Poettering: The Biggest Myths [LWN.net]

Poettering: The Biggest Myths

Posted Feb 4, 2013 16:12 UTC (Mon) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75)
In reply to: Poettering: The Biggest Myths by nye
Parent article: Poettering: The Biggest Myths

I'm saying that there are loads of people who keep saying that they don't need systemd because they have no need for the facilities it provides, and that maybe - just maybe - they might not be lying.

And they might be more believable if they appeared to be more familiar with exactly what facilities systemd provides. It appears to me that a substantial fraction of the resistance to systemd is based around ignorance of what it actually does and doesn't do. People seem to have made up their minds that they're happy with existing init systems and then looked for reasons to dislike systemd rather than finding out in detail about the potential advantages and disadvantages.

(Log in to post comments)

Poettering: The Biggest Myths

Posted Feb 6, 2013 12:29 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

To begin with, personally I'm actually not one of those people who doesn't have those problems. I do on occasion want to be able to do things that systemd makes easier, and am in principle very much in favour of systemd, though in practice I'm not actually willing to try it for myself yet until it's had at least another couple of years to mature - let's say jessie (Debian 8.0).

However, I have a great sympathy for those who are in that position, because that's where I was (and actually still am) with PulseAudio (which, I'll note, still doesn't work properly with Wine on 64-bit systems, at least not on Debian, and still provides no benefits I actually care about).

This is roughly how the exchange sounds from that perspective:

Person A: Try this new snibulator; it's great!
Person B: I'm happy with my old snibulator, thanks.
A: But this one allows you to snibulate even when you're under water!
B: Huh, that sounds cool, but I've never needed to do that.
A: Well you're just too stupid to realise that you need this after all.
B: Please stop telling me what to do.
A: Stop being so hostile! You're clearly too lazy to spend the time to work out that you really need waterproof snibulation. If I had any employees like you, I'd fire them on the spot! I'm so important!

The last line is the one that really grates on me, because it's so arrogant and so aggressively obnoxious. And I haven't hardly even had to exaggerate in my paraphrasing; many of the responses really are that hyperbolic.

Poettering: The Biggest Myths

Posted Feb 6, 2013 19:00 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

> …with PulseAudio (which, I'll note, still doesn't work properly with Wine on 64-bit systems, at least not on Debian, and still provides no benefits I actually care about).

It Works For Me™ on Fedora. Rawhide no less (in December; not sure about this month yet). As for features, I keep an instance of MPlayer streaming some internet radio at work. It's nice to be able to mute it and still play some video with sound and then go back and unmute the stream seamlessly.