Reply to post: Re: Why LTS?

A perfect marriage: YOU and Ubuntu 16.04

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Why LTS?

Reasons people complain about systemd (a classic example of Not-Invented-Here gone wrong):

* Replaces the transparent script-driven startup with an opaque ini-driven model.

* Replaces /sbin/init with a comparably large C binary that is tightly coupled to the Linux kernel[0] and its developers refuse patches that would make it portable.

* Uses DBus - something that should have died off a lot sooner than ConsoleKit/PolicyKit

* Replaces the "true way" to start daemons with a service supervisor[1]

* Defaults to binary logging[2]

* Expanded scope far outside the system bootstrap to subsume and replace a whole host of software that it had no business replacing including: udev, hostname, ntpd, rsyslogd.

* Its developers actively refuse patches that would make systemd-* compile with C libraries other than glibc.

Nothing prevented them from taking an existing lightweight service-driven system instead they embarked on badly re-inventing Solaris SMF

[0] - This is not a hard thing to do, but it also is not the first example in the Linux space, iproute2 is a clusterfuck in its own right.

[1] - Dr Bernstein had this idea long before when he wrote "daemontools" and that idea spawned a pretty solid, compatible and dependable alternative: "runit", which itself inspired "s6" (http://www.skarnet.org/software/s6/).

[2] - What the fuck were they smoking when they came up with this? A non-transaction-safe binary logging system (yes I know you don't have to use it, but it shouldn't even exist).

Bottom line, I have my reasons for not liking systemd, and they run quite similar to the aforementioned developer of s6 who has a whole page on the topic: http://www.skarnet.org/software/s6/systemd.html

TL;DR:

systemd attempts to cover more ground instead of less. In other words, rather than simply being an init system, it tries to be a complete overhaul of the way a Linux system is run, and tries to force other software to hook with it in order to be supported. This goes very much against:

* The Unix philosophy, which is to do one job and do it well;

* The bazaar approach that has made the free software ecosystem what it is today - see below;

* Cross-platform compatibility. BSD is not dead, Solaris is not dead, but systemd ignores Unix. It even ignores Linux to some extent: the systemd authors had the guts to ask for specific kernel interfaces!

The reason why systemd has become so prevalent is not that it has been accepted by the community. It's that it has manpower. It is backed up by open source software companies that can provide much more manpower than developers like myself working on free software on their own time. The distribution model of systemd, made of lobbying and bullying, is much more akin to the distribution model of Microsoft Windows than the one of GNU/Linux.

For all my Linux needs, there is Gentoo or VoidLinux, for my servers, there's BSD/Solaris

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