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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, @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.