On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 06:22:20PM -0600, Joe S wrote:
> I've read some controversy about systemd. How is this going to change
> Linux?
Massively. Controversially. With much argument. With much effort.
Everyone needs to know more about this. And read around a lot. Many
people hold strong views about systemd. Legitimately.
Links at the bottom.
On Sat, Sep 19, 2015 at 07:00:56PM -0600, Gustin Johnson wrote:
> Linux is not going to change in the short to medium term. Systemd has been
> live for half a decade, and on the balance it is an improvement. If one
> was really against it, you can use Ubuntu 14.04 until 2019. By then you
> will either have to suck it up or systemd will be extinct. Unless
> something better comes along (and no, the various pieces that it replaces
> were not better from a *Linux* perspective) it will likely be with us for
> some time.
>
> Most of the bad "press" has been a result of a misunderstanding of what the
> systemd pieces are and more importantly are not. I read one post about a
> guy fuming at how systemd replaced ifconfig with "ip addr". He was blaming
> this on systemd when the reality is that these are not related (net-tools
> was deprecated back in 2001, however it has taken 15 years for Linux
> sysadmins to realize this).
>
> One could always switch to OpenBSD since systemd is Linux specific.
I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you, Gustin. That
last line especially. Many can't switch or would find it very
difficult. And unfortunately systemd isn't going extinct any time
soon.
systemd started as a replacement for the Sys V Init system in Linux.
It's use case was to speed up and streamline the boot process,
especially important for virtual server implementations that create
new virtual machines via virutal booting.
For various reasons, systemd has absorbed and continues to adsorb many
parts of user-space system code. Starting with server process
control, it continues to take over more and more. In doing so those
components tend to lose their more general UNIX support in place of
solely being available for Linux. These include udev and consolekit.
systemd only supports the glibc libirary, making it useless for
embedded systems using other libraries.
Partly to avoid struggling individually with making and supporting a
better Init replacement, most Linux distro's have decide to go with
systemd as their default Init system. While many still support Sys V
Init or other new Init systems, these decisions have grave impacts.
In Debian, continued support of the alternate kernels (FreeBSD and
Hurd) is threatened.
Why is systemd bad? It is run by a small group of coders (smaller
than the Linux kernel), some with a history of difficult relations
with others with respect to their system products. As a piece of
replacement software, its adoption and spread has been very rapid
considering the legitimate concerns and history of grave bugs it has
generated.
It is a single source of failure in all Linux systems but the project
has not been administered and coded to the high standard demanded
considering its critical role. It goes against decades of painful
experience in operating system design going back to even before UNIX
to Multics and IMB OS/360 and further to general experience in all
fields of engineering and general system design.
Read as much as you can about systemd.
Mark
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd
http://ewontfix.com/14/
http://ewontfix.com/15/
http://slashdot.org/tag/systemd
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_systemd
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
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