Systemd Introduces "Portable Services" Functionality, Similar To Containers
Lennart is at it again, making complicated things that nobody asked for.
The past several months Lennart Poettering has been working on a "portable services" concept and that big ticket new feature has now landed in Systemd. Portable services are akin to containers but different.
[...] A portable service is ultimately just an OS tree, either inside of a directory tree, or inside a raw disk image containing a Linux file system. This tree is called the "image". It can be "attached" or "detached" from the system. When "attached" specific systemd units from the image are made available on the host system, then behaving pretty much exactly like locally installed system services. When "detached" these units are removed again from the host, leaving no artifacts around (except maybe messages they might have logged).
[...] The primary focus use-case of "portable services" is to extend the host system with encapsulated extensions, but provide almost full integration with the rest of the system, though possibly restricted by effective security knobs. This focus includes system extensions otherwise sometimes called "super-privileged containers".
(Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Wednesday May 30 2018, @10:53PM (1 child)
Personally, given how powerful personal computers' CPUs have become, I can say the number of packages I actually have a problem with spontaneously compiling on a whim due to their compile times, I can count on one hand.
And I think it's worth noting that the distros that do not supply systemd by default (or at all) often supply the choice of init system. Which is how it should be, by all distros. It would be far more acceptable, I'm sure, had distros such as Debian simply maintained the option of switching the init system rather than forcing just the one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:21PM
> It would be far more acceptable, I'm sure, had distros such as Debian simply maintained the option of switching the init system rather than forcing just the one.
One can just install sysvinit in Debian if wanted.