The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 10:03 UTC (Thu) by timtas (guest, #2815)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate by imitev
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

That was a misunderstanding, due to my far from perfect English. I was not intending to revoke my membership, but expect(-ed) it to have it revoked due to the sarcastic opening of my response.
Believe me, I'd like to join the silent majority and stop caring about all that systemd stuff, and I really often ask myself why I also get so emotional about this stuff. But, as there are a lot of people like me, I asked myself, why exactly this debate about an init system gets so heated. And my response was the result of my soul-searching, the invasiveness and the betrayal of Linux's roots by systemd (interchangeability, portability) is what gets me so upset.

Aside from that, systemd technically makes some decisions I strongly disagree with, but that alone would never make me so upset. I have disagreed with things before and then just didn't use them and never engaged in any emacs vs. vi or GPL vs BSD license flamewars.

to post comments

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 10:27 UTC (Thu) by luya (subscriber, #50741) [Link]

Interchangeability and portability never truly worked on init like sysvinit for Linux kernel as evident of numerous features exposed by systemd, different i.e. non standard implementations of scripts on main distribution. Slackware retained the old BSD init and never used sysvint.

UNIX system virtually abandoned sysvint knowing a core part like init or specifically a system management have to be designed for their own kernels.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 19:53 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

But, as there are a lot of people like me, I asked myself, why exactly this debate about an init system gets so heated. And my response was the result of my soul-searching, the invasiveness and the betrayal of Linux's roots by systemd (interchangeability, portability) is what gets me so upset.

IMO there aren't that many people opposed to systemd. The ones that are opposed are highly vocal and tend to continually repeat the same arguments even in the face of ample contrary evidence. My experience discussing it with the ones that remained civil is that very very few have actually used systemd and the vast majority of the hate for systemd is hatred of Pottering and anything he's involved with, not particularly systemd the software. When individual features of systemd are discussed many approve and think it's a good idea up until the point where you involve the name systemd.

The vast majority of Linux users are like the person you replied to. Which is ambivalent about systemd. I'm in that camp and thought Jon's article was highly appropriate, after all it is JUST an init system. Those of us that have experienced a sysv "breakage" have horror stories to tell and they are common enough that a simple google search for "sysv problem" has a quarter million hits. With sysv being the standard by which to judge it would be difficult to be worse IMO.From what I've read systemd encompasses many features I would have given an arm and leg for when I've had sysv problems. And it accomplishes this while providing new features that are highly desirable that people have been trying to implement for 20 years.

Like most people 40+ I don't particularly like change that requires me to relearn how to do something. I'm skeptical of big changes and the impact they will make on what I already know how to do. But I also trust the people that have been building the distributions and the kernel. They make mistakes but eventually the ship will be righted when the mistakes become apparent. By all appearances systemd has very good support within the community of developers that encompass the kernel and distributions. If I don't like systemd when I eventually end up deploying it (probably with jessie providing Ian doesn't destroy Debian with his crusade) nothing will stop me from moving to another distribution that doesn't use it and I have no doubt in my mind that if it is bad software that it will be eventually removed and replaced.

IMO the biggest negative against those opposing systemd isn't that they fear it will fail and cause instability and problems, it's that they fear it will succeed and that other software will come to rely on it. That is not a rational objection. Systemd will succeed for fail on it's merits, not on the irrational hatred of a person involved in it's development.