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 15:39 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (guest, #2582)
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

I have used Linux since 1994. And also other Unix-based systems (not MacOS, except very occasionally). The only thing that is keeping me from jumping to FreeBSD or Dragonfly BSD, at this point, is hardware support in Linux -- NOT systemd! I'd venture to say that hardly any users care about systemd, hardly any users will benefit either, but LOTS of users care about the poisonous atmosphere that has arisen about the entire linux ecosystem in recent years.

There are suggestions that though users won't care one way or another, greybeard sysadmins do care (negatively) and it is they who are behind the current backlash. Just remarking -- I'm not a sysadmin (though my stubble shows signs of grey).

Which sort of Linux user is systemd good for, exactly? The desktop/workstation user? That battle is over -- the future Linux desktop/workstation users are the ones who are comfortable with the command line, and that market will neither grow nor shrink, it will remain the niche that it is. And they don't need systemd. The average joe? There is no hope and that was never clearer than it is today. People who need a real computer use Mac, Windows, or perhaps Chromebook. People who don't use a tab. And, incidentally, Chromebooks and most tabs run Linux -- but they don't run systemd and don't need to.

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The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 15:59 UTC (Thu) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

"I'd venture to say that hardly any users care about systemd, hardly any users will benefit either, but LOTS of users care about the poisonous atmosphere that has arisen about the entire linux ecosystem in recent years."

Well... OpenSUSE with systemd boots much, much faster than Ubuntu with Upstart, to the extent that after I installed Ubuntu on my workstation I actually thought it was hanging during boot. I guess users will care about that...

And I don't think many users will actually be aware of all the vitriol being spewed about systemd, most users don't read websites like this, or, worse, Phoronix. All this echo-chambery stuff doesn't have any impact in the real world, where, yes, even normal people use Linux to do their day job.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 16:03 UTC (Thu) by Felix (subscriber, #36445) [Link] (3 responses)

> Which sort of Linux user is systemd good for, exactly? The desktop/workstation user? That battle is over -- the future Linux desktop/workstation users are the ones who are comfortable with the command line, and that market will neither grow nor shrink, it will remain the niche that it is. And they don't need systemd. The average joe? There is no hope and that was never clearer than it is today. People who need a real computer use Mac, Windows, or perhaps Chromebook. People who don't use a tab.

Well, Linux sales are good for about 10% of all Humble Bundle revenues (and IIRC there are some bundles which didn't have a single game which could run on Linux ). So either sysadmins play a lot more than I thought or we have quite a few "average Joes" (or plain Janes for that matter).

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 16:43 UTC (Thu) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Yes, we have. There are millions of plain, ordinary non-developer, non-geek users of Linux. In my circle of acquaintances, there are artists, musicians, writers, students, scientists, grandparents, parents, children, civil servants and, yes, geeks, who use Linux.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 17:40 UTC (Thu) by rsidd (guest, #2582) [Link] (1 responses)

If you had said "10% of all gaming revenues", that would have been a good talking point.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 17:45 UTC (Thu) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]

how big is the android gaming market nowadays?

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 16:10 UTC (Thu) by jonnor (guest, #76768) [Link] (6 responses)

systemd is superior to sysvinit (and upstart) for embedded systems, servers and light container/VM OSes for "the cloud".

It is also better than sysvinit for desktops, but that is probably less important, as this market is miniscule. However, the developments around "apps" as self-contained and sandboxed bundles could become a major improvement to desktop and mobile systems.

systemd is not end-user technology, it's "users" are developers and engineers creating and deploying systems based on GNU/Linux.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 16:44 UTC (Thu) by pj (subscriber, #4506) [Link] (5 responses)

So, speaking of other systems, what has the general reaction from distros like OpenWRT and OpenEmbedded been to systemd? positive? negative? indifferent? Has anyone from the systemd project tried to put systemd on a system of that size? I've seen little press, if so, and I think it would likely be several points in favor of systemd if the superiority you cite (sadly without references) was quantified and publicized.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 19:24 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

There are uclibc-based builds of systemd for OpenWRT. So it's definitely interesting for embedded people.

I've used one of the earlier versions of systemd a couple of years ago on my embedded systems.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 22:10 UTC (Thu) by ebiederm (subscriber, #35028) [Link]

Openwrt uses something much slimmer the systemd.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 14, 2014 7:39 UTC (Fri) by koenkooi (subscriber, #71861) [Link]

<pet peeve>OE is not a distro, it can build one</pet peeve> I've been using systemd happily on all my embedded systems and even gave a few presentations about it: http://elinux.org/images/b/b3/Elce11_koen.pdf

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 14, 2014 7:42 UTC (Fri) by mokki (subscriber, #33200) [Link]

I am writing this comment on Jolla ohone. Jolla/SailfishOS uses systemd +wayland+btrfs. All this released in a 2013.
Works smoothly from end user point of view.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 14, 2014 15:34 UTC (Fri) by andza (guest, #72692) [Link]

Well, we have systemd support integrated in OpenEmbedded as well as in Buildroot... So, yes, it's definitely of interest for quite a few embedded systems.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 18:45 UTC (Thu) by thoeme (subscriber, #2871) [Link]

>People who need a real computer use Mac, Windows,
Oh really ? I have been using Linux as a desktop since 1997; currently running my *company*-provided desktop PCs with openSuSE.
Fluently on the command line ? Yes, but very fond of my KDE4 desktop, wouldn't miss it.

>Linux desktop/workstation users ... And they don't need systemd.
Well I like my notebook to boot fast...which it does thanks to systemd.

YMMV,Thöme

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 20:23 UTC (Thu) by rodgerd (guest, #58896) [Link]

> greybeard sysadmins do care (negatively) and it is they who are behind the current backlash.

This greybeard sysadmin cares positively (and I am hardly a unique datapoint), and is more than a little tired os self-important, self-appointed spokespeople claiming to speak for everyone. Especially when it is abundantly clear that in most cases they have never so much as booted systemd-equipped boxes, let alone run them on a production basis.

The Grumpy Editor's guide to surviving the systemd debate

Posted Nov 13, 2014 20:46 UTC (Thu) by misc (subscriber, #73730) [Link]

> but LOTS of users care about the poisonous atmosphere that has arisen
> about the entire linux ecosystem in recent years.

From reading debian-users archive, I doubt that the expressed voices ( who I would count as less than 100 people ) count as a lot.

Another data point, this old petition, around 235 people who signed it.
https://www.change.org/p/lennart-poettering-stop-writing-...

So we have around 500, maybe 1000 people who seems to complain, and just on lwn, we have at least 90 000 accounts ( provided the id is increased by 1 for every account ).

Canonical announce numbers of users/systems around 12 to 20 millions, Fedora numbers of unique ip are around the same order of magnitude ( 1 to 2 millions ).
RH announced 1 billion of $ of revenue 2 years ago, so you can divide by the price of 1 subscription ( from the website ) after removing the part of jboss/rhev/etc and remove the services/training of the revenue ( from Sec fillings ). Then you will have a idea of the installed base. And while there is maybe not 1 admin per server ( that wouldn't be efficient ), but something like 10 to 100 servers per admin ( per latest industry stats, maybe not up to date nowadays with cloudification of application ).

All of this seems to say that we can safely count gnu/linux users around the million or even more. So even if there was 10 000 of people complaining ( and I frankly do not see anything to back that estimation, but we can be generous ), this would still be only 1% of the most pessimist estimation of the total number of Linux users.

Now, of course, for a individual, 10 000 may count as a lot. But for the whole population, that's still a minority.