SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Arik on Friday September 19 2014, @04:14PM
No, it doesnt.
Properly configured system logs will never fill up file system. Old logs are deleted automatically long before that becomes an issue.
You can also compress the log files. Text compresses well and will be little, if any, larger than a binary log. This can be and normally is done transparently without you having to think about it.
The advantages to sane logging are numerous. In the event of a crash, the file can still be read, and that's probably the biggest one because that is the one case where you need that log the worst, and that's the one case where systemd ensures you will get no log.
And any time you need to access the logs, for whatever reason, if they are text there are dozens of high quality tools to use here. Tools that we are already familiar with. Tools that are robust and mature and well understood. But with systemd, you cannot use your own tools anymore. You MUST use their crappy log tool. Assuming you even have a log to look at anyway - which, if if you just crashed, will not be the case.
Systemd is a plague. Eradicate it. Ban Poettering from PID 1! Demand competence instead.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?