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A developer affiliated with boycottsystemd.org has announced and released a fork of systemd, sardonically named uselessd.
The gist of it:
uselessd (the useless daemon, or the daemon that uses less... depending on your viewpoint) is a project which aims to reduce systemd to a base initd, process supervisor and transactional dependency system, while minimizing intrusiveness and isolationism. Basically, it’s systemd with the superfluous stuff cut out, a (relatively) coherent idea of what it wants to be, support for non-glibc platforms and an approach that aims to minimize complicated design.
uselessd is still in its early stages and it is not recommended for regular use or system integration, but nonetheless, below is what we have thus far.
They then go on to tout being able to compile on libc implementations besides glibc, stripping out unnecessary daemons and unit classes, working without udev or the journal, replacing systemd-fsck with a service file, and early work on a FreeBSD port (though not yet running).
Responses from the wider Linux community are yet to be heard.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by chris.alex.thomas on Sunday September 21 2014, @07:58AM
considering that programmers are supposed to be logical, thoughtful, analytical people because well, how else could you stare at a screen of text all day and produce amazing things, some people are fucking retarded.
there isnt a single, coherent, provable point that there is a problem with systemd and yet it solves so many typical problems about the init system and yet people always scream loudly (because why bother otherwise, right?) about things which don't even exist....
it runs everything as pid 1?? no....it doesn't, if you at least read for 5 minutes, googled for 5 minutes, you'd find it DOESNT do that....
I mean, ok, if this interfered with your everyday work because you build linux systems, or it changes your entire development patten because now you have to waste time learning unfamiliar tools, etc, then I could understand people complaining, it costs time and money to change.
but please, show me even a small amount of people who are complaining about systemd, who are actually, DIRECTLY affected by it?
Barely a handful at best and yet we all have to endure this type of bullshit on an almost daily basis because people who shouldn't care, suddenly care a lot....why? because it doesn't do things the unix way?? well hell....better hate on Richard Stallman too, because he created emacs and I believe it's not just a single text editor with a well defined purpose that there are even jokes about it being almost a complete operating system.
you don't want your entire system to be dependant on a single piece of software? as linus said the other day, better stop using the kernel then....
are any of the people loudly complaining even affected by this? if all you do is say write software in GTK or Qt, why would you ever care about the init process, it's not your business, as long as it works and it does the job, why do you want to get involved and argue? is your opinion even worth listening to? do you even have anything relevant to say? The only people who really should or could complain about this are people who build linux systems, people who actually are affected by the changes in the system layout, so perhaps some upper tier system managers, etc.
But everybody else? people who just use their linux to do their job, which is NOT related to the base init system, should just STFU already, because NO, your opinion is not worth a single dime, nobody cares, you have no skin in the game.
and even if you hold up the benefits of systemd, they STILL cry like a bunch of babies.....
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:13AM
But everybody else? people who just use their linux to do their job, which is NOT related to the base init system, should just STFU already, because NO, your opinion is not worth a single dime, nobody cares, you have no skin in the game.
If they're running Linux, then there's the relation. It's like saying that if I just use a car to do my job, then I should STFU about tires or engines.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by chris.alex.thomas on Sunday September 21 2014, @10:18AM
yes!!! you should, because unless you're a rally driver, where you have an interest in the type of tyres to use, you know fuck all about tyres, if you're a delivery man you use a car to do your job, it doesn't mean you have a valid opinion on whether I should buy goodyear or michelin over the typical "price" or whatever opinions that people have.
if you're a delivery man and you start giving lectures on what type of tread or what type of rubber goes into the tyres, I frankly don't give a fuck about your opinion and neither should anybody else, because you're not an expert or a developer of said tyres, you're just a user, stick to your side of the fence.....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @10:32AM
if you're a delivery man and you start giving lectures on what type of tread or what type of rubber goes into the tyres, I frankly don't give a fuck about your opinion and neither should anybody else, because you're not an expert or a developer of said tyres...
You're exactly right. I am glad you are here on this site to hold the line.
We need to understand that Red hat and Lennert are all about making things better, not worse for you! Putting our trust in them is what made Linux great. Seriously, Linux = Red hat for all I care, and if Red hat says it's good, then I'm fine with it.
There's no need to worry. Just let Red hat take care of things. They're the experts.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by chris.alex.thomas on Sunday September 21 2014, @10:41AM
systemd isn't a redhat project, it's available on many distributions and at least somebody is pushing to make the system better, it's just not understandable why the system wasn't better designed in the first place, sysvinit is a batch of skeleton bones that sort of works, as long as you don't edit a lot, of change anything, but it's dumb as a bag of hammers and isn't debuggable and barely anybody knows how it works, they just know shell scripting and edit a few things here or there, it's much better to corral all of the systems under a single method of working and make the system more programatical and logical.
the benefits far outweigh any problems, that to me is clear as day...
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:46AM
while technically correct, this statement is incorrect in practice. Either you know it and you're guilty of misinformation or you don't know it and you are doing exactly what you've just told others not to do: talking out of your ass about something you don't know anything about. In both cases, as you put it so politely, STFU!!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:59AM
>the benefits far outweigh any problems, that to me is clear as day...
If so, then why the thing needs to be pushed by hook or by crook? If it *can* outcompete the other projects, then why the propaganda campaign and the Debian farce? And why your declarations, light on facts but high on shrillness?
If systemd is competitive, then let it compete. Nobody is asking for anything more. Stop the Embrace-and-Extend, and let the so-called "benefits" become visible to the target audience.
And in meantime, the developers could maybe learn to fix the bugs. Bugreports are *really* meant not for the future historians a hundred years away; a developer fixing his bugs the same year they were reported, can do wonders to his project's stability. Red Hat people should try it sometime. ;)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Sunday September 21 2014, @12:55PM
"as long as you don't edit a lot, of change anything,"
Its a script that starts and stops executables. For 99% of situations your only change should be the executable name.
If you're trying to embrace / extend / extinguish something by turning an init system into a complete social media web 2.0 hub, or into a retro pac man game, or a desktop environment, or a complete OS within an OS, you're doing something horribly wrong. Or rephrased, if your main complaint about an init system is its hard to turn it into something else, its not a very serious concern as long as its a good init system.
"isn't debuggable and barely anybody knows how it works"
Yes, nobody in the whole world, especially in ops, can debug or understand shell scripts, LOL.
"it's just not understandable why the system wasn't better designed in the first place"
This argument never gets any detailed explanation, because its wrong. Doesn't prevent it from being stated over and over. Sometimes I've seen circular arguments where "better designed" is assumed to be the mistakes systemd is making, with no explanation why those decisions are good, just that they are good. Of course many people disagree and they've pretty much got nothin.
"it's much better to corral all of the systems under a single method of working and make the system more programatical and logical."
That would be trivial and in fact a really good idea to abstract out into a library / subroutine. That has nothing to do with embrace / extend / extinguish everything else systemd does. There is a huge cultural problem where theres an utter fixation on running cruder less competent shells than bash because they're microscopically faster or microscopically more portable. So there's a huge push (at least in Debian and some other distros) away from bash and toward dash etc. This is of course a huge waste of time and is also controversial. Of course dash isn't all that much more advanced than dash, but its at least a little better. In summary, yeah, re-implement most of sysvinit in bash (or gasp, python?) with some decent modularization / libraries / functions / subroutines instead of cut n paste, and the whole world will be microscopically happier.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Sunday September 21 2014, @07:53PM
There isn't much to debug and that's the idea. In my /etc/init.d/rc, I found:-
and likewise for killing stuff.
If you don't understand symlinks, shell scripts and/or globbing, you shouldn't be be doing any major system administration. This stuff exists whether or not it is in your init system.
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by cykros on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:34PM
it's much better to corral all of the systems under a single method of working and make the system more programatical and logical
I can't decide whether to accuse you of being the borg or Sauron. Since when was monoculture the Linux (or hell, the Unix) way?
Sysvinit was never the only init option available, and people have always had alternatives there were in use, from BSD init to runit to upstart, and now we have systemd as another alternative (runit is quite dead by now, but I hear it was nice while it lasted). Open source means YOU get to decide what code runs on your box, and YOU can change it if you'd like it do be different. And furthermore, you can change it an package it so that other people can make use of your changes too. How you can jump from that to "one system under a single method" is a bit of a head scratcher though. Sounds a bit like Windows.
(Score: 1) by Robert Moonen on Tuesday September 23 2014, @12:45PM
"Better designed in the first place", hrmm. Well SysVinit is one of the early Unix system start up script systems and it worked so well that it was adopted for nearly 45 years by its protoge linux. The System 5 init script was designed to supercede some earlier unix init systems.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:29PM
I think I'm going to have to respectfully disagree about Trusting Redhat == Making Linux Great. Not needing to take anyone at their word and being able to be in control of your system is what made Linux great, and is why even after this whole fiasco with systemd, it'll still be around. I just hope we don't see more software lock-in with programs unnecessarily requiring one init system over the other...just ask anyone who has opted for just ALSA how much they love the fact that Skype requires pulseaudio as of the latest version.
Choice is a great thing...the uproar here is because people feel like a choice was made for them without their being consulted. Was the change wrong? Not really, you can manage your distro however you like. Could it have been handled better to upset fewer users and handle things more smoothly? Absolutely. I'd say this is almost indistinguishable from when Facebook or Google add a new "feature" that you get opted into by default. Are they allowed to? Sure, they're private servers, and you don't have any kind of contract with them forbidding it, so not a problem. Can you choose to not use them? Often enough, with more ore less effort required on your part. Do people get extremely angry, generally preferring to have been asked if they wanted this new "feature" before having it thrust upon them? Always.
What the distros engaging in this behavior hopefully all asked themselves before making the changes was "Will the advantages of this new software overall outweigh the harm caused by the infuriated portions of our userbase?" If they did so, I can't hold anything against them, and it is now up to the angry users to do something to help themselves rather than continue to complain about the quality of their free handouts.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:03AM
My point here is that these things are used, be they tires or systemd. Thus, we are entitled by your logic to have an opinion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @12:36PM
Don't bother trying to discuss this kind of stuff with chris.alex.thomas. He apparently has a very broken sense of logic and reason.
In another thread of discussion he was saying it's okay to engage in bigotry and intolerance, as long as the target is something or someone he dislikes. His sense of right and wrong appear to be very broken.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:00PM
true story
I do not comment that much anymore due to this kind of flawed logic. it is like trying to explain advanced physics to my 6 month old daughter..she just mumbles and drools
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by chris.alex.thomas on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:01PM
ahhhhh, you're the same homophobic asshat from that discussion?
well then I guess you shouldn't be surprised if I tell you to go fuck yourself....I care even less what you think about systemd after you aligned yourself with anti-equality/anti-gay homophobic pricks like in that conversation. Maybe before I would entertain some logical argument you made, but now, I don't care what you say, even if it makes sense.
Don't think that you can come here, criticise me and think you can find allies here just because you and another guy both disagree with me, probably the guy you're replying to is reading your comment disagrees with me AND you....but hopefully he'll agree that you're a homophobic asshat.
it's really weird, it's like you're asking to be respected, whilst totally disrespecting a whole category of people......you really should be ashamed of yourself, but I'm sure you're not. cause you're garbage....Sorry, but I'm not tolerating your intolerance, GTFO....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:10PM
LOL
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @02:58PM
You must respect my disrespect!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday September 21 2014, @05:42PM
Faggots! Fags all around! Gay buttsex! Homosexual anal sex! In the alley and bent over a pole! Body Language! [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:39PM
I think it's safe to say, we've successfully reached critical mass where we've finally brought over THIS aspect of the old site.
Small improvements :-)
(Score: 2) by khallow on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:11PM
We have a word for your kind of people, "bigot". That means I get to two minute hate you now, k?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Sunday September 21 2014, @05:06PM
Actually he was promoting the idea that gays should have equal rights. In an attempt to distract from the fact that you don't have a rational reason to disagree with him, you did some word-smithing to paint him as a hypocrite. The problem with your approach, and this is probably the reason you were misleadingly vague about it, is that even if you could get your bigot label to stick on him, his views are still many times less bigoted and hate-filled than yours.
If you really want to sort the people here by their sense of right and wrong, you aren't going to like where you land on that list.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by khallow on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:05PM
He may well have been, but his main argument was promoting the idea that you could discriminate against or be intolerant of someone because you have a better or more tolerant viewpoint.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday September 22 2014, @12:14AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by khallow on Monday September 22 2014, @02:56AM
And we succeeded because that is what he wrote [soylentnews.org].
And for the edification of other readers who might be wondering what your contribution was, they can go here [soylentnews.org].
A leading question for a statement that no one made and no one declared "absurd".
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday September 22 2014, @03:39AM
And we succeeded because that is what he wrote.
You're declaring 'success' because you're fuzzing the terms to label him a hypocrite. If you get your way then you're both bigots, and then you're in no position to criticize him. If you're not on equal footing, then actually that doesn't work well for you either. It's like you don't want to be called a bigot so you're trying to dead-end the debate, but haven't thought much past the ramifications of it.
A leading question for a statement that no one made and no one declared "absurd".
That 'statement that no one made' was a correction of what the AC in that post was trying to claim that guy was doing. For the edification of our readers who are at all curious about this off-topic discussion: You see... the AC made a statement that nobody made either, and my response was to show him that by rephrasing his statement more accurately. Khallow did know and understand this at the time of post and is... again... trying to use word-smithing to wrangle the debate back into his control instead of offering a reasonable rebuttal. Basically that whole thread is an attempt to make somebody vocal about anti-gay behaviour somehow sound worse than the bigoted actions themselves. The critical waypoint of that debate is to make 'bigot' a harshly black-and-white term and declare victory through use of the word hypocrisy. Which, in a highschool debate setting, might be fine. But here there is no substance to back it up, it has barely progressed farther than "the people speaking out about bigotry are bigots!" And where does that get us? Does it address whether or not he should have made the donation? No. Does it address whether or not his employees had a right to bring it up? No. Is it at all relevant to the people who were vocal about whether or not he should stay? Since everybody is now a bigot... Nope! But, hey, at least a correction I made was labeled! That's something, right?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by khallow on Monday September 22 2014, @04:34AM
What term got "fuzzed"?
What's the basis for claiming that bigots can't criticize? And speaking of "fuzzing" terms, we have you fuzzing "bigots" here since you have yet to mention any bigot-like behavior on my part. Maybe you shouldn't do what you criticize others of doing?
It still is a blatant misrepresentation of the AC's words and a leading question fallacy.
He was paraphrasing what chris.alex.thomas wrote (which I've already quoted). Note also that chris.alex.thomas actually implies that former Mozilla CEO, Brendan Eich was harassing and intimidating people who did nothing wrong. But let us note that didn't happen. He was kicked out for a political donation, not harassment or intimidation. And as a result of that imaginary sin, chris.alex.thomas claims it is ok to hound Brendan Eich (he termed it as hounding generic "bigots" but nobody else was ever mentioned as being hounded).
And I think that's a good point to remember here. The anti-bigot bigotry was worse than the alleged bigotry that they were protesting. After all, it cost someone their job.
I can't do your thinking for you. You have to figure out why we wrote what we wrote on your own. But as long as you keep trying to shoehorn other peoples' opinions and arguments into these ridiculous little pigeonholes, you won't be able to understand why people just don't always agree with you.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday September 22 2014, @04:54AM
It still is a blatant misrepresentation of the AC's words and a leading question fallacy.
Correction, yadda yadda yadda.
But let us note that didn't happen. He was kicked out for a political donation, not harassment or intimidation.
Are you, at all, familiar with what his donation was used for?
The anti-bigot bigotry was worse than the alleged bigotry that they were protesting. After all, it cost someone their job.
His voluntary resignation was worse than the years a lot of same sex couples could not get married? Seriously?
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @08:48AM
He didn't do it himself, but he did pay other people for doing so.
We also put people in prison for hiring a hitman, even though they didn't fire the bullet themselves.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Monday September 22 2014, @10:42AM
Recall that the donation was advocacy for a California ballot initiative - not harassment or intimidation. He didn't do what he was accused of, even by proxy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @01:00PM
According to Wikipedia, you are wrong. That ballot was about proposition 8, the attempt change the legal system to consider non-straight people as not humans, thus not qualified for human rights (such as equality under the law, including those pesky marriage laws).
Harassment by government is one of the worst kinds of harassment, because the people you are supposed to turn to (e.g. the police) are part of the harassing side.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Tuesday September 23 2014, @02:25AM
I'm not interested in what "Wikipedia" has to say when it's clear that's not what Proposition 8 does.
(Score: 0) by chris.alex.thomas on Sunday September 21 2014, @12:56PM
Well lets think about this logically shall we, do you think michelin or goodyear are open for your comments on how to make tyres or what the better alternatives are, or do you think they'll humour you for just long enough to put the phone down, then ignore you completely?
If you said yes to the above question, then you're clearly not thinking logically. The correct answer is: no, they arent.
so, no, you're not entitled to an opinion, if you have a point, make it, defend it, but once it's dead because it's a bogus point, move on, thats if people even listen to you in the first place.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:02PM
Yes. Of course. I take you've never done any work in customer service. Sure, you can arbitrarily ignore people who buy your stuff, but you never know how that can bite you.
Ah, yes, the "I'll declare you to be the idiot so that I won't be" argument. It's really a devastating piece of rhetoric.
so, no, you're not entitled to an opinion, if you have a point, make it, defend it, but once it's dead because it's a bogus point, move on, thats if people even listen to you in the first place.
"Dead because it's a bogus point"? That means you'll listen to your own argument and move on right?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 22 2014, @06:08AM
Or, in a word, "yes".
Don't criticise others' logic when you clearly have no grasp of it yourself.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by arashi no garou on Sunday September 21 2014, @12:50PM
First, car-computer analogies always have and always will suck. But given this analogy, you are forgetting that there is a certain class of computer user/car owner out there. There are people who are technically proficient enough to be their own sysadmin/mechanic, even if they don't do that by trade. I have every right to change my own oil, inspect my own tires, and hell, I even helped with the rebuild of the engine in my truck. In that sense, I also have every right to decide what kind of tires I want, what kind of oil to use, what type of camshaft and intake to install. Going back to the systemd issue, I'm the kind of person for whom the switch to systemd does matter. So far, the negatives outweigh the benefits in my case. I almost never restart my workstation (generally only for a hardware change or a kernel update), so boot times are irrelevant to me. I do like to be able to parse logs as plaintext files; this is impossible under systemd. I like being able to use text based init scripts; it's simple and just works. I enjoy being able to control mounting myself, using fstab; it's simple and works. Do you see the pattern?
Simply put, systemd isn't for everyone. It may make life easier for Red Hat sysadmins, which is why they invented it. Kudos to them for designing what they see as the perfect hammer for their nails, even if their nails are sometimes screws or staples. But for me, well I'm going to stick with distros that haven't adopted it, as I don't get any real benefit from it and quite a few drawbacks instead. But that's just me.
For you to take the position that systemd works for everyone and everyone should just shut up about it, speaks volumes. Everyone I've encountered who is so insistent that systemd is the One True Way has come across as a severe control freak, to the point that all they hear anymore is their own voice. You should maybe consider that not everyone has the same needs in their init as you do.
(Score: 1) by pnkwarhall on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:52PM
My comment would have been something along these lines: Linux is NOT Windows. A way higher percentage of "users" (and not just sysadmins) absolutely do have a skin in the game. It's kinda what a major part of the whole Linux eco-system is based on...
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 3) by cykros on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:49PM
I miss the days of the old installers. They didn't give you defaults as often as they asked you what you wanted. You didn't get dropped into a DE the distro thought was what would be best for everyone, you got a list and asked which one you'd like to choose (perhaps with a default selected if you really did just want to hit "Enter" to continue).
Somewhere along the way, installers changed in many distributions. People started using LiveCD's, and stopped selecting their software (how much EASIER it was!).
And then they get mad when the software installed isn't what they'd have chosen.
Just a reminder...most distros still HAVE these old style installers available. You'll just need to grab something that isn't a LiveCD to make use of it. The place where something seems pretty fishy, however, is that none of these appear to give the WM/DE style selection with the init system, despite there being multiple available. What gives? Is this new system so much better than the old that you have to manipulate people into installing it, even when they've gone out of their way to use a more choice oriented install method? Just because Apple figured out how to perfect choiceless Unix doesn't mean everyone else needs to aspire to it as a goal...
(Score: 1) by arashi no garou on Sunday September 21 2014, @10:47PM
I miss the days of the old installers. They didn't give you defaults as often as they asked you what you wanted. You didn't get dropped into a DE the distro thought was what would be best for everyone, you got a list and asked which one you'd like to choose (perhaps with a default selected if you really did just want to hit "Enter" to continue).
You just described Slackware's installer, which is not only my favorite installer but also my favorite GNU/Linux distro. It was what I cut my teeth on; I had started with Red Hat back in 1999 or so, but I didn't care for it and dropped it after a few weeks. Then I tried Slackware, and almost immediately felt at home (I had come up on DOS as a high schooler back in the early 90s so I was happy on the command line). The distro has changed very little since then, and almost always for the better. The only thing I didn't like about it through the years was the hostility towards Gnome, but in retrospect I think Pat was right.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:22PM
And I wrote it on a Slackware64 installation :-).
But while Slackware may be the only distro whose main installer takes this form, this wasn't always the case. I started using Linux back in 2000, and back then even Mandrake (think of it as the Ubuntu of its age, but based on Redhat instead of Debian) had a similar style of installer.
While LiveCD's are a fantastic tool to actually make use of a distribution without bothering to install it, I've never thought of them as a particularly good method of installing a system. A lot of distros jumped all over them thanks to requiring just about nothing from the user, but then, you get what you "pay" for, so to speak. Luckily, as I mentioned before, there are things like the Ubuntu Alternate Install ISO, which gives you at least a bit more choice and an ncurses interface for installation, for those who go looking for them. It's a shame they're not more well known or commonly used...a lot of the things that get complained about heavily in Linux communities everywhere are usually pretty easy to avoid by just taking the few extra minutes at install time to make a few choices...
And I would agree at this point re: Gnome. Not that it ever would have bothered me, as I've yet to see a DE that didn't feel like an unnecessary layer of abstraction to bloat things up and get in the way. But what was at the time an unthinkable removal of perhaps the most popular DE in use looks almost like an "of course" move in retrospect. Besides, nothing stops anyone who wants it from grabbing Dropline Gnome [droplinegnome.org] which is a third party package for installing Gnome onto Slackware if they really choose. Just like how you can install Pulseaudio from Slackbuilds.org [slackbuilds.org]. Keeping the distro trimmed down to a sane set of software that makes a complete system while additional software generally considered optional off at third party repositories...one of the MANY things I love about the distro in the first place.
(Score: 1) by arashi no garou on Monday September 22 2014, @12:08AM
Believe me, I'm familiar with Mandrake; I ran it alongside Slackware for a while. It was ok, but I just never developed a sense of being "at home" on RedHat based distros. I can't stand Fedora to this day. I'm sure it's a great OS for those it appeals to, but I just don't jive with it.
Regarding LiveCDs, I think they were awesome back in the days of Knoppix, when one might need a Linux distro without having to install. I kept a Knoppix disc on hand for data recovery purposes for many of my clients. Windows ME and XP were notoriously unreliable, though the latter gained a lot of reliability after the first two service packs. In those days being able to pop in a LiveCD to diagnose the drive and other hardware, and pull critical files if necessary, was a godsend.
Then Ubuntu popped onto the scene, and LiveCD based installs became the Next Big Thing. Thankfully distros like Debian and Slackware still offered their non-graphical installers.
Regarding the Gnome on Slackware situation, I never did find the replacements like DLG and GSB to be stable enough to use daily, so I just switched to Xfce. These days I prefer Openbox to any other WM, but Xfce seems to have gotten better and better with time. As far as I'm concerned it's the perfect Gnome Classic replacement.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sjames on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:35AM
To get it out of the way, I am one of those people who develops linux systems and end up having to deal with systemd's hairball of dependencies. So don't complain when I complain.
Users SHOUL:D complain, and loudly. That hairball makes it much harder to even try to create something better than systemd. How would you have felt if sysvinit was that sort of hairball and replacing it with systemd made random other seemingly unrelated stuff break (such as your desktop)? So user may lose out on something much better later because systemd wedged itself so far up their backsides it can't be removed.
Admins likewise have every right to complain. If the system doesn't come up properly, it's on them to somehow make it come up. They care very much about the init process. Here again, users have a right to complain too. If the system doesn't come up, they're going to want that fixed quickly and effectively. They aren't going to get much work done if systemd is throwing some sort of fit and nobody knows why because the blob sitting at PID 1 resists debugging.
Had systemd been thoughtfully designed, it would expect to be run by init and then do the rest of the bringup through scripts and a helper program or two (for example, a helper that creates a cgroup, runs the daemon in it, then monitors it and acts as a controller.
I don't hate Stallman because emacs isn't a critical piece of system software and nothing depends on it. I can install it or not (and personally, I choose not).
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Sunday September 21 2014, @10:05AM
Hey thanks for the heads up: I wasn't aware that systemd resisted debugging.
Looks like there's no better way to serve a backdoor at this point.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday September 21 2014, @05:57PM
I am more or less ignorant about systemd, but I do know that it takes over the syslog function as well.
Also, pulseaudio libpulse0 now depends on libsystemd-id128-0 and libsystemd-journal0. It all gets tied together so much..
I haven't had time to look at the patch where the Debian package of pulseaudio starts to depend on libsystemd-journal0 but I'm curious because I know the same people are working on both projects.
I will do my best to see if this uselessd thingy would work for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @03:06AM
What a fucking mess.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @09:13AM
Systemd is a huge binary blob, where as both sysv-based and bsd-based init systems are a simple binary (on the scale of a couple of bugs being found per decade) that hand everything important over to shell scripts.
A unix admin is more or less a shell script expert, often with minimal C skills.
Debugging a shell script is on level with turning off the coffee machine for these guys, where as C code with any level of complexity would likely result in sending mails to the developers and spending a lot of time waiting for replies.
(Score: 1) by chris.alex.thomas on Sunday September 21 2014, @10:36AM
it took all of ten seconds to open google, type "systemd debugging" and found this
https://activedoc.opensuse.org/book/opensuse-reference/chapter-8-the-systemd-daemon [opensuse.org]
I suppose you could have done the same and know how to debug it if you have problems.
and are you still talking about PID1 ??? barely any part of systemd runs as pid1, it's all branched off and the benefits far outweigh the problems, I've also had a problem with my system which was practically impossible to fix and it was using the old init.....systemd is faster and better designed than the old sysvinit.....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:08PM
Did you actually read what you linked to? Have you ever done any actual shell script or software debugging on Linux?
Debugging init scripts sounds FAR easier than doing that sort of systemd debugging that's described. Binary log files? Jesus Christ, that has just made debugging 8x harder, even if there are tools to work with those binary log files. And what's to say that these complex tools are even working if the system is really screwed up? Nothing! Yet we can usually rely on sh and ed to be working, since they follow the UNIX philosophy by doing one thing, and doing it really damn well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @03:03PM
I know very little about systemd, but I have been a unix dev for 20+ years now and one thing I am qualified to say is that binary log files are a terrible, terrible thing. They should only ever be used when the alternative is no log files. They are so unfriendly to developers, and it has a way of biting you in the ass when you least expect it. Being able to manually run them through a translator is only good enough for the most low-impact bugs.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 21 2014, @04:01PM
So, when I want it to go step by step and stop in-between each step,.....
How about if I resort to init=/bin/bash and then wish to start the services manually? It seems systemd can't do it's thing without that chunk sitting on PID1 (where my shell is)
I'll be sure to use all those pretty tools as soon as the system comes up far enough that I can. I gues if the problem prevents getting to that state your solution is to reinstall Window^w Linux?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:37AM
"there isnt a single, coherent, provable point that there is a problem with systemd"
Really? That's just the biggest load of bullshit. Even if systemd was the god you are potraying it to be, there for sure are problems with it. Even if i don't know too much about it, in my view systemd seems like emacs, an OS on it's own stuffed in one package, or EU. When you say things like the quote above, or never or always, i don't even care to really read the rest.
(Score: 1) by chris.alex.thomas on Sunday September 21 2014, @10:44AM
just because you pedantically took the meaning of "problem" and ran off with it doesn't change the point I was trying to make, which is, that all the so called problems that people have said systemd has, are just bullshit, they arent true and they are just whingebags who don't like change, probably they hate wayland as well.....
you knew exactly what I meant and if you didn't, perhaps you should think a little harder about what people are saying before you "prematurely optimise" your understanding of a conversation.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:04PM
"probably they hate wayland as well."
Accusing them of having good taste does not exactly help your argument.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:39PM
"probably they hate Windows as well."
...fixed that for him. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @04:29PM
Well with problem i mean design problems, concept problems, not some bugs, and i personally am not so sure that there aren't bad ones with systemd, unlike you seem to be.
"probably they hate wayland as well....."
Nice one. What is your problem? Do you think this somehow helps making your points? You seem to be very, very emotional about this. I like wayland, but am leaning towards not liking systemd due to the complexity of it. Same reason i like wayland over all that stuff that X has gathered over the years, including problems, which can't really be fixed due to the complexity of it all.
(Score: 1) by gcrumb on Monday September 22 2014, @03:23AM
[A]ll the so called problems that people have said systemd has, are just bullshit, they arent true and they are just whingebags who don't like change....
What the fuckety fuck fuck?!?
If 99.992% of all the complaints about systemd weren't valid, if everything everyone ever said was exaggeration, if systemd was the greatest thing ever committed to ones and zeros, if systemd solved the halting problem, filled knapsacks perfectly everytime, set every traveling salesman's itinerary ever, turned P into NP in an instant....
... We would still be right to bitch about the fact that it's usurping its place in Linux, that it should never have been moved into place until it had achieved years of exposure to real-world conditions and consensus among the technical community, that there is not, and never has been, a compelling argument for designing it in such a way as to make it unavoidable if you use Linux.
Ignoring the compendious technical arguments against the design and its implementation, ignoring the arrogance of youth that thinks it knows better than us fucking 'whingebags' who were admining systems while you were still (literally, in some cases) in fucking diapers... ignoring all of that, systemd's developers still have no right to tromp all over a usable system the way they have.
The whole line of argument that begins, '... but the kernel ...' deserves the same response another sycophantic little shit got back when he thought he was smarter than his opponent: Systemd, I know the kernel. I work with the kernel. You're not the fucking kernel. You're nothing like as useful or important. So get off your high fucking horse and listen to us fucking whingebags who know when change is a Good Thing, and when it's an exercise in folly.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bunfight
(Score: 3, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:24PM
Bingo. systemd's core swiss-army-knife-do-everything-whether-you-want-it-or-not design, where none of it's bloated features are modular is the problem. I'd say that's provable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:52AM
I'm not directly affected by it because I'm avoiding it like the plague.
The people complaining are the ones who are trying to justify avoiding it like the plague.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:35AM
And if you googled for 2 minutes, you'd find this is not the complaint. Of course you already know this, strawman withstanding.
Apples to oranges. The way systemd is 'evolving' it won't be long before it contains it's own kernel.
I'm a systems administrator, the init process absolutely is my business and essentially I am creating a custom distro whenever I bring up a new system. What is laughable here is that systemd developers continue to tout features as beneficial to administrators like myself, no matter how loudly we tell them otherwise. It's not the systemd developers business to be dictating how we do our jobs whilst ramming their braindead cluster-fuck of an init replacement down our throats.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday September 21 2014, @06:10PM
As you are a systems administrator, please help us ignoramuses out in this discussion:
It is said that systemd takes over the syslog function (libsystemd-journal0)
In your personal opinion, was there anything wrong with the way rsyslog worked?
Or in other words, have you read anywhere that the systemd people *explained* why a replacement syslog daemon provided by systemd was necessary, or why theirs was better, in any way?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday September 21 2014, @07:42PM
When you say " It's not the systemd developers business to be dictating how we do our jobs", you may be wrong. We don't know quite what their jobs are, only what they purport to be. Given recent government and corporate actions, this is something one should keep an open mind about pending actual evidence.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Monday September 22 2014, @12:45AM
Bad enough for the whole system to depend on one huge piece of software, such as the Linux kernel.
Worse for it to depend on two.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 22 2014, @06:34AM
With systemd, the flow is only in one direction. It is becoming the grey goo.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 21 2014, @12:13PM
chris.alex.thomas, why are you such a negative, hypocritical person? Every comment of yours that I've seen here so far has been filled with immature insults ("fucking retarded", "bunch of babies", etc.), cursing and self-contradictory views.
I also find it very hard to read your comments. You need to use proper capitalization, proper grammar, proper spelling, and far fewer "..." if you want to be more easily understood.
(Score: -1, Troll) by chris.alex.thomas on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:05PM
Well being a grammar nazi won't win you any arguments, it does however prove you're a pedantic person who cares more about the letters of a word, than the meaning behind it.
so far, I've not found a single contradictory view......so feel free to explain though.
if you're unable to grok normal human speech or typing patterns, then you're going to find the internet a difficult place to occupy.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Sunday September 21 2014, @06:43PM
"considering that programmers are supposed to be logical, thoughtful, analytical people because well, how else could you stare at a screen of text all day and produce amazing things, some people are fucking retarded."
You get all kinds of types..
Maybe it's a matter of motivation:
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20120703 [userfriendly.org]UserFriendly cartoon
I wonder if THIS is the reason for systemd's byzantine complexity!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cykros on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:17PM
It's similar to the situation with pulseaudio.
Are there real benefits? Yes. Is there a NEED for most people to go through the upheaval of completely changing something as foundational as an init system or audio system in order to have those benefits? No....it's generally a minority that really see any benefit from the additional features, and the majority being dragged into the additional complexity with no real or perceived benefit.
I use Slackware, which doesn't come with pulseaudio by default, and I installed pulseaudio because I found that to do what I wanted to do, it was the best tool for the job. It DID add another layer of complexity, and I get crazy looks from other Slackers wondering why I'd use such a thing. When I explain my use case, I get a lot of "ahh's", and it is what it is. Go and suggest that they get dragged into needing to use it by including it by default in the distro, however (or worse, put out software that for no good reason requires it), and they'll go running off to *BSD right quick.
Systemd is similar. Distros people have used for years, and relied upon heavily have decided to just about overnight completely overhaul a very basic foundational element, bringing more complexity, for so called improvements that just aren't a concern to most of us. Faster boot time? Really? On the machine I reboot once or twice a year, if that? I'm sure that'll save me a lot of wasted time, and all I have to do is go read up about using a whole new system! In the end, it boils down to something that wasn't broken being fixed anyway, rather than an alternative being presented side by side for people to weigh for themselves and make their own choices (though at least in the case of Debian, while I don't quite condone every aspect of the transition, they did still maintain sysvinit support for those willing to go in swap out systemd).
I'm sure there are people who benefit from systemd, and it doesn't surprise me that it has its apologists. And I'm not saying they're deluded. Mostly just that the people managing these distros were relatively impolite and inconsiderate to their users. And do they owe anything to their users, who get their software for free? No, they don't. But likewise, the users don't have to just sit back and be treated like lab rats by their OS maintainers, and nobody should be surprised when they jump ship (or, what I'd honestly like to see, fork the distro/installer...Slackware is great and all, but there are definitely cases where the repository breadth of distros like Debian offers enough time-saving to make it worth going for for specific tasks).
In the end, a lot of it has boiled down to sabre rattling anyway. The amount of people that have only ever known Linux from LiveCD's and software centers for easy installation is something some of the people who have been around longer may forget about is staggering, which is likely the biggest source of the uproar. It's all open source software, and you're totally free to switch things out and reconfigure them as you see fit...provided you take the time to learn your way around, and then take the time to make the changes. Something it would seem is becoming a lost art in the world of Linux as it gains steam (or at least tries to) among normal desktop users.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @11:31AM
There was no general resolution in debain.
Someone reported not having systemd as default was a "bug".
A technical committie stacked with current or former redhat and ubuntu employees voted.
The redhat camp had the chair, and tie broke.
They had promised to keep choice before they had won.
They have renegged on that after.
As we all knew that they would.
Abuse and bad faith.
Debian is an oligarchy.
It is not run by the users nor the programmers anymore.
Nor does it care for either.