Systemd, a piece of shit you should avoid

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[–]Drewski 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

I've been a linux user for years, but I've avoided the systemd debate so far. The criticisms seem valid, so I'm wondering about the practicality of using a non-systemd distro.

What's the experience like with a different init? Any pitfalls, software incompatibilities or other issues I should be aware of? If I were to switch to say Devuan what are the pros / cons of using SysVinit, OpenRC or Runit? Are they fairly easy to create new services, check the status and all that?

[–]iDontShift 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

can see no downside. after switching to freebsd .. i learned just how stupid linux had become

[–]Airbus320 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I just don't know how hard it is to configure openrc

[–]leucocyte 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

using runit and no problem the only sad things is : cannot use anbox

*my old pc always get an error whenever installing systemd based OS, now it has no problem.

[–]Bink 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I, mostly, tend to use OpenBSD. Yes, it's far from Linux in many ways, but the init system, like most other things in OpenBSD, is simple. Like it should be.

[–]Airbus320 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Do they use pulseaudio?

[–]Bink 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I believe PulseAudio is possible, but sndio is built-in.

[–]jamesK_3rd 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

I've always used FreeNAS for my storage appliances. I've moved my centos servers to FreeBSD since the "Stream" debacle.

But it's harder to find distros out there without it(systemD). On top of that, most of the older generation who ran their own repos, developed software for everyone or supported such free distros because they value freedom are retiring.

The younger generations believe they should be paid for the extra hours or work on such repos or software. They care more about things like pretty, JS heavy webpages than functional ones.

That leaves mega Corps like RedHat as the gatekeepers for FOSS and mainstream distros. Very few people can build their own kernel now.

And if you look on even RedHat page, they are striving for diversity, inclusion, etc now. Focusing on nonsense things like master/slave whitelist/blacklist.

I think the writing is already on the wall, and I'd bet systemD is part of the plan.

[–]Airbus320 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Kconfig can be fun

[–]jamesK_3rd 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

It's been a while since i rolled my own.

I could roll my own again. The thing is I too am close to the point where time starts becoming limited. That's was a benefit of business like TrueNas and RedHat. The woke is everywhere.

I didn't mention it above, but I am also worried about the same loss with the ports tree in the unices.

[–]solder0 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (10 children)

Kinda seems to me like most of the issues with systemd are social, rather than technical.

[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

There are valid tech concerns too https://saidit.net/s/Linux/comments/7zli/nasty_linux_systemd_root_level_security_bug/

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

    yeah it's probably misconfigured. i think it's taking everything down. I can't see the config myself tho.

    [–]iDontShift 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (4 children)

    well, you say that until you have a audio port block the boot process entirely (my audio port in the front appears to have strange issues that reports bad info, but somehow, if you ignore that shit, it just works if you 'force it' .. which I had been doing.. i told systemd .. ignore this port, just fucking use it.. and it worked .. until one day.. it crashed my whole system and it refused to boot or give any information about why.. I just randomly guessed as it was a problem before.. removed the rule, the computer booted.. fuck you systemd)

    oh, it also blocks boot if a nfs mount isn't available.. i dunno seems lots of things that don't happen on freeBSD .. hitting escape skips the nfs mount on freeBSD .. linux? i dunno .. just sat and made me wait.. until I added something to the fstab to nowait ..

    [–]bopomofodojo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    You know all of these things are configurable, right? Pretty typical of blind systemd haters to not put in any effort to understanding the system before moaning about it.

    [–]iDontShift 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    ya know I built my own arch system, maintained it for 4 years, and yes I did recover from it

    what I didn't recover from was my distaste for a system that blew up without any indicators as to WHY ...

    well fuck that shit, piss off, no.. give me an error, not just a force reboot, try to watch the verbose output to figure out just where.. but nothing was written to the log..

    freeBSD .. uses a simple init system that in linear (systemd is NOT LINEAR .. faster but WHEN SHIT BREAKS... WHAT JUST BROKE I DUNNO .. )

    do you really need to boot 2x faster and sacrifice simplicity .. for something you need just once...

    and seriously, freeBSD boots in like 30 seconds.. what the fuck you people need?

    i don't need it, don't want it

    fuck off systemDICK

    [–]Airbus320 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

    u/superfox can't live without systemD

    [–]superfox 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    hey, i dont ride in the faggy car, so dont get me fkd up like that.

    [–]bopomofodojo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Yes, they are. They always boil down to three things:

    1. I don't like Lennart Poetering, and thus systemd bad - this is a tradition at this point since the same thing happened with Bonjour and PulseAudio before everyone got with the program. For some reason, though, systemd's hate was stronger and has lasted far longer, I guess because it's his 3rd major "I'm going to make something that actually improves the Linux ecosystem" project and it's the most... integrated, I guess for lack of a better word.

    2. "Something something Unix philosophy" just fucking stop. If you're running your Linux system on a PDP-11 in 1975, sure, talk about this magical "UNIX Philosophy". However, in the real world of 2021, any software worth a damn in the last 20+ years hasn't "followed" it either, including the kernel of the operating system Systemd runs on. Computing has evolved, and no one talked about this when GIMP was big and complex ("You can do everything GIMP does with imagemagick and pipes!" Yea Kyle, if I want to spend 20 years writing scripts to do it, but I have better things to do), or any one of thousands of other programs that have evolved far past the archaic notion of tiny programs and pipes. This philosophy is still useful for some things, but it is not for system management. Shell scripts doing service management is fucking terrible, always has been, and the kludges needed for it to work barely do so. Systemd is better in every way precisely because it says "No this is a task that a full blown program should do so it can keep proper state and track running daemons, input/output, etc.". Most of these masquerade as "technical arguments", but they ultimately circle back to this philosophical decision about what software "should be".

    3. Various things that always boil down to "I don't understand how systemd works/is developed/was designed/how to use it, and therefore it's bad". Stuff like "it's bloated" (no, it's not, it's a tiny program if you turn off all the features at compile time - but most distro maintainers find these features useful and thus turn them on), "it's all one source tree" (so is FreeBSD but no one calls that "bad" for it), "My server X blocks boot or crashes or" read the damn manual and learn how to configure it so it doesn't do that thing. Like #2, most of these also masquerade as "technical arguments", but are ultimately simply a case of not understanding how the software actually works, refusing to learn new things, and then becoming upset that Systemd doesn't work they way they "think" it should (usually, the way SysV and it's myriad of cludges worked), usually because it's solving a problem and took an alternate design path that, when understood, makes perfect sense.