write systemd knows enough about the Unix way and the principles behind it that this *must* have crossed their mind. Systemd's current design doesn't seem to have internal interfaces that allow easy use of individual modules. There are lots of executables, but the whole thing is basically a huge POSIX noncompliance. It is almost like they thought that making a bunch of executables would make it look enough like the Unix way that it might pass muster while still allowing them to prevent people from making derivative works that are actually useful without integrating systemd source code directly into another code base. Perhaps they think they are going to be able to passively torpedo a million other projects by making them legally related to systemd code?
Yes, I think the design was very deliberately poisonous.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:07AM
I'm kind of divided on that point. Hanlon's Razor says that you should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity, and the clusterfuck of bad design and implementation that is PulseAudio certainly supports that view. On the otherhand, there is more than a whiff of "embrace, extend and extinguish" about the whole architecture of systemd, how it's not possible to entirely shutdown some parts of it even when you have a fully functional alternative running alongside and how various other unrelated projects, many of which are also heavily backed by Red Hat, all but require systemd to work themselves. What I'm not seeing in that though is the end game; is there *really* that much benefit from getting a given piece of code so entrenched into the Linux ecosystem that it's all but impossible to switch it out for an alternative?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @06:24AM
There have long been a refrain from Gnome/Freedesktop that if only Linux had a unified userland, everything would be so much easier and shinier...
(Score: 1) by Alias on Friday November 13 2015, @10:09PM
"Is there *really* that much benefit from getting a given piece of code so entrenched into the Linux ecosystem that it's all but impossible to switch it out for an alternative?"
Good question. I'm not completely sure. It would depend on exactly which piece of code. What is scaring me is that they have already managed to get lots of people on lots of projects to make changes for systemd. I know some of those changes are trivial. They are more like supporting systemd as an option. This looks like a hard dependency to people who aren't looking at the code because the package will require systemd to be present as a dependency, even though one could just comment out 3 lines and recompile to make the systemd dependency go away. I have heard, (though not personally verified,) that some of them are quite a bit worse, including at least something in the kernel.
If the community is willing to trust the systemd people to not have an alterior motive, I can see how the systemd people might end up effectively controlling the architecture of other projects. All I am really saying here is that people need to look out for the "extend into left-handed coordinate system" takeover attempt.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Zz9zZ on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:58AM
Systemd does some very cool stuff, no doubt about it. However, from LP's own talk about cgroups there is little need for all this magic on desktops! So why isn't this a server optimized package to be optionally installed for those who need such capabilities?
From the same talk, systemd now controls all permissions, and a lot of it happens automatically. The system will manage everything for you, and you must only request what you need to have it magically delivered.
Here's a rough quote: "There shall be only one writer to the cgroup tree! Except when delegation is involved. Delegation, again, means that this other manager manages this specific subtree of the big tree. To give an example, LXE currently puts itself on the top level of the tree. SO that there's systemd, then next to it is this other tree with its own cgroups. And that is not allowed, but what is allowed now is that systemd has the big tree, then lxe asks for its own little unit where it gets what it needs and does what it wants."
On one hand you have a system that is able to manage all the sub-processes, however it also means that compromising Systemd will give any process full access to anything on the system. You are no longer able to compartmentalize a system.
"We are basically stalling on the kernel people to do their work and fully port all the remaining controllers to the Unified Hierarchy."
Is it just me or does this sound like a cyberpunk spinoff of LOTR?
Diversity is good, diversity breeds strength. Unification and specialization breeds a certain kind of strength, but one flaw becomes an Achille's Heel.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 2, Informative) by liquibyte on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:20AM
package.mask
kde-misc/kcmsystemd
sys-apps/gentoo-systemd-integration
sys-apps/systemd
sys-apps/systemd-readahead
sys-apps/systemd-sysv-utils
sys-apps/systemd-ui
sys-devel/systemd-m4
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:24AM
Umm, systemd is pushed by the Freedesktop people (those trying to turn Linux into a Windows 8 competitor). Server people tend to be the graybeards that the systemd developers despise, because they want systems that work, never change ("never change a working system", "if it works, don't fix it") and can do whatever the admin needs with a few lines of shell scripting (another thing the systemd developers hate).
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:18AM
Yours, Greybeard, one of the latter.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday November 10 2015, @11:44AM
The AC is onto something. LP has made it clear one of the central goals of systemd is to give the distro wars a way to make peace.
Systemd + BTRFS would make it possible to run applications with specific version of libraries without reconfiguring your system.
Combine this with a patching linux kernel, and it become possible to imagine a very stable end result.
Unless you are administering *millions* of machines (i.e. like Android), it might be hard to see the vision that is behind this...
I am not (administering anything past this one!) but I did watch a few you tube snippets a few years ago...
My summary - it works quite well, but the interface is a bit of a "challenge" sometimes...
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 10 2015, @01:21PM
We already do that with chroot environments.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday November 10 2015, @01:33PM
Sure and I use LD_LIBRARY_PATH to reroute applications. But what was proposed (on his blog) was that say Redhat has deployed some neat application v2.0 and you are using Debian and they only have v1.0. In principle you could mix version of a wholelotta stuff , but with out having to mess with the system. The "subvolume" feature of BTRFS would allow just the files need to be export.
The vision presented was that instead of package managers holding the components of the distribution, the whole distro becomes a volume.
The advantage of a volume would that it could be signed etc... but (and I am guessing there) I think it means applications would be distributed as subvolumes with all their dependencies.
I know it sounds whacky, but if you want reliability on a large scale, this is one of the ways...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 10 2015, @02:07PM
So they poorly reimplemented namespaces and a vfs like plan9 did over three decades ago. This is just more unnecessary "oh shiny!" complexity layered on top of existing complexity.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:12PM
Okay, this part I missed. It is wacky, completely bonkers if you ask me.
If you think mixing a bunch of mutually incompatible applications through some partitioning scheme promotes large scale reliability, you have another thing coming. I can only imagine the mess this will promote as people upgrade by adding partitioned apps while leaving old code in place. Before you know it, you have a tangled web of mutually incompatible applications running on top outdated code. Sound familiar? Oh sure you can upgrade the OS underneath but why not do that to begin with? I can only see this encouraging bad upgrade paths by allowing people to perpetually run old bug ridden security swiss cheese code because it's easier to pop in that new app container and be done with it. You can argue all day how these scenarios can be mitigates by best practices but let's be honest here, the vast majority is lazy to varying degrees including you and I.
And this isn't an easy problem to solve. We have so many different pieces of software talking to each other that it is very difficult to get everyone on the same page. Libraries, apps, kernels, userspace tools, api's, protocols, frameworks, etc., all add in enormous amounts of complexity and weave a delicate web that is your OS. I think we are at a point where there are so many miles of shit piled up, we have no choice but to pile on more shit held on by duct tape to keep it all from falling apart. One thing Rob Pike was right about, we have completely stagnated in the area of OS research. And that is hurting us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:14PM
Unix has retarded OS research by 10 years and linux has retarded it by 20.
— Dennis Ritchie as quoted by by Boyd Roberts in 9fans.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:22PM
I think Linux is retarding it by more than 20 years thanks to systemd. Worse is better, should be the mantra. Features only add unnecessary bloat and do nothing for the consumer and torture the developer along with IT.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday November 10 2015, @04:26PM
you should see opensuse leap. Essentially I agree that it is going to seem messy, but I give LP some leeway because Pulseaudio started as awful and is now indispensable.
Seriously, I can have audio flying via bluetooth or HDMI and it just works.
I am a bit miffed about the huge package shift that occurs every now and again (e.g. Opensuse tumbleweed tried to address this), so it might actually be the opposite of complicated.
It may actually permit small changes?
Trying to be constructive, because I know that *I* am not writing any of the code, and I am happy someone is!!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @03:24AM
Pulseaudio is still awful though...
(Score: 1) by Alias on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:09AM
So, basically... Containers...
(Score: 1) by Alias on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:05AM
"Systemd + BTRFS would make it possible to run applications with specific version of libraries without reconfiguring your system."
That was possible before systemd. There are a variety of ways to do it. One way is to just link the app executable against the version of the library you want. The unversioned entries in /lib are usually just symlinks to the latest version of a library. Unless you remove the other versions, the other ones can be there happily forever. You could also just statically link binaries, thereby making this a total non-issue. There are some other benefits to static linking too. There is also chroot. There are really a lot of solutions to this that have been around for a long time.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:36AM
you'll get no argument from me, I have used all of those methods! The one being proposed (AFAIK) is that with BTRFS there is high compression, security (against hacking) and automatic deduping. And it is a proper volume. So distros can use that hard work of making sure packages work together, and users can run what they need.
Let me be clear; BTRFS nearly killed my SSD (the actual comment in the sources was "shred") so I haven't touched it in a year. I am using ZFS. I have had my own fights with systemd that were pretty stupid security holes. But I overcame and I guess they patched it!
But I really do see a need for linux to become considerably more robust, so we can get sufficient momentum to exploit the enormous size of the Android ecosystem, and perhaps raise the percentage of desktops to....5%?
Seriously though, I watched a couple of the talks and I get the strong sense they are "down in the weeds" developers and they want it all to work *really* well.
I think that after a while some folks just want to argue - there certainly aren't as many developers as there are detractors!!!
My $0.02.
(Score: 1) by Alias on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:27AM
"But I really do see a need for linux to become considerably more robust, so we can get sufficient momentum to exploit the enormous size of the Android ecosystem, and perhaps raise the percentage of desktops to....5%?"
I do think app sandboxen that could keep their sand thoroughly contained and prevent it from smelling or poking any part of the underlying HW/SW would be good. I'm not really comfortable with the level of permeability that containers seem to have.
I don't think the Android or Steam ecosystems will be truly available on a Linux desktop with free graphics drivers that work well until someone invents a way to make "secure" UEFI the only boot environment for desktops, at which point, we will all be ants in Microsoft's ant farm anyway, and I will probably become a lawyer because it will be the only remaining way to make any money in North America.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:40PM
well there is a chrome plugin that runs android apps? So if you create a VM and run android in it....might be useful? Just throwing a few things out there, as computers are getting faster, somethings just become possible. Virtualisation for example, is almost turnkey, but maybe a bit complicated?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by novak on Wednesday November 11 2015, @12:27AM
systemd is pushed by the Freedesktop people (those trying to turn Linux into a Windows 8 competitor). Server people tend to be the graybeards that the systemd developers despise, because they want systems that work
I think that's part of their bait and switch. When talking to server people they say, "oh, I realize you don't want many of these features but we are using them to develop great cross-distro desktops." And the server guys say "well, ok then." When talking to desktop users, they say, "Yeah it might have a bug or two but the server guys need it yesterday for containers and cgroup features that you don't understand."
I often see people say "I'm not qualified to comment on systemd technically." That right there should raise red flags, you're running a system that you can't understand? Who fixes it when it breaks? It's probable that no one with one or fewer PhDs is qualified to comment on it technically. And that is a pretty harsh technical comment.
Systemd, perhaps best described as an object oriented dependency network for changing system state reminds me in many ways of certain object oriented languages which seem too try to add as many features as possible and then allow you to concatenate them all. Is C++ better than FORTRAN? In what cases? How do you measure it? Does it not depend on which features are used? And, of course, the kicker: If C++ is better on average does this mean we should deprecate FORTRAN bindings in all libraries and compilers so that people can't use it?
novak
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @09:47AM
Do not confuse true server graybeard with devops/*aaS/web bleached hipster beard.
The latter is basically about cramming a would be desktop distro (used to be Canonical's Ubunutu, seem to be shifting towards Fedora workstation or Arch) into a "container" and calling it a web service/app.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday November 10 2015, @01:36PM
Systemd does some very cool stuff, no doubt about it. However ... there is little need for all this magic on desktops
I find it ironic that the end result of the whole disaster of systemd, after enormous agony and effort switching at work and home to freebsd, is I now have cool new stuff available that I actually use, like ZFS and PF and CBSD/jails and ports.
So now that the pain of having to abandon Debian after roughly 20 years is over, I really enjoy the new features systemd brought me. ZFS absolutely rocks! Thanks systemd! Without systemd I'd never have upgraded!
I did scrub thru some of the systemd youtube videos (this is from last week or so?) and I didn't see anything I was missing and I don't miss anything I saw. Its kind of like a high school reunion, in that way.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:50AM
Are they using metal detectors and bomb sniffing dogs at the conference site? One lucky disgruntled Linux aficionado can decapitate the entire Systemd conspiratorial Mafia!
And now for something serious!
As someone who really doesn't give a rat's ass about systemd so long as my Linux iMac and my Android pad boot up, I'm amazing at the animosity expressed toward systemd. It's reminiscent of the old Mac/PC religious wars of the 1980's. Frankly, if you really don't want to use systemd, don't! There are other Linux distributions and you can always use FreeBSD.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:06AM
Don't give us ideas...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:53PM
I changed my mind. More ideas please!!!!!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:28AM
"Other Linux distributions" being basically down to Slackware and Gentoo, with Gentoo users complaining that systemd keeps sneaking in through the backdoor and Patrick (Slackware) only promising to "wait and see".
As for FreeBSD, as far as I know the software I use most doesn't run, or at least not very well on FreeBSD. It's called Steam, and tends to quickly turn into a huge investment.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:35AM
You might consider trying (and backing if happy) devuan. They did a pretty good job sofar, even if they look like condemned like any people trying to oppose lennax.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:45PM
I'm glad to hear that at least one of the "protest distros" has survived. A lot sprung up in a short time, and most of them seemed doomed to die once the people behind realized how big a task a distro is.
If the efforts have been focused on Devuan, it may be time to add that one to the "keep an eye on" list.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:35AM
I just downloaded FreeBSD. (Boot drive failed, might as well refine my set-up)
I plan to use full-disk encryption, then dual-boot Ubuntu off a second hard-drive. That way, proprietary software like steam can not clobber my work (or at least not exfiltrate it in clear-text).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Magic Oddball on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:48AM
PCLinuxOS is still holding steady against systemd as well — I've been using it since last December, and have been very happy with it.
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:34PM
That makers 2 of us, except I've used it longer, I think Texstar would rather have his balls removed with a rusty razor blade than have systemd infect his distro
Alie
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by novak on Tuesday November 10 2015, @06:48PM
Is PCLinuxOS a reasonable replacement for say, mint? I myself use crux primarily, but sometimes I have to put together a machine for someone less technically adept. Thus far I've been sticking with systemd-less debian, and it's ok. But I would prefer to use and support something a little more-future-proof and... I never thought I'd get to say this... better made than debian.
novak
(Score: 2) by present_arms on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:33PM
In my humble opinion, yes it is, it also has Mate and Cinnamon of you like those desktops, plus it's a rolling release, install once use always, I myself have made some community ISO'S of trinity (see sig), KDE and Mate so people can use it without downloading 10 months worth of updates :) the community is small yet very friendly :)
Alie
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by novak on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:39PM
Great, I'll give it a try and see how I like it. I see it has LXDE too which is what I usually put on machines to be used by people who do not like/know tiling WMs. I personally like trinity quite a bit too, and it's pretty easy for someone to get the hang of so I might actually give that a shot as well.
Good to know that there are still a lot of people holding out against systemd. Even after losing some of the better known distros there are still quite a few options. I know people say linux isn't about choice but that's one of the biggest reasons I love it.
novak
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Alias on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:33AM
"I know people say linux isn't about choice but that's one of the biggest reasons I love it."
Linux has always been about choice. Linus has said so many times. GNU / the GPL have always been about freedom. (Read the GNU manifesto.) The GPL has allowed programmers who care about software freedoms some assurance that their work and derivatives of it can be legally encumbered only to the exact degree allowed by the license.
(Score: 2) by novak on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:25AM
You hear the opposite a lot.
http://islinuxaboutchoice.com/ [islinuxaboutchoice.com]
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-January/msg00861.html [redhat.com]
I like my choice though so you won't get a lot of argument out of me.
novak
(Score: 1) by Alias on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:55AM
The post about pulseaudio gives interesting insight into the mindset that may be pervasive in the systemd crowd. I haven't yet seen a software situation where user choice couldn't be maintained *and* supplied with good defaults that take care of the users who don't want or need the choice.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by tekk on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:55PM
General consensus among Slackware users at this point is that if Slack adopts systemd there's a fork that takes most of the serious users with it, not a distro to worry about.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:23AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:48PM
Whose bad is it, FP? Who is the villain? systemd, Lennart, the cabal, RedHat, or the Debian technical committee? Face it, no one was twisting anyone's arm. The cabal managed to write something marginally better than the traditional init, and distros started to adapt it willingly. It is silly to expect that your distro will never change (unless you are on DOS or something), so when your "finely tuned" scripts stopped working (which was only a matter of time), you had 2 choices: update the scripts for year 2015 or downgrade your distro. You picked the downgrade, which probably makes total sense in your case, so what's all this bile for? Life ain't perfect, but you seem to be doing OK :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:22PM
Because the future only holds systemd options, with tons of core software people require depending on it as well. Some will be able to hold out for a few years I'm sure, but eventually something will come down the pipe that requires newer versions. Up until now Linux had only one real dependency, the kernel. Everything else had options. Systemd apologists keep saying it is modular, and anyone can write a replacement, but so far these claims seem to be total bunk. Half of the anger is about having a complicated and buggy system shoved on the entire community with questionable benefits, and the subjugation of functionality keeps increasing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:52PM
for year 2015
IT IS THE CURRENT YEAR
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Alias on Wednesday November 11 2015, @03:52AM
"Face it, no one was twisting anyone's arm."
I know I am going to sound like a conspiracy theorist for saying this, but... Arms were almost certainly twisted. The current status of systemd in the Linux world doesn't make sense unless people in charge of projects, who have been doing this for a long time and know better, have had silent strokes or something. Many different people. Strokes. In unison. Either that or arm twisting. When I first installed Centos 7, I was somewhat of a systemd apologist too.. I thought, "yeah, this is wierd and very non-Unix way, but this is Redhat and if they want to be corporate and stupid, it is their right to do so, since it is their distro and it seems to work OK, and they aliased old commands to their systemd equivalents so I don't even realize I am using systemd half the time when I am using it." And then I learned more about it and realized how much of a trap/torpedo it is. And then Redhat announces a partnership with MS not long after MS's rather obvious pro-Mono-on-Linux developer evangelism which reminded me of the developer evangelism details I read about in those documents that became part of public record in a european country where Microsoft was sued several years ago. And then I looked at some systemd code and was reasonably impressed until I looked at the interfaces, which seem almost intentionally impedance-mismatched with the rest of the Linux/Unix world, kind of like IE's Javascript event bubbling model. And then I looked at a bunch of systemd blog astroturf and realized that someone paid a lot of people to flog the stupid bullet points in Lennart's conference presentation, which are very disinformational. And then I read about Redhat hiring an ex-MS PR guy and thought, "aha, that explains why Redhat's spokespeople are suddenly insulting the intelligence of the entire free software community." This rabbit hole just keeps on giving. I bet 98% of the people that hate systemd don't even realize how bad it actually is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @06:56AM
Been noticing Fedora news in outlets that rarely to never mentioned any Linux news as all (unless it was some spectacular security failure). The marketing push must be staggering on all fronts.
BTW, RH's biggest customer right now seems to be the M-I complex. Their current chairman was formerly the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at Pentagon no less.
Frankly it seems that RH is pitching to replace Windows as the M-I's go-to OS, after screwups like a certain Windows running warship.
And systemd seem perfect for producing a *nix that is "familiar" to MSCEs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:21AM
Whether you love systemd or hate it, it looks like it's not going away. If you dislike it maybe one of these videos might change your mind.
Given the lack of trust, no. In fact, FUCK NO!
Appropriate quote from Dune [wikiquote.org]:Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by NickFortune on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:32AM
Yeah, exactly.
Well, it's not going away from jasassin's system, that's for sure.
As far as I'm concerned, it's not even getting installed.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:11PM
Appropriate quote from Dune
One thing about Dune that you should factor in, there's a bunch of imaginary people with pithy quotes about how not to find freedom, but nobody actually looks for freedom. You wouldn't expect someone who isn't looking for freedom to find it anymore than you would expect someone who isn't looking for alternatives to systemd to find those.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:12PM
Freedom for individuals is rare in human history. Freedom for small groups is common. We are designed to live tribally, and can only exist as independent individuals in situations where the threat level is very low and the resource level is very high. Sometimes technology can enable this, but that usually equalizes over time, where intra-group relative power does not.
We evolved to live in small groups. Anything else is stressful and unnatural. Even with technological advantage people who do that are rare. Consider how few "mountain men" there were. And the ones who survived usually had horrific periods in their lives. Consider why Kit Carson was known as a cannibal.
In Dune the Fremen were the "free men" because they lived outside the Empires authority. They weren't independent of their local tribal groups. In this way Dune was true to human history. They were modeled on the Tuareg, or perhaps on the Bedouin, as their religion was modeled after Harris' understanding of Mohammedism. (And in neither case was there an attempt at an accurate replication. E.g., Paul was more closely modeled on Moses than on Mohammed...but it wasn't close in either case.)
You might consider what you mean by saying "free". In Dune it meant you didn't pay the Empire's taxes. That's what it meant in feudal England, also. (Actually, in England you still paid some taxes, just not all of them. You didn't pay fee(s), i.e. cattle. I believe that in Norway it meant you didn't pay any taxes, but they used a different language, so it's not strictly comparable...and usually only younger sons of the nobility were free in Norway...O, and outlaws, of course.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:06PM
Freedom for individuals is rare in human history. Freedom for small groups is common. We are designed to live tribally, and can only exist as independent individuals in situations where the threat level is very low and the resource level is very high. Sometimes technology can enable this, but that usually equalizes over time, where intra-group relative power does not.
[...]
You might consider what you mean by saying "free". In Dune it meant you didn't pay the Empire's taxes. That's what it meant in feudal England, also. (Actually, in England you still paid some taxes, just not all of them. You didn't pay fee(s), i.e. cattle. I believe that in Norway it meant you didn't pay any taxes, but they used a different language, so it's not strictly comparable...and usually only younger sons of the nobility were free in Norway...O, and outlaws, of course.)
Which seems rather irrelevant to Herbert's quote which didn't make that distinction.
It also seems quite irrelevant to my particular society (which also happened to be Herbert's original society) which has rather weak "small group" freedom (such as the substantial regulation of businesses).
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday November 11 2015, @07:28PM
The details are, indeed, irrelevant. The point, however, was that free isn't an absolute, and only exists within a context. When used as an abstract it's something that's unachievable. Freedom from hunger is well defined. Freedom isn't. Even free speech has it's gnarly places. Am I free to shout loud enough to keep you from being heard? But that's what media channels do all the time.
So you need to pay careful attention to precisely what you mean when you say "free". Janis Joplin correctly used the term in talking about human relationships when she said "Freedom's just another word for 'nothing left to loose'". But even in that context it's sometimes worthwhile.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:19PM
One thing about Dune...
Actually, I was looking for a Star Wars light side/dark side quote when I stumbled onto this one. Regardless of the storyline, the quote is still apt.
...looking for alternatives to systemd...
At the moment, alternatives are trivially easy to find (Slackware, PCLinuxOS, *BSD etc). The trick is to make sure the alternatives survive the [remove foil helmet] latest EEE effort [replace foil helmet].
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:35AM
I have no opinion on the technical merits of systemd itself. I am not qualified to pass comment.
However, I do have an opinion on the process whereby very few distributions offer the choice of using or not. I believe that reduction in choice for anyone other than linux gurus is bad.
systemd reminds me of the creation of the Catholic church after the First Council of Nicaea. I hope we do not have to wait long for Linux' Luther to spark a Reformation.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:38PM
Aaahhh, yea! I remember them as well, those were good times, weren't they?
Constantine, a jolly fellow if you didn't try to cross him, but... weird: lived with his mother for quite long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by kazzie on Tuesday November 10 2015, @01:09PM
I hope we do not have to wait long for Linux' Luther to spark a Reformation.
But what if he just tries to kill Superman insteas?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @03:41PM
Green systemdonite!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday November 10 2015, @09:54AM
Well maybe that would be hard to obtain but the laboratory preparation of the VX Nerve Agent can be found in Wikipedia.
It's not a "Nerve Gas" rather it is a liquid with the consistency of motor oil and is regarded as an "Area Denial Agent" because it evaporates slowly, thereby denying the enemy the ability to occupy the conference hall where some irate Soylentil sprayed a fine mist into the HVAC ducts.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday November 10 2015, @11:08AM
MDC pls.
Nerve gas would barely tickle systemd devs braincells.
Try giving them omega-3 instead.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @10:55AM
For all the moaning about devuan forking Debian (not the way I would have done it), it's really not hard to build your own Debian install discs without systemd. I use the image on most of my installs now and have a jessie install that comes with sysvinit / rc. Everything still works. The only real gotcha is that the live-installer people ignored a patch that fixes the systemd flag for jessie. It's on the mailing list and you can grab it and apply it and that does the trick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @11:13AM
I am betting that any talk against cancerd^W systemd will be prohibited at this conference.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:34PM
Probably, but you could always give one at a regional event such as Linux Fest Northwest. Bryan Lunduke gave a series of talks over several years about how Linux sucks and they were quite good. Perhaps you could plan a similar 'systemd sucks' talk...
Slides: https://github.com/BryanLunduke/LinuxSucks [github.com]
Videos: https://www.google.com/search?q=bryan+lund+linux+sucks [google.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @12:25PM
In just a few years, systemd.conf will have engulfed USENIX, ICDCS and even SIGGRAPH. Eventually, all conferences will be a part of systemd.conf.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @01:29PM
"If you dislike it maybe one of these videos might change your mind."
Not bloody likely.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @02:18PM
Here's one for you conspiration theory fans: Could it be that Poettering is the new mole that evil forces have placed into the Linux community after Icaza was "burned"? Tasked to bring the most Microsoft-like workflow imaginable and while at it do damage where possible?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:03AM
I think this thought has passed through everyone's mind, but without further info there isn't anything to talk about. Just choose alternatives.
(Score: 1) by Alias on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:34AM
It's not just the workflow and Poettering isn't just a mole. Systemd isn't just to make MS developers and admins more comfortable on Linux. The damage being done isn't random. It isn't even damage, exactly, yet. At least not beyond the way they shoved it into the Linux world -- that was damaging. Systemd and its interfaces is/are like ice-9. The intent is to de-POSIX the Linux/GNU/additional code bases in such a way that impedance mismatch makes everything eventually involve MS-sponsored code. In other words, they realized the GPL can be used virally and are now using it against the free software community. Mono and secure UEFI boot are the patent law counterparts to the systemd copyright law part.
What is most worrisome is the fact that a few years ago, the Linux community would have just laughed at Poettering and told him and MS to just go fork stuff if they want a MS dev/admin friendly version, (thereby calling their bluff.) If they actually did fork it, nobody would have used it except Azure customers who would probably have no other choices except Windows. Now, I'm hearing the "The Linux greybeards are all a bunch of morons, someone improves Linux and gets flamed because of not-invented-here, no wonder Linux is only on 1% of the desktops. Harhar," type arguments. They are either shills or they just haven't been in the computer industry long enough to know what they are looking at.
MS just announced a partnership with Redhat a few days ago. This is no longer a conspiracy theory -- it is more like a collection of observations whose connections are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @06:57AM
Told you so.
--MikeeUSA--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:36AM
Told you so.
--MikeeUSA--
Told you so.
--MikeeUSA--
Told you so.
--MikeeUSA--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @01:37AM
For me, Linux is about choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @04:07AM
Frantic meowing and whimpering from what seemed like dozens of cats and dogs were heard, along with loud cursing from humans.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @05:11AM
> If you dislike it maybe one of these videos might change your mind.
Fuck you
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:42AM
basically systemd from the outset was about making Poetterings laptop boot fast, to circumvent that it had issues with suspend/resume. This much like how Pulseaudio was about scircumventing that he had issues getting Alsa to play nice with his shiny new USB headset.
But then came the pitch, and it was grand. Containers. its the devops cure-all of out day. It solves the dependency "problem" (a problem created not by *nix, but by package managers), and it provides security. And it must be double plus good, no? Meh. All it inevitably does it make security worse, as now you do not have a lib to update, but X containers containing a lib to update.
With sane package management you could drop lib x+1 on top of lib x, and have everything use x+1 unless it absolutely needed x to work (at that point you ping the devs some angry emails and look for alternatives). But package managers are not sane. They can't get their dependencies code around the idea of having multiple libs of the same name installed at the same time. And from there you find yourself spiraling towards dependency hell.
I just him and his supporters had not gotten hold of the Fedora reins. With it they have the backing of Red Hat, big bro of the Linux ecosystem. As such major projects has ended up hog tied to systemd long before systemd has reached anything like maturity.