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Linus Torvalds Shares his Opinion on systemd

posted by LaminatorX on Friday September 19 2014, @05:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the voice-from-on-high dept.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Systemd has turned into the Godzilla of Linux controversies. "Everywhere you look it's stomping through blogs, rampaging through online discussion threads, and causing white-hot flames that resemble Godzilla's own breath of death," writes Jim Lynch. Now Sam Varghese reports at iTWire that although Linus Torvalds is well-known for his strong opinions, when it comes to systemd, Torvalds is neutral. "When it comes to systemd, you may expect me to have lots of colorful opinions, and I just don't," says Torvalds. "I don't personally mind systemd, and in fact my main desktop and laptop both run it."

Oh, there's been bitter fights before. Just think about the emacs vs vi wars. Or, closer to systemd, the whole "SysV init" vs "BSD init" differences certainly ended up being things that people had "heated discussions" about. Or think about the desktop comparisons.

I'm not really sure how different the systemd brawls are from those. It's technical, but admittedly the systemd developers have also been really good at alienating people on a purely personal level too. Not that that is anything particularly new under the sun _either_: the (very) bitter wars between the GPL and the BSD license camps during late-80s and early-90s were almost certainly more about the persons involved and how they pissed off people than necessarily deeply about other differences (which existed, obviously, but still).

Torvalds was asked if systemd didn't create a single point of failure which makes a system unbootable if it fails. "I think people are digging for excuses. I mean, if that is a reason to not use a piece of software, then you shouldn't use the kernel either."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 19 2014, @02:32PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 19 2014, @02:32PM (#95504)

    Welp, looks like I'll be installing PC-BSD when Xubuntu 12.04 support lapses. Assuming the cancer hasn't spread beyond Linux.

  • (Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday September 19 2014, @03:17PM

    by Geotti (1146) on Friday September 19 2014, @03:17PM (#95519) Journal

    Assuming the cancer hasn't spread beyond Linux.

    It tried but was "benignified" at the gate.

    See for example here [undeadly.org].

    • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday September 19 2014, @04:57PM

      by LoRdTAW (3755) on Friday September 19 2014, @04:57PM (#95557) Journal

      The purpose of that package is to allow linux programs with systemd dependency be easily ported and ran on xBSD.

  • (Score: 1) by Arik on Friday September 19 2014, @04:16PM

    by Arik (4543) on Friday September 19 2014, @04:16PM (#95539) Journal
    The BSDs and the better Linuces (Slackware and Gentoo) have avoided systemd pretty well. Specific functions it provides that are required for specific programs we want to use have been and are being implemented in sane ways. Gentoo offers max freedom and you CAN even compile with systemd there, if you like, but it's not required. Slackware and BSDs are so far avoiding it entirely.
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?