Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 6:36 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: Fedora defers systemd to F15 by tialaramex
Parent article: Fedora defers systemd to F15

What you still do not get:
- the vast majority of Fedora users (not just me) did NOT ask for systemd, not even for improvements to the current system, whatever ugly it was.
- it takes ZERO volunteer not to develop systemd. How demanding for a taste?

I am totally convinced Lennart is a fantastic developer. Sorry, but "Ooooh! aaaahhh!" does not give him an automatic right to push his software fast forward.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 10:07 UTC (Thu) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] (1 responses)

> - the vast majority of Fedora users (not just me) did NOT ask for systemd, not even for improvements to the current system, whatever ugly it was.

The vast majority of Fedora users have no idea what an init system does and why it is important to have a truly dynamic one. Please go and view that Apple presentation on launchd. Apple is not in the business of pleasing geeks for geeks' sake. They switched to launchd because it is ultimately better for users and developers.

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 27, 2010 16:14 UTC (Mon) by topher (guest, #2223) [Link]

True, but Fedora also already switched to upstart, which provides a similar framework for that dynamic and "cool" system startup.

Personally, I'm not yet convinced that systemd is actually an improvement over upstart, so forcing it through as the new default because it "works pretty well, and is mostly reliable" doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm still waiting for a better explanation of why I should want it.

(Yes, I've read the docs on it. Some of it is looks kinda cool. . . and like a big improvement over the old SysV init. And like a marginal improvement, at best, over upstart, which is more established and significantly better tested. And, as someone who has to use multiple distributions, consistency counts for far more than any of the minor potential improvements. I don't want to have to deal with yet another init system on another distribution.)

Fedora defers systemd to F15

Posted Sep 16, 2010 20:53 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]

Fedora 14 will introduce numerous package updates, new features, and bug fixes and not a single one of them will have achieved your arbitrary threshold of "the vast majority of Fedora users" asking for it.

Raymond Chen has written a number of thought experiments which are valuable for those who want to understand why their idea is stupid before they propose it. The relevant one here is not "Features do not exist by default" (as you seem to think) but "What if two people did this?"

If you are entitled to a systemd-less Fedora just because not making systemd would have been zero effort, obviously all other Fedora users are also entitled to new versions which lack whatever features they don't happen to want.

But all these extra versions of Fedora require considerable integration and maintenance effort. The project will inevitably collapse if this approach is taken. On the other hand, Fedora is pointless if it each new versions just consists of a few uncontroversial bug fixes against the previous one.

So Fedora has a process to decide which new features land. In those parts of this discussion which aren't taken up with you ironically asking other people to "get a life", it is clear that the process failed, badly.