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posted by martyb on Monday January 21 2019, @07:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the their-way-or-the-highway dept.

Michael Biebl, long-time maintainer of systemd for Debian (2010 or earlier, based on changelog.Debian.gz), is taking undetermined holidays from packaging it. The e-mail was short:

Will stop maintaining systemd in debian for a while.

What's going on is just too stupid/crazy.

This takes place after he discussed a bug in which he expected systemd to respect local settings, and not rename network devices:

@yuwata a default policy like /lib/systemd/network/99-default.link should never trump explicit user configuration.

Later he seems surprised about how things roll there:

I'm amazed that I have to point this out....

The issue is locked currently, and also archived just in case, so everyone can read the initial report and the replies he got.

Opinion: It seems distribution developers are starting to get the stick too, not just users with their "errors" (taken from a reply). Will distributions finally wake up or is that they don't still grok the attitude of projects like this? [Or is it something else? --Ed.]


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Apparition on Monday January 21 2019, @08:47AM (15 children)

    by Apparition (6835) on Monday January 21 2019, @08:47AM (#789474) Journal

    Most of the non-systemd Linux distributions are only maintained by one or two core developers each and are therefore vulnerable to the bus factor [wikipedia.org]. A major Linux distribution backing away from systemd would be a welcome development.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Monday January 21 2019, @09:04AM (7 children)

    by pTamok (3042) on Monday January 21 2019, @09:04AM (#789482)

    A major Linux distribution backing away from systemd would be a welcome development./

    A major Linux distribution mandating packages support a choice of inits would be welcome. There is more to systemd than just the init. That said, I find it odd (read crazy) that choosing a particular Desktop Environment which itself is dependent upon things that systemd does forces the use of systemd (or shims that emulate systemd behaviour). It goes against the modular philosophy of Unix-like systems. Diversity is strength.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by MadTinfoilHatter on Monday January 21 2019, @09:37AM (5 children)

      by MadTinfoilHatter (4635) on Monday January 21 2019, @09:37AM (#789490)

      A major Linux distribution mandating packages support a choice of inits would be welcome.

      Easier said than done. Making a Linux distro that allows you to choose between different kinds of normal init systems, e.g. sysv, runit, epoch, et.c. isn't that hard, because those init systems are just init systems. Systemd, on the other hand extends it's slimy tentacles to who-knows-where, which means that the only kind of distro that can offer this kind of choice is something like Gentoo, where the users himself builds all the binaries. Gentoo in fact does just this - you can choose systemd if you want to, even though it's not the default. (Funtoo could do the same, but their stance is that systemd is a turd that they're not going to waste any time supporting.)

      Because of all the systemd bindings to packages that have nothing to do with init (which BTW is the single biggest architectural flaw of systemd), regular binary package distros pretty much have to make a choice, whether to support systemd while making everybody else 2nd class citizens where things may or may not work, or whether to support normal UNIXy init systems, and give systemd the middle finger. In my opinion more distros need to do the latter, and evict the cuckoo from the nest before it destroys everything else in it.

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @01:28PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @01:28PM (#789558)

        systemD totally needs a bit-torrent subsystem : ]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:30AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @03:30AM (#789949)

          Just run KodiD, fully loadeD, on your RaspDberryDPiD. Use a HDMID 2.2D cable to connect it to your SmartD TVD and you're good to go.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:51PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:51PM (#792039)

            Hate smart tvs.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by digitalaudiorock on Monday January 21 2019, @02:22PM (1 child)

        by digitalaudiorock (688) on Monday January 21 2019, @02:22PM (#789582) Journal

        Because of all the systemd bindings to packages that have nothing to do with init (which BTW is the single biggest architectural flaw of systemd), regular binary package distros pretty much have to make a choice, whether to support systemd while making everybody else 2nd class citizens where things may or may not work, or whether to support normal UNIXy init systems, and give systemd the middle finger. In my opinion more distros need to do the latter, and evict the cuckoo from the nest before it destroys everything else in it.

        Absolutely. What's more they need to do the same for any software projects that decide to require systemd. The fact that the open source community didn't dump Gnome on the trash heap of software history when they did so has always astonished me.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:04PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:04PM (#789699)

          The fact that the open source community didn't dump Gnome on the trash heap of software history when they did so has always astonished me.

          Some of us did. You'll never get 100% - the maintainers at least are unlikely to dump their own stuff - and it sounds like I'm not alone, but I don't know where the general consensus on gnome ended up.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:44AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:44AM (#789492)

      I have to agree with that diversity is a strength of GNU+Linux distros. Being able to choose a distro to fit any given need has always been a big bonus, but it's less and less if everyone does everything same as systemd attempts to do. It would be difficult for every distro to mandate init agnosticism however, but I think having a good crack at supporting more than one and not forcing any packages relating to other inits is worth doing.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:06AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @09:06AM (#789483)

    A major Linux distribution backing away from systemd would be a welcome development.

    It would indeed! But all the big distros seem to be in lock-step - and nobody dares be the first to make the right and sensible move. It makes one think of the hypothetical monkey experiment: http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place [answers.com]
    PS - first 'monkey' to break ranks will get much banana. Me give money to distro that brave. Go ahead and test my generosity...

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Monday January 21 2019, @02:53PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 21 2019, @02:53PM (#789593) Journal

      First, it is amusing that you would use the monkey-banana-water-spary experiment even after Ballmer is no longer part of Microsoft.

      Second, nobody wants to be the first to break ranks and say The Microsoft Has No Clothes!

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @12:34PM (4 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 21 2019, @12:34PM (#789527) Homepage Journal

    Gentoo is a major distribution, it's just not the major distribution for people who don't want to fundamentally understand their system.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:02PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @07:02PM (#789696)

      :) The thing is that in 2019 we don't want a distro that requires a double PhD in CS. We need something to put on a disc/usb and hand it to Joe Public, Auntie May, install for family, friends - and not open up a can of whoopass that immunises them from ever trying Linux again. So we need a mainstream major distro, like Debian, Ubuntu, Suse, or Arch to make the move. Gentoo and Slackware are too hands-on terminal-heavy for the average user. I run Mint as I can get work done and not play sysadmin all day long.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @07:24PM (2 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 21 2019, @07:24PM (#789719) Homepage Journal

        So, like I said then. Also, just a side note, if you're a competent sysadmin, you don't play it all day long. You hardly ever have to play it at all because you've automated away everything that doesn't require your constant attention.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.