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posted by martyb on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the all-your-computer-are-belong-to-us dept.

At the All Systems Go conference in Berlin 20-22 September, Lennart Poettering proposed a new extension to systemd, systemd-homed.service. A video of his session can be downloaded from media.ccc.de with accompanying slides [PDF].

In his presentation, Poettering outlines a number of problems he sees with the current system, like /etc needs to be writeable, UIDs need to be consistent across systems, and lack of encryption and resource management.

His goals with the proposed solution are migrateable and self-contained, UID-independent home directories with extensible user records that unify the user's password and encryption key; LUKS locking on system suspend; and Yubikey support.

He identifies a number of problems this new idea could cause with SSH logins, disk space assignments, UID assignments, and LUKS locking.

He plans to introduce JSON user records that can be queried via a Varlink interface and to a certain extent are convertible to and from existing formats. The home directories will be stored as LUKS-encrypted files that will be managed by the proposed new service, systemd-homed.service. The system integration will be supported by pam_systemd and systemd-logind.service.

It will be interesting to see how the world responds to this new take on systemd's ever-increasing encroachment of Linux.

... and lastly, this story is brought to you from a systemd-free laptop.


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(1) 2
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:18PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:18PM (#897094)

    That systemd is a Microsoft conspiracy?

    All your personal data are belong to systemd!

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:45PM (7 children)

      by RamiK (1813) on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:45PM (#897114)

      It's not a Microsoft conspiracy per se. More like, it's the C++ thought process trying to abstract and generalize everything that leads to this convergent "evolution" where engineers disregard the edge cases they're paid to solve when describing the issue at hand.

      The whole registry-like "JSON user records that can be queried via a Varlink interface" concept is such a thing. Instead of acknowledging the different needs of different applications to organize their data and runtime settings in different ways by allocating them directories under ~/.config/, he's trying to force everyone into little boxes he built out of JSON. As a result, we'll have yet another standard for storing preferences.

      --
      compiling...
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:46PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:46PM (#897176)

        It comes to be too much of a stretch to consider the thing Unix-like at all. Its having a common binary format with traditional GNU/Linux should be considered legacy and not commonality; like OS/2 and Win9x/NT both having EXEs.

        • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:14PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:14PM (#897195)

          POS.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:35PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:35PM (#897226)

            POS

            POEttering

            FTFY

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @09:55AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @09:55AM (#897480)

        What's this about ~/.config/ ? What's wrong with ~/.$appname ?

        • (Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Monday September 23 2019, @10:28AM (2 children)

          by SemperOSS (5072) on Monday September 23 2019, @10:28AM (#897490)

          I do not like my home directory too cluttered. Currently it consists of the following hidden files (produced with ls -1dF):

          • .aspell.en.prepl
          • .aspell.en.pws
          • .bash_history
          • .bash_logout
          • .bash_profile
          • .bashrc
          • .cache/
          • .config/
          • .dbus/
          • .desktop*
          • .dmrc
          • .esd_auth
          • .fontconfig/
          • .Fontmatrix/
          • .fonts.conf
          • .gconf/
          • .gksu.lock
          • .gnome2/
          • .gnupg/
          • .gtk-bookmarks
          • .gtkrc-2.0
          • .gtkrc-2.0-kde4@
          • .ICEauthority
          • .kde/
          • .kde4@
          • .lesshst
          • .local/
          • .mdk-menu-migrated
          • .menu-updates.stamp
          • .mozilla/
          • .mzbu/
          • .orc/
          • .pingus/
          • .pki/
          • .profile
          • .purple/
          • .PySolFC/
          • .shutter/
          • .ssh/
          • .subversion/
          • .thbbu/
          • .thumbnails/
          • .thunderbird/
          • .Trash/
          • .vim/
          • .viminfo
          • .vimrc
          • .wget-hsts
          • .Xauthority
          • .xsession-errors

          I would rather see one like:

          • .cache/
          • .config/
          • .dbus/
          • .local/
          • .Store/
          • .Trash/
          • .xsession-errors


          --
          I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
          Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
          • (Score: 2) by DeVilla on Wednesday September 25 2019, @11:54PM (1 child)

            by DeVilla (5354) on Wednesday September 25 2019, @11:54PM (#898849)

            I can understand your not wanting a particular directory to get clutter. In contrast, I'd like to know where everything for a given application is. I'd rather know my info for firefox is in ~/.firefox and not have to guess which pieces are in .config/firefox, .cache/firefox, .local/firefox, .local/share/firefox, ... Add to that the reality that I current also have to look in various other directories like .gnome/*.

            Now if those all go in one ~/.hidden/* directory, fine. But having each application's data spread across all these directories was a big step backwards for me on the backup / restore / migration front.

            • (Score: 3, Interesting) by SemperOSS on Thursday September 26 2019, @12:31PM

              by SemperOSS (5072) on Thursday September 26 2019, @12:31PM (#899066)

              Fair enough, and I could easily accept that, provided they all go under something like a .App directory. That would also clear up the home directory. I would still like .cache to be separate, though, as I do not back up cache files.

              I personally prefer the separation between caches, configuration and local data, as they have different backup schedules: caches never, configuration when it changes and local data on a regular basis. Some well-placed symbolic links might give us the best of both worlds, if only programs like rsync would know when to follow symbolic links and when not to.


              --
              I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
              Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:52PM

      by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:52PM (#897284)

      Because I can't resist (although maybe I should):

      That systemd is a Microsoft conspiracy?...

      If microsoft are the major driver (and, while I can see the attraction for them, I'm not convinced they are) then strictly speaking it's not a conspiracy...

      --
      It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:38PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:38PM (#897095)

    I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, systemd/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, systemd plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning systemd system made useful by the systemd corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the systemd system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of systemd which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the systemd system, developed by Red Hat. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the systemd operating system: the whole system is basically systemd with Linux added, or systemd/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of systemd/Linux.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:42PM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:42PM (#897096)

      RMS died for their sins.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:35PM (6 children)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:35PM (#897169) Homepage

        RMS also ate his own toejam, and apparently now he is also one of Epstein's buddies.

        • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:40PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:40PM (#897171)

          Epstein dindu nuffin.

          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:47PM (1 child)

            by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:47PM (#897177) Homepage

            Maybe he didn't, maybe they all blew him willingly. But that's not what matters here.

            • (Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:39PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:39PM (#897231)

              Well, what the fuck DOES matter?? It's been all downhill since Kennedy died. Has anything changed dramatically? No, it's the same old bullshit since the Gulf of Tonkin...

        • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Pav on Monday September 23 2019, @07:51AM (2 children)

          by Pav (114) on Monday September 23 2019, @07:51AM (#897457)

          Epstein? Er, no... RMS was defending a dead friend, a friend who couldn't defend himself. Minsky had slept with one of Epsteins girls... they call it statuatory rape, which it was... but apparently she was legal in Boston, Mass where Minsky was living. Considering the blackmailing of the powerful that Epstein was involved in, I wonder what the angle was with Minsky. Other power seekers certainly benefited by pushing RMS aside.

          I don't think many doubt RMS is on the spectrum and misses much of the emotional content of things he talks about, which unfortunately makes him a poor politician in some ways. His defense of Minsky was certainly a fail. He understands loyalty though obviously, which is often a strength of many on the aspergers spectrum. and has a conception of freedom which I've benefited from massively. He has certainly proved to be a visionary in his domain of expertise.

          • (Score: 1) by Remmy on Monday September 23 2019, @11:38AM (1 child)

            by Remmy (4050) Subscriber Badge on Monday September 23 2019, @11:38AM (#897508)

            Only thing... No one has stepped forward saying Minksy did sleep with the Epstein girl... Only story so far is that a girl offered herself to him and he turned her down.

            • (Score: 2) by Pav on Monday September 23 2019, @01:25PM

              by Pav (114) on Monday September 23 2019, @01:25PM (#897535)

              Her deposition said she had been forced to have sex with him. While it's true that she could have lied, I'd say it's more likely she's being truthful.

              The problems people have are that she was 17 which was statuatory rape in the juristiction they were currently in, and that no 17yr old girl would have offered themselves to Minsky in any case... and Minsky should have known that - therefore he committed sexual assault. Stallmans argument was that he didn't think Minsky was the kind of guy to have sex with someone against their will, and he believed she may have presented herself as being entirely willing (even if Epstein had privately pressured her). Stallman also argued Minsky might not have been aware of the age of consent was different to where he lived (16 in Boston).

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Nuke on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:12PM

      by Nuke (3162) on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:12PM (#897141)

      You've got it wrong. What you are refering to as systemd/Linux is, in fact, Lennartix

    • (Score: 2) by EEMac on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:54PM

      by EEMac (6423) on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:54PM (#897155)

      Once Microsoft comes out with a Linux distro, we'll see how true this is!

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Monday September 23 2019, @05:29AM

      by DECbot (832) on Monday September 23 2019, @05:29AM (#897426) Journal

      I don't think you should call it systemD/Linux until gcc is replaced. That's probably going to happen shortly after systemd-homed.service is dumped on the community to fix. Then we'll get our systemD-ccd.service which will compile systemd.bitecodeLibs at runtime into nearly C code from json header files encrypted in LUKS containers. These applications are streamed through logind to ensure the only have the permissions of the user launching the application and then compiled into random executables assessable only to systemD.run_exe into your choice of native environment; WindowsWayland for the GUI and PowerShelld for the command line. Component styling will be handled by systemd-Gui-StylesD.lib, which is a four way merge of GTK5, CSS3, .Net, and the Java Swing libraries. Each application will be sandboxed in its own container managed by systemd.containerd. To ensure the application is truely isolated systemd_FSd will partition a SystemD.zyztemd.fs journaled and checksumed encrypted virtual had disk only accessible to the application. These disk drives will be registered in the EFI to the application to ensure they cannot be mounted by systems not managed by systemD.

      --
      cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:43PM (30 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:43PM (#897097)

    like /etc needs to be writeable,

    No, you don't. If you want to write something, use /var. /etc only should be written to if you want to change some configuration, system-wide.

    UIDs need to be consistent across systems

    That would be nice... if your in an enterprise environment... there are solutions for that.

    and lack of encryption and resource management.

    Again, only useful for enterprise environments, where solutions already exist. In all other cases it is overhead.

    He identifies a number of problems this new idea could cause with SSH logins, disk space assignments, UID assignments, and LUKS locking.

    No shit Einstein... you're not solving problems... you're creating them... stop doing that!

    He plans to introduce JSON user records that can be queried via a Varlink interface and to a certain extent are convertible to and from existing formats.

    Ugh... keep reinventing the wheel... who pays this guy?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:17PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:17PM (#897106)

      [quote]Ugh... keep reinventing the wheel... who pays this guy?[/quote]

      Clearly either Microsoft or one of those companies that provides paid support for Linux.

      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:43PM (#897149)

        I thought he was paid by SCO?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:55PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:55PM (#897286)

        It's RedHat. The largest Linux paid support company on the planet.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:23PM (9 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:23PM (#897107)

      Well, /etc contains files that are not strictly configuration (e.g. /etc/mtab) and files that are technically configuration but may need to be changed dynamically (e.g. /etc/resolv.conf), which means that /etc has to be on a writeable filesystem — unless, of course, these files are placed somewhere else (like /var) and replaced with symbolic links in /etc for backward compatibility.

      So yes, you are right that it does not have to be writeable, but at the same time, you are wrong stating that it only needs to be written if you want to change some configuration system-wide.

      Lennart Poettering's fascination with complexity is well-known and the idea of having everything in a binary format or a not-so-human-friendly-but-still-almost-readable format is a pity. I hanker back to the times where I could easily search for a configuration setup with find/grep/awk/... instead of having to rely on soul-searching Google endeavours to discover the right service setup or systemctl option.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:58PM (6 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:58PM (#897117) Homepage Journal

        Gentoo. Nuff said.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:44PM (1 child)

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:44PM (#897150) Journal

          Who the hell modded you troll for this? +1 coming momentarily. I started my Linux journey on Gentoo more than 15 years ago (back when a 1 GHz T-Bird was top of the line...) and credit it with teaching me to look at *why* things work, not just how.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 2, Troll) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:01PM

          by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:01PM (#897185) Journal
          You spelled FreeBSD wrong. Also, fuck you Pottershit.
          --
          SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:36PM (1 child)

          by Gaaark (41) on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:36PM (#897227) Journal

          It's starting to look like Gentoo is a possible for me: I love Manjaro, but it seems that removing systemd is a pain in the ass there.

          I might have to look at dual booting Gentoo and go from there.....Gentoo, it seems, has changed from when i used it, but not a whole hell of a lot.

          I wish they'd leave things alone unless it ABSOLUTELY makes it better.

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 2) by corey on Sunday September 22 2019, @09:09PM

          by corey (2202) on Sunday September 22 2019, @09:09PM (#897255)

          Yep, another systemd-free Gentoo user here.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:41PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:41PM (#897211)

        /etc/mtab -> ../proc/self/mounts

        If you are writing to /etc on a regular basis, you are doing it wrong.

      • (Score: 2) by rleigh on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:14PM

        by rleigh (4887) on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:14PM (#897268) Homepage

        I don't think mtab is a good example, because it's outdated. I eliminated mtab in Debian around 8 years back now, along with the util-linux maintainer who made it use procfs for everything. resolv.conf is fair enough; though most modern distributions make it a symlink. Overall, the direction has been to remove these special-case writable files from /etc and put them in /var or similar, making it possible to have only readonly state in /etc. However, some software, like CUPS, does like to rewrite its configuration in /etc; IMO these services should be putting that dynamic configuration into /var.

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:07PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:07PM (#897121)

      "who pays this guy?"

      RedmondHat.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:42PM (14 children)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:42PM (#897148) Journal

      who pays this guy?

      Red Hat. What you keep saying is 'enterprise environments' - which is precisely who Red Hat want to provide systems and support for. systemd isn't a mistake for them - if meets exactly their needs. It might not be what the home user wants, but RH don't care. You cannot be a money stream for them. From their point of view it makes perfect sense - for us, maybe things appear different.

      '

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:55PM (6 children)

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:55PM (#897156)

        Seems like we need a distro that's focused on SOHO systems instead of enterprise computing. Luckily, systemd does seem to be pretty modular, so distros are free to pick and choose which components they want to use. Some parts of it make sense for SOHO computing, other parts (like this) really don't, and a SOHO/single-user focused distro should leave out the components that don't make sense in that context.

        • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:43PM (2 children)

          by isostatic (365) on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:43PM (#897173) Journal

          When debian went systemd, I felt that the fight was over.

          • (Score: 2, Disagree) by janrinok on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:19PM

            by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:19PM (#897199) Journal

            It was - you can choose whether to use a systemd distro or not. What is there to argue about?

          • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:53PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:53PM (#897214)

            Not so much.

            VOID is fighting the good fight. There are only a few guys working on it, but it is amazing how good their stuff is. It's runit based, rolling release, and more stable than Arch. The guys who are behind it wanted all the software of Linux, but more of a BSD package system. So it is Linux for Unix people. And it is EU based, which has some advantages.

             

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:54PM (1 child)

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:54PM (#897238) Journal

          Oh c'mon... Who needs a "distro"? Just write a script to collect all the source files and compile from that. What's this obsession with market share? Everybody wants to make a million bucks off their favorite hobby. Just be satisfied your electronic contraption runs without Microsoft.

          But, if you insist, the path of least resistance is Slackware. Full installation takes less than 10 minutes. Just remember "nomodeset" in case your video fucks up

          --
          La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @11:03PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @11:03PM (#897291)

            Who needs a "distro"? Just write a script to collect all the source files and compile from that.

            You're welcome [linuxfromscratch.org]

        • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:58PM

          by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:58PM (#897288)

          Seems like we need a distro that's focused on SOHO systems...

          Like Slackware.

          --
          It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:09PM (5 children)

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:09PM (#897190) Journal
        Redhar doesn't want to provide a Linux enterprise environment. They want to provide THEIR enterprise environment. Embrace extend eradicate.

        Other linuxes worked just fine without his shit.

        Redhat is not Linux, not in implementation, not in the Unix small individual tools that do one thing and do it well.

        I'm sure someone can come up with lyrics to The day Linux died, to the tune American Pie.

        --
        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:17PM (4 children)

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:17PM (#897197) Journal

          RedHat uses systemd. Debian uses systemd. Ubuntu uses systemd. It is not a single distro - it has business benefits for many distros. But you don't have to use it. You probably downloaded it for free, so choose another distro that doesn't use systemd. Your problem has just gone away.

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:02PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:02PM (#897218)

            Yes, what you say is true in principal, but not quite so, in practice.

            It makes me really sad that Debian went with systemd, by default (when using a linux kernel). Debian always called itself the, "universal operating system'. In the past, there was more truth to this claim. You used to be able to run the same Debian userspace with a Linux kernel, a FreeBSD kernel, a GNU HURD kernel, and even an OpenSolaris kernel. Now, the Linux version is this weird fucked up thing, so knowledge does not transfer, and the maintainers of the non-Linux ports have to do a lot more work-- since the Linux version has been the defacto upstream to the rest of the ports.

            I run systems that are not x86. And while ARM is now supported pretty well by many distros, Debian is the only game in town for more obscure architectures. Debian also has, for years, made cross compiling a simple task, that got even easier with their multi-lib. Just apt-get your toolchain and foreign arch libraries and setup binfmt to automatically run arch-x binaries via qemu so cross builds of things using autoconf, with tests that assume it is running native, just work.

            • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @05:48AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @05:48AM (#897429)

              Maybe true for your principal, but not true in principle. See what I did there? Two different words, with two different spellings. Now, I suppose, you will accuse me of being a pendant.

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:59PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:59PM (#897290)

            Devuan and Artix do not use systemd.

          • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 23 2019, @07:34PM

            by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Monday September 23 2019, @07:34PM (#897750) Journal
            Claiming systemd makes a system more "enterprisey " is bullshit. Making stuff more complicated without any must-have benefits is always a bad idea.
            --
            SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
      • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:29PM

        by pTamok (3042) on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:29PM (#897203)

        Actually, since Red Hat was bought by IBM [redhat.com], IBM pays him. Apart from that, what you say makes sense.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:38PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:38PM (#897229)

      who pays this guy?

      It is obviously the work of Il Diablo.

  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by idiot_king on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:47PM (30 children)

    by idiot_king (6587) on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:47PM (#897098)

    I know there will be lots of negative comments and downvotes, but what precisely at this point is actually wrong with systemd at this point, and what exactly are you going to do to fix it? Everyone uses it by now and nobody's come up with a better solution on Linux specifically. There's a really good video talking about this bias against it [youtube.com], and as much as you or I might not like Poettering's attitude, the reality is that he filled the gap on Linux where things like launchd and others did on other operating systems. If there are better solutions, where in the FOSS ecosystem are they, and who precisely is stopping everyone from using better solutions?

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by jbernardo on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:00PM

      by jbernardo (300) on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:00PM (#897100)

      The "good video" you're babbling about is basically repeating the debunked "biggest myths" post by LP. It has had all comments removed and blocked when people started pointing this, and asking who was paying for that bunch of tripe served as under guise of a simple presentation.
      If you want to talk about that video, first read "the biggest fallacies" - https://judecnelson.blogspot.com/2014/09/systemd-biggest-fallacies.html [blogspot.com], it already answered all the half-truths, fallacies and just plain lies of that text in 2004.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by ledow on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:09PM (6 children)

      by ledow (5567) on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:09PM (#897103) Homepage

      You turned one small folder of readable shell scripts into one humongous set of binaries and packages that, even with the source available, are basically unable to be modified at all by anyone without trashing their system.

      And all under the guise of utilising *kernel* interfaces that exist now and didn't before (e.g. cgroups) that you could have used from those readable, customisable scripts if you'd just bothered, and got all the same service dependency tracking, etc. required.

      Instead, we now basically have to let systemd interfere in everything from mounting your home folder to setting up your DNS in order for things to work and if you don't do that, it's work to uncouple all those systems just to make the damn thing boot correctly.

      On top of that, there are no fewer security issues (if anything, more), and when they are issues because of the systemd nature, the systemd project has introduced them, and the systemd project has to fix them. Because nobody really understands all the tiny interactions happening behind the scenes.

      And this has all happened in the world's biggest OPEN SOURCE project, using OPEN SOURCE software, to get an OPEN SOURCE operating system up and running. And, basically, run by one company/man.

      It's like letting Elon Musk be in charge of vehicle safety laws.

      • (Score: 1) by PlasticCogLiquid on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:08PM (2 children)

        by PlasticCogLiquid (3669) on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:08PM (#897188)

        I bet Poettering is a CIA agent and his real task is to introduce backdoors into Linux amongst the chaos of SystemD.

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by PlasticCogLiquid on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:10PM

          by PlasticCogLiquid (3669) on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:10PM (#897193)

          I feel like I said it better on SD, quoting myself:

          "I bet at some point in the future Poettering will turn out to be CIA/FBI agent, and made SystemD as crazy as it is so that backdoors could be implemented among the chaos. I mean how did he even weasel into the scene in the first place? Suddenly big Linux supports a guy with a crazy init system out of nowhere and then it was everywhere. The hatred for it is pretty universal among the community and yet it persist."

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @04:45AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @04:45AM (#897415)

          Meanwhile, the only two factors who matter (China and Russia) simply use their own software.
          It's drunkard-at-the-lamppost crap. "It's so much easier to work here!"

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by rleigh on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:25PM (2 children)

        by rleigh (4887) on Sunday September 22 2019, @10:25PM (#897271) Homepage

        I gave up entirely last week. systemd-resolved died and broke the system badly, losing a good bit of time and work in the process. Not for the first time, and it was essentially the straw which broke the camel's back. That was on Ubuntu 19.04, and I didn't even want that silly resolver. I ended up moving everything over to Windows 10. All the Unix stuff is in FreeBSD and Linux VMs. Previously, I ran those VMs plus a Windows VM on Linux.

        First time I've used Windows as a primary OS since 1997. It's got a multitude of problems, but the networking and desktop works, and I can get stuff done without intermittent random system breakage from the fragile mess which is systemd. Sad to say it, but I need to get work done, and systemd has made Linux unpleasant, as well as being unusably buggy.

        • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday September 22 2019, @11:06PM (1 child)

          by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday September 22 2019, @11:06PM (#897292)

          I gave up entirely last week. systemd-resolved died and broke the system badly... I ended up moving everything over to Windows 10...

          So it's almost* working as designed?

          ...All the Unix stuff is in FreeBSD...

          A BSD may ulimately be the only escape.

           

          *You were SUPPOSED to move to redhat.

          --
          It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
          • (Score: 2) by rleigh on Monday September 23 2019, @09:53AM

            by rleigh (4887) on Monday September 23 2019, @09:53AM (#897479) Homepage

            I'd happily use FreeBSD on the desktop if I had the time to deal with any breakage, but I don't. It's almost usable, but there's still a lot of freedesktop.org stupidity compiled into the pkg ports builds by default. TrueOS gets pretty close; there were a few issues with it, but overall they deserve a lot of credit for their work.

            Of all the Linux distributions I've used over the years, RedHat has always been my least favourite. They might have been successful at entrenching themselves in businesses, but that has little bearing on their technical choices. I don't see them any differently to the IBM or Microsoft of old. We were forced to support it in work products because it was "the standard", but actual usage statistics never bore this out. More a case of technical decisions being dictated by management based upon little factual evidence. It will probably be superseded sooner rather than later; look at all the contortions they are going through to justify their "Stratis" product rather than use ZFS. It's inferior in every way! And I don't see that as a sound long-term technology or business strategy. But there will be plenty of know-nothing RHCEs who will suck it right up and tell the rest of us how wrong we are about its many defects!

            The systemd world will eventually implode due to the unmaintainable and unsecurable overcomplexity of the whole edifice. I won't take much pleasure in seeing it, but that's the inevitable fate of spaghetti messes written by cowboys with giant egos.

    • (Score: 1) by NickM on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:51PM (1 child)

      by NickM (2867) on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:51PM (#897116) Journal
      Sorry I accidentally modded you overrated when i meant underrated, please accept my apology
      --
      I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
      • (Score: 2) by bart9h on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:38PM

        by bart9h (767) on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:38PM (#897146)

        ok, I underrated it back for you

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:59PM (9 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:59PM (#897118) Homepage Journal

      Nobody's stopping me. I use them on my Gentoo-based distro every day.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday September 23 2019, @07:32AM (8 children)

        by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Monday September 23 2019, @07:32AM (#897453) Journal

        For now.

        If you are instituting a vast system of social control, you deal with people intelligent enough to use gentoo and wise enough to know that LP has a hidden agenda, seperately.

        They have enough time and resources to put invisible cameras above the workstations of all of those people while they are out of the house.

        Tyranny of the masses is a thing. Once 95% of the people are using cloud computers that are backdoored through spageti code, they can focus down the remaining personal computers with grunt work the old fashioned way.

        They are manipulating a bell curve of a population who can't understand any of this entire thread without house of acronym and concept study. I don't completely understand a lot of this discussion because at this point they are expert level discussions and I am not a programming specialist, I'm someone who doesn't have to look up the acronyms and concepts though.

        So I am looking for which side of the argument is being more manipulative and in whose bed everyone is sleeping.

        An intelligent person can be overloaded with too many specific questions, which is what is happening here, it's a real whackamole scenario with systemd that is exhausting the community exactly as predicted.

        A wise, experienced, mature person can just look at who is lying, manipulative and/or naive, and the answer to this question in this case is as clear as day, clearer even.

        At some point though 'well my specific solution works for me i don't care if everyone else builds a panopticon and gives away all their freedom' is going to stop working, sane people cannot survive for long in a completely insane society once it hits a point.

        I am on the front lines of this, I had to leave the united states out of fear in January 2018. Ignore my story at your peril .

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 23 2019, @10:56AM (7 children)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday September 23 2019, @10:56AM (#897496) Homepage Journal

          There's no conspiracy here, just one terrible software engineer with a vision that looks good to morons in a hurry. And if you think good software can't survive a bunch of morons wanting to use shitty software, I offer you the opportunity to explain the continued existence of the Linux kernel and *BSD. Or SoylentNews when many more people use Slashdot.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Bot on Monday September 23 2019, @01:17PM (4 children)

            by Bot (3902) on Monday September 23 2019, @01:17PM (#897532) Journal

            The adoption of systemd cannot possibly be anything but a conspiracy. It is documented by the 180° change in Debian, the formerly init AND kernel independent Universal OS.
            To correctly frame it as a car analogy imagine if the automakers all started to build larger heavier cars full of insa uffnely connected electrics and electronics which hamper repairability and slow them down. Would you conclude that:A. The advantage in doing that is so compelling that they can afford being less competitive. B. They do that so that they can sell more and do more assistance, no need for a conspiracy. C. A conspiracy to build shitty cars is underway. The answer is somewhere between B and C, but the official answer is always gonna be A.

            --
            Account abandoned.
            • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday September 23 2019, @03:33PM (3 children)

              by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Monday September 23 2019, @03:33PM (#897599) Journal

              To help with your analogy, these improvements would be for 'enterprise cars' that are rentals or for transport, but the entire engine for these types of cars is put in everybody's car, even if they don't want it.

              AND there was an open source car that just anyone could build and contribute to the design, and rather than make their own proprietary one, dozens of people converge from nowhere wanting to change the open source car version for everyone, just because. They don't want to fork, they want to take over the whole thing. And then the things they add are overcomplex and totally out of line with the original philosophy of the project(s).

              They are actually doing this with cars too now by the way, your car will be tracked like it's in a fleet and there will be no way to buy one that is not.

              Always be suspicous when people want to do free work and come from a for profit entity that does business with spy agencies.

              At this point if business representatives contribute to a software project, it already starts to stink. There is a huge world for business software, but if there is no distinction made for personal computers and individual needs, we might as well just beam up to the borg ship already.

              It may be too late, which is why I type so much here.

              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 24 2019, @02:46AM (2 children)

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 24 2019, @02:46AM (#897929) Homepage Journal

                They are actually doing this with cars too now by the way, your car will be tracked like it's in a fleet and there will be no way to buy one that is not.

                Says you. All I need are parts, tools, and time and I can put one together that does exactly what I tell it and nothing else. I don't just want my computer just so, I want my everything just so and will acquire any skills necessary to ensure that it is.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday September 24 2019, @08:06AM (1 child)

                  by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Tuesday September 24 2019, @08:06AM (#898019) Journal

                  Like I said before, those of us capable of using and building alternatives will receive special treatment because there are so few of us, and gradually living with a bunch of people who have no regard for their privacy or control of their devices, will be annoying.

                  If you go with the flow and let all manner of tyranny pass on right in front of your face like a heartless monster, the system will treat you well though.

                  https://jmichaelhudson.net/4-important-drawings/ [jmichaelhudson.net]

                  Totalitarianism is like a restaurant where if you order anything off the menu or interfere with the slaughter in the backroom, you get slaughtered in the backroom. And they don't tell you actually everything that is on the menu and it constantly changes, getting smaller, and eventually it forces everyone it doesn't like into a grievous error.

                  You can only bury your head in the sand for so long with your own perfect world of ethical personal tech before they come for you, and your ass will be in the air, and at that point no one else will see you because they all have their heads in the sand too.

                  One of the main points of my writing in 2019 is because I have seen how this works first hand, so I am trying to yank your head out of the sand, but you just like it in there so much apparently.

                  We cannot protect ourselves from tyranny one at a time, and tyranny anywhere threatens every free person. These are not problems you can run from.

                  And you still haven't answered my question: Are there any non-crazy people in the united states being infiltrated and harassed by undercovers just because of things they say and think?

                  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 24 2019, @12:17PM

                    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 24 2019, @12:17PM (#898062) Homepage Journal

                    Are there any non-crazy people in the united states being infiltrated and harassed by undercovers just because of things they say and think?

                    Oh, sure but you don't number among them as far as I can tell. You see a situation with an obvious, mundane explanation (like Mr. Douchenozzle and systemd) and come up with a conspiracy to explain it instead. That don't reflect well on your mental state. I mean, if there's some evidence of a conspiracy that's all fine and dandy but if it's entirely speculation on your part, you're supposed to be able to recognize that.

                    Like I'm relatively sure quite a lot of people who've pissed the Clintons off and subsequently died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the back of the head number among them. You don't get double digits worth of enemies dying in extremely timely circumstances and retain the benefit of the doubt. My relative certainty still holds a very important bit of doubt that your absolute certainty does not though. Science vs. Religion. Proof vs. Faith. Cynicism vs. Mental Illness.

                    Now as far as the on-topic stuff goes? Please... Nobody anywhere gives two shits if you build or modify your car in such a way as to not have invasive bits you don't want on it. Well, maybe your insurance company but they have good reason and they'll just charge you more if you do. The people who have the skills and the inclination to do so are such a small fraction of the population that we're utterly irrelevant to anyone.

                    --
                    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday September 23 2019, @03:38PM (1 child)

            by jmichaelhudsondotnet (8122) on Monday September 23 2019, @03:38PM (#897606) Journal

            I'm curious, do you see any conspiracies anywhere?

            In your eyes, how did epstein get away with it for so long?

            Because if someone sees no conspiracies, then that is the last person I can trust on the matter.

            btw you did not answer my question, have you read about any private citizens being harassed and followed by mucky mucks?

            I can name 5 offhand. Snowden is one side of the issue, but if anything he says is true, the cointelpro stuff has to be going at full speed, so you think *no one* is encountering undercovers?

            That *everyone* who reports strange things has a mental illness?

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 24 2019, @02:49AM

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 24 2019, @02:49AM (#897931) Homepage Journal

              Oh all the Epstein stuff was full of conspiracy. Systemd is just one egomaniacal douchebag who talks fast enough to convince corporate officers he's not a shitty software engineer though. I mean, is he or is he not an egomaniacal douchebag? Is he or is he not convincing if you don't have half a clue what he's talking about? When you have an obvious cause staring you in the face, it's kind of silly to go looking for a hidden one.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:42PM

      by digitalaudiorock (688) on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:42PM (#897131) Journal

      I know there will be lots of negative comments and downvotes, but what precisely at this point is actually wrong with systemd at this point, and what exactly are you going to do to fix it?

      A while back someone posted a link to this analysis of the systemd concepts and design. It's not political in any way...just a pure design analysis:

      https://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/ [darknedgy.net]

      I've yet to read it all but from what I've read, the clear answer to your question about fixing it is to flush it down the toilet and start over, with designers/developers who have a clue. The section titled "Imbalance between promoting laziness or eagerness" regarding service dependencies is a great example, and coincidentally also compares what they've done to launchd by the way...and it's not pretty. I personally think the whole parallel service startup thing is an unnecessary pile of BS.

      Everyone uses it by now and nobody's come up with a better solution on Linux specifically.

      Since when? I use nothing but Gentoo for myself, and my company moved from CentOS 6 to Devuan.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:48PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:48PM (#897178)

      " If there are better solutions, where in the FOSS ecosystem are they, and who precisely is stopping everyone from using better solutions?"

      They were replaced by SystemD, and the people stopping us from using them (easily) are the same people pushing SystemD, trying to sink their hooks into everything and its brother and make them non-operable without it. For some people it probably does help, even if you ignore the support fees to Red Hat (which I've long suspected was the primary goal). For my use-cases it's about as useful as a festering bowl of dog snot. For the systems I manage, I use non-SystemD distros like Devuan wherever possible, but we have to do interop testing and our customers mostly use RHEL and Debian derivate distros, so I have constant A/B testing on the two init systems. Happily it's now at the point I don't have to bother trying to fix SystemD problems, I can just wipe the VM and start a new one.

      Now that Debian is looking to cave completely and go SystemD-only it's probably going to complicate forks like Devuan enough to push me to running BSD wherever we don't need something for interop.

      Saying all that usually gets me called scared of change, which is one of the SystemD supporter's standard accusations. I object to change for the worse, which SystemD is for me. I have no problem with changes like going from iptables to nftables. Ther's no improvement without change, but not all change is an improvement. Turning Linux into Windows is not an improvement.

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @05:52PM (#897180)

      When you're writing a new OS, it is a worthy enterprise and you're welcome to it; but hijacking an existing one and morphing it into something it by definition should NOT be, is a violation.

    • (Score: 1, Troll) by janrinok on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:21PM (3 children)

      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:21PM (#897200) Journal

      If there are better solutions, where in the FOSS ecosystem are they, and who precisely is stopping everyone from using better solutions?

      A point well made - systemd is not designed for the home user, it is designed for businesses and cloud computing.

      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday September 22 2019, @08:04PM

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Sunday September 22 2019, @08:04PM (#897241) Journal

        Really, this is very true, but where else do we get the chance to come out and throw tomatoes?

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday September 23 2019, @07:46PM (1 child)

        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Monday September 23 2019, @07:46PM (#897756) Journal
        Linux was used in the enterprise long before systemd reared it's ugly head. So let's see - Linux is never gonna be the enterprise desktop OS, it's crippled by systems for regular users, infrastructure such as routers aren't going to want to be loaded down with such crap, it's not needed to run servers (or "clouds"), so it's just a way to get more support contracts for redhat for helping fix and maintain an overlay that just makes things more complicated. Anyone remember "nobody got fired for buying I B M " .:. Until they did? Wanna bet we'll see the same with redhat/IBM Linux?
        --
        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday September 24 2019, @04:22AM

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 24 2019, @04:22AM (#897955) Journal
          Systemd is very useful for cloud computing. That is why it exists. If you don't exist in the cloud then your OS does not need systemd.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Sunday September 22 2019, @11:11PM

      by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday September 22 2019, @11:11PM (#897293)

      ...Everyone uses it by now and nobody's come up with a better solution on Linux specifically...

      Emphasis added. Both wrong; lots of people don't use it and for many use cases the better solution is simply to not use it.

      --
      It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by hwertz on Monday September 23 2019, @06:08AM

      by hwertz (8141) on Monday September 23 2019, @06:08AM (#897432)

      "I know there will be lots of negative comments and downvotes, but what precisely at this point is actually wrong with systemd at this point"
      Piss-poor documentation, replacing readable text files with opaque binaries, lack of configurability. Excessively complicated. Change for the sake of change. Completely ignoring what I'll call "tradition", i.e. systemd tends to change some things for no apparent technical reason, just because.

      A specific example? screen, you can run screen, run some virtual terminals under it, and if you log out of X (or X dies), systemd decides it should kill screen! The documentation says set "KillOnlyUsers" or "KillExcludeUsers" in /etc/systemds/logind.conf, but it LIES (piss poor documentation), I have it set right now and screen will still die if I log out of X. People have told them killing processes people SPECIFICALLY set to run in the background is NOT the UNIX way (ignoring tradition) and the response is basically "tough shit" (change for the sake of change), or they state these workarounds that DON'T work.

      A second example, although it doesn't cause me trouble, systemd improperly runs rc.local just whenever, rather than running it last like it's supposed to. (Change for the sake of change).

      I've also had occasional failure to have my daemons all load properly on my "slowputer" (Dell D430 with a comically slow low-cache ghetto low-volate Intel 1ghz CPU), because systemd actually commits the ultimate sin of introducing bootup race conditions -- in it's zeal to load things in parallel, it presumably must fire some stuff up and just assume it's loaded a second or two later, rather than actually making sure it's loaded like a sane init system would do. Can't tell exactly what's happening since systemd can't bring itself to just write stuff out into a proper log file (replacing proper text files with opaque binaries), and the documentation on how to get anything out of it's "journal" is completely inscrutable (piss-poor documentation).

      Luckily Ubuntu has it more or less working. But honestly, systemd is an unholy bitch and I'd love it to be replaced by something better.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:56PM (18 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @01:56PM (#897099)

    Can anyone alive now explain what the hell systemd even currently is, let alone where it is going?

    Is it a replacement for init scripts?
    Is it some kind of daemon?
    Is it some kind of meta-kernel or kernel replacement?
    Is it a general kernel services interface?
    Is it a daemon service provider? With what overall scope?
    And why is the kernel not good enough for each and every "service" systemd is now determined to provide?

    The feature creep of systemd is completely out of control. Poettering & Co. have gone off the ranch and decided to re-implement things that no-one needs redone, in an architecture which was never designed to support them.

    No harm in innovation you say? I say that linux audio system have not in fact recovered from the mid-stream horse crossing to Pulseaudio -- Poettering's pre-systemd trial run. ALSA was fucking working before pulseaudio arrived and screwed everything up for years. Now I'm supposed to believe that Poettering's latest bright idea will handle encryption better than tried and decades tested solutions that already encrypt /home folders at the click of a checkbox? Does Lennart even use a modern Linux system, or does he just not know all the things he's selling are available already?

    HHe plans to introduce JSON user records that can be queried via a Varlink interface and to a certain extent are convertible to and from existing formats.

    AAAAhhhhh!!!! [uri.edu]

    • (Score: 1) by NickM on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:46PM (1 child)

      by NickM (2867) on Sunday September 22 2019, @02:46PM (#897115) Journal
      I know your probably kind of sarcastic but systemd is a collections of system daemons and an init system that are configured in an homogeneous way. The init system is named systemd-init, the logging deamon is named systemd-journald , the networks resolver is named systemd-resolved and I hope by now that uou get the pattern...
      --
      I a master of typographic, grammatical and miscellaneous errors !
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:09PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday September 22 2019, @04:09PM (#897139) Journal

        And the older version was a lot easier to use, and had fewer problems.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:06PM (8 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:06PM (#897120) Homepage Journal

      Alsa was only "working" if you tack on the adjective "poorly". I can't tell you how many times I had to deal with an audio source refusing to play or crashing the program it was part of because something else had the entire damned audio system tied up under alsa; hundreds at least. Yes, pulseaudio's a fucked up pile of monkey turds. But it still works more reliably than alsa ever did.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:57PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:57PM (#897134)

        I did hours long sets with alsa, not a single dropout even with cpu under stress.
        I used the default mpv and pulseaudio, presentation worked fine at home, failed in the field without error messages, likely because of no network, which was the only differing aspect.

        Yes default alsa can do only one application at a time, i also can listen to one thing at a time.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 23 2019, @01:00AM (1 child)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday September 23 2019, @01:00AM (#897325) Homepage Journal

          I can listen to music, video game sounds, and system/app notification sounds all at the same time. Maybe you should practice more.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @02:10PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @02:10PM (#897551)

            I practiced monitoring a song and beatmux another since the SL1210mk2 setup in 1996. In fact the sessions I talked about were timestretched mp3 flacs and wavs output by mixxx to two separate stereo tracks to an audio mixer, its output picked up by the same USB audio card input and recorded using arecord. All on a pulseaudioless 10+ year old core i5 2.6ghz laptop.

            I also turn the volume all the way down on the desktop so not to be bothered by notifications and autoplaying stuff. For your use case there is dmix.

      • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:41PM

        by pTamok (3042) on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:41PM (#897212)

        Yes, pulseaudio's a fucked up pile of monkey turds. But it still works more reliably than alsa ever did.

        Not on my system it doesn't. Unless you count 'reliability' as reliably crashing every time I try to change the volume when watching streamed video via Firefox (and not just YouTube). I now wear my headphones around my neck or behind my ears to listen to anything important.

        I am reasonably good at diagnosing IT issues and finding solutions or workarounds. Pulseaudio has me beat.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:16PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @07:16PM (#897220)

        Alsa supports (since forever) setting up a software mixer, if your hardware does not natively support this. You don't need pulse audio to achieve this.

        It is a bit arcane of a config, it you want to set up from just docs, but there are tons of examples around, if all you want is a mixer, or just a mixer with a volume boost, etc.

        Since Alsa came out, I have never seen a crash due to Alsa.

        Personally, I don't now, and didn't understand, at the time, why Linux created Alsa, instead of just improving OSS.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday September 23 2019, @01:01AM

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday September 23 2019, @01:01AM (#897326) Homepage Journal

          I'll admit, I do miss being able to cat .wav files to /dev/dsp

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @01:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 23 2019, @01:02AM (#897327)

          Personally, I don't now, and didn't understand, at the time, why Linux created Alsa, instead of just improving OSS.

          Same reason why git came into being: Hannu Savolainen wanted to make money off of OSS, and provided only a crippled edition for Linux.

      • (Score: 2) by hwertz on Monday September 23 2019, @06:22AM

        by hwertz (8141) on Monday September 23 2019, @06:22AM (#897436)

        Agreed. Apparently ALSA worked pretty nicely if you had a fancier card that supports multiple card users and mixes them on the card; I never had one of these, so the first ALSA user would get the card, the second would (depending on how it was written) either detect the card was busy and have no sound, or simply attempt to open the audio device and block (making that app lock up until the audio device freed up.)

        Pulseaudio is (or at least was last I looked) messy code, but they seem to have gotten the kinks worked out well over 5 years ago, and for me it's worked a treat. It works for "normal" use (i.e. playing a video but still having notification beeps or whatever). It successfully (not useful really but cool) let me pipe audio from computer to phone, and phone to computer, via bluetooth. And, I was able to use pactl and such to persuade pulseaudio to use a SDR (software defined radio) receiver app that was expecting to dump audio out to speaker, and pipe that audio straight into a decoder app that was expecting it's input to come into the headphone jack from a physical radio. Instructions to do this kind of thing in Windows, they buy a $20-30 app to do virtual audio loopback; pulseaudio does it for free.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:23PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @03:23PM (#897123)

      "The feature creep of systemd is completely out of control."

      That was the whole point. They couldn't proprieterize the kernel, so the proprieterized the next best thing: the init system. I knew it was a fuckfest shill for Redmond the first time I saw the INI file format. I have always been flabberghasted that Debian chose SystemD. I thought Debian were supposed to FOSS zealots. The design principles that SystemD uses, move in the other direction.

      • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday September 23 2019, @11:12AM (4 children)

        by opinionated_science (4031) on Monday September 23 2019, @11:12AM (#897498)

        i must have missed something. How is systemd proprietary if it's FOSS?

        Is this a theoretical complaint?

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by rleigh on Monday September 23 2019, @12:13PM (2 children)

          by rleigh (4887) on Monday September 23 2019, @12:13PM (#897519) Homepage

          It's hyperbolic, but not theoretical.

          Being "FOSS" means having a free software licence. That licence grants you the right to modify the source code as you see fit. The entire point behind software freedom is to empower the user, by both allowing them access to the original source code, and to make and distribute modifications. That's the legal rights. However, there are also practical concerns. If something is made as big and complex as possible, even though it's technically free from a legal perspective, it can be effectively closed to modification in practice.

          Not all software is modifiable. You can't alter a character set, or a communications protocol, without breaking inter-operability. You would need to create a new one which could be used alongside the original. You can't alter systemd if you modify any of its interfaces. But many of the internal and external interfaces are so poorly documented (e.g. logind), that you couldn't do this even if you tried. You can't reimplement or redesign a system when the original is opaque to begin with. And this is the source of much of the concern and frustration with systemd. It's rooted in bad design and bad implementation, which we are powerless to fix or to maintain ourselves. This is in stark contrast to other init systems, which are completely open to understanding and modification, even if they are superficially less featureful.

          Linux succeeded because it could be repurposed for many tasks and used as glue to connect and interoperate with many different systems. It was open for modification, and many people took advantage of that. systemd represents a corporate takeover of Linux, by locking it down to a small set of officially sanctioned "use cases", while sticking the finger up at everyone who wants to deviate from these scenarios. It's as inflexible as Windows or MacOS in essence. This goes completely counter to what Linux was historically, and that's one of the major sources of complaint. By making its unit configuration declarative, rather than imperative, they have been able to insert themselves as the gatekeepers of what is and is not allowed, which is basically "whatever Lennart thought was a good idea to jam in at the moment". Same deal with the D-Bus and library interfaces which can't be reimplemented since they depend upon so much internal state and undocumented behaviour. It's a fragile house of cards, and it's going to come back to bite them.

          • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday September 23 2019, @01:49PM (1 child)

            by opinionated_science (4031) on Monday September 23 2019, @01:49PM (#897544)

            but interfaces in FOSS code, can be wrapped. A pain, yes! But try doing that with binary only Micro$oft junk.

            For that matter, have a crack at closed source CUDA.

            So in all cases, having the source code to both sides of a systems is many times easier than having just one.

            • (Score: 2) by rleigh on Monday September 23 2019, @05:41PM

              by rleigh (4887) on Monday September 23 2019, @05:41PM (#897693) Homepage

              > but interfaces in FOSS code, can be wrapped

              What exactly do you mean by this? Do you really mean wrapping, or independently re-implementing? And what exactly are you wrapping or re-implementing? The core code? The library APIs? The D-Bus endpoints and services? Either way, please explain what the end goal of the exercise would be.

              Whether or not it's wrapping or re-implementing, you can't do anything without there being a documented design, a documented API, and/or a documented set of D-Bus services. This part is sorely lacking, and would greatly limit what is possible to do. There's a reason it's impossible to replace logind with a compatible alternative implementation. To be compatible, you have to understand the behaviour of what you're replacing in order to replicate it. And not even the systemd developers understand all the subtle nuances of that. It's almost completely defined by the implementation...

              > But try doing that with binary only Micro$oft junk

              Err, wrapping a documented ABI and/or API would be trivial, particularly since it's all documented. Microsoft Windows has a dedicated service API, and you can wrap it if you want to (unsurprisingly, it's already been done).

              > So in all cases, having the source code to both sides of a systems is many times easier than having just one.

              Please rephrase this; it's barely intelligible. What exactly are the "both sides" you are referring to? And what is the source code being used for?

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Bot on Monday September 23 2019, @04:03PM

          by Bot (3902) on Monday September 23 2019, @04:03PM (#897628) Journal

          Systemd is not proprietary. It is worse, it is anti-free software. The distro adopting systemd has to devote resources to adapt to its quirks and has to obsolete literal tons of software and how-tos. And this is not meant to settle. Forking is an option but the stabilized, documented result still has a questionable usefulness. Yes Unix has many paths towards a solution, and the answer to that "problem" is called a configured distro.

          Being internally free software is as irrelevant as an expansionist country being internally democratic. In fact, they all want to seem democratic as a way to shift blame on the masses.

          --
          Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:01PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 22 2019, @06:01PM (#897184)

      The situation with GNU/Linux and systemd/Linux at present is resembling the one when Microsoft stopped collaborating with IBM on OS/2 and rolled out Windows NT.

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