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posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 10 2015, @05:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the love-it-or-hate-it dept.

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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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:19AM

    by Whoever (4524) on Tuesday November 10 2015, @07:19AM (#261124) Journal

    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).

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:18AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 10 2015, @08:18AM (#261134)

    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.

    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

    by Alias (2825) on Wednesday November 11 2015, @02:41AM (#261544)

    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

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 14 2015, @09:38AM (#263143)

    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.