Someone please convince me why I should hate systemd because I still don't understand why all the hate exists.
this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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The idea as far as I can tell is that it's responsible for too many things and gives a massive point of failure.
Man, wait until these people hear about the filesystem and kernel.
hurd "exists"
That's GNU/Hurd thank you
yes mr stallman
Does it ? I thought it was never completed !
On the other hand, if you want a microkernel that does exist, there’s Mach. But I don’t think you can replace Linux with it 😆
It's been two years away for the last 30 years.
Yeah, there's a Debian implementation of GNU/hurd. Debian recommend you run it in a VM
I won't bother. Sounds like hurd work.
The very existence of a defined kernel is an insult to the Linux philosophy
The Linux kernel (the part that gives Linux the name) is antithetical to Linux philosophy? I could understand it being contrary to GNU philosophy
In some ways I think the filesystem is philosophically the exact opposite of systemd
I can boot my system with an ext4 root, with a btrfs /home...or vice versa. Or add some ZFS, or whatever. The filesystem is (with the exception of some special backup schemes) largely independent of the rest of the system, despite being of core importance.
On the other hand, I can't change my init system (i.e., systemd) without serious, serious work.
It's also "infectious" software. The way systemd positions itself on the system, it can make it more difficult for software to be written in an agnostic way. This isn't all software, and is often more of a complaint by lower level software, like desktop environments.
https://catfox.life/2024/01/05/systemd-through-the-eyes-of-a-musl-distribution-maintainer/
This isn't a terrible summary of some of the aspects of it.
Another aspect is that when it was first developed, the lead on the project was exceptionally hostile to anyone who didn't immediately agree that systemd definitely should take over most of the system, often criticizing people who pointed out bugs or questionable design decisions as being afraid of change or relics of the past.
It's more of a social reason, but if people feel like the developer of a tool they're forced to use doesn't even respect their concerns, they're going to start rejecting the tool.
What do you expect from an init system? It's like saying my cpu is infectious because my computer depends on it
It's that it also decided to take over log management, event management, networking, DNS resolution, etc, etc.
If it were just an init system that would be perfectly portable. People were able to write software that way with sysv for years.
It's that in order to do certain low level tasks on a systemd system, you need to integrate with systemd, not just "be started by it". Now if a distro wants that piece of software, it needs to use systemd, and other pieces of software that want to be on that distro need to implement integration with systemd.
A dependency isn't infectious, but a dependency you can't easily swap out is, particularly if it's positioned near the base of a dependency tree.
Almost all of my software can run on x86 or arm without any issues beyond changing compiler targets. It's closer to how it's tricky to port software between Mac and Linux, or Linux and BSD. Targeting one platform entails significant, potentially prohibitive, effort to support another, despite them all being ostensibly compatible unix like systems.
Bro I’m with you on this but the systemd bots will just keep arguing with and downvoting you. Don’t bother.
log management, event management, networking, DNS resolution
and this is a bad thing? the distro can choose to not use it, but because every systemd distro uses it, it's a 1000x easier to implement it without needing to put a fuck tons of if-else's for every distro
No, not everyone thinks it's a bad thing. It is, however, infectious, which is a reason some people don't like it.
Knowing why people dislike something isn't the same as thinking it's the worst thing ever, and liking something doesn't mean you can't acknowledge it's defects.
I think it's a net benefit, but that it would be better if they had limited the scope of the project a bit, rather than trying to put everything in the unit system.
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Indeed, the Unix philosophy was do one thing and do it well. ls just list directory’s and files it’s not a network manager too. Systemd crams a lot of extra shit into an init.d/rc.
I still prefer the old system-v/openRC setup or BSD’s setup. It’s simple does 1 job and does it well. But I can work with systemd just fine in creating scripts these days and it does have some nice features like user startup scripts baked into it and podman integrates very nicely with it.
My understanding is that some people are die hards to the software philosophy of "do one thing really well". systemd at the very least does many different things. These people would prefer to chain a bunch of smaller programs together to replicate the same functionality of systemd since every program in the chain fits the philosophy of "does one thing really well".
For me it’s 3 things
- Do one thing and do it well
- Everything is a file in Linux
- human readable logs
Systemd breaks all three of though by being monolithic and binary. It actually makes you have to jump through more hoops to do things in certain cases. I understand it’s a mindset shift but it really starts making it feel more like Windows with how it works and the registry and event log.
You forgot: use as many dependencies as you need. For example, my init system does not use xz-utils.
I remember the clusterfuck that existed before systemd, so I love systemd.
People don’t like it because it’s declarative. It felt cool to be able to just put bash files into certain directories to have them executed on startup. That was elegant, in the sense of “everything’s a file”.
systemd is more of an api than a framework, so it’s a different design paradigm.
I hated systemd until I printed out the docs, for some coffee, and sat in a comfy chair to read them front to back. Then I loved it.
Mostly I hated it because I didn’t know how to do things with it.
Also, “journalctl” is kind of an ugly command. But really, who gives a fuck. It’s a well-designed system.
And if a person absolutely must execute their own arbitrary code they can just declare a command to execute their script file as the startup operation on a unit.
Good that you've enjoyed it. But a fundamentally wrong thing about systemd is that it is actively harming the best thing about Linux – freedom. Some programs won't work on a non-systemd distro because how tightly coupled and vendor non-agnostic anything that becomes dependent on might become at times. Of course it's not as bad as glib(loat)c, but still if something can be done without any degradation of functionality via standard POSIX facilities, WHY either incur additional maintenance overhead for non-systemd implementations or punish people for their computing choices if there's no one to maintain it?
"I am a new linux user. After 15 minutes of research on google, I found a few forum posts and some niche websites that said SystemD was bad, so I took it as gospel. Now my system doesn't work as simply as it did with installer defaults? How do I make everything Just Work™ after removing any OS components I don't understand the need for?"
I mean you essentially just highlighted a primary user experience problem with Linux....
Information & advice is fragmented, spread around, highly opinionated, poorly digestible, out of date, and often dangerous.
And then the other part of it is that a large part the Linux community will shit on you for not knowing what you don't know because of some weird cultural elitism...
When you finally ask for help once you realize you don't know what you're doing, you're usually met with derisive comments and criticism instead of help.
Do you want Linux to be customizable so that users can control it however they want. Or do you want it to be safe so that users don't mess it up? You can't have it both ways, and when you tell users to "go figure it out" and then :suprise_pikachu: that they found the wrong information because they have literally no idea what's good or bad, instead of helping, they get shit on.
It's the biggest thing holding Linux desktop back.
The cultural elitism comes from years of tinkering with their system since all the information they can find is fragmented and spread around, highly opinionated,’poorly digestible, out of date, and often dangerous.
This isn't a Linux problem this is a society problem people just want to one up everyone In anyway they can and sometimes I dont think we do it consciencely
It turns into a Linux problem when it holds back Linux desktop adoption by creating a difficult or even toxic environment for new, low-technical or non-technical users.
IMO that's not what is holding back Linux from adoption. there are great forums with great people and they happen to be in the distros for beginners. You can use your argument with any small enthusiasts groups and that was my point toxicness is not caused by Linux. I personally believe its windows and Mac forcing themselves on people. Have you ever been to a store to buy a computer and someone said hey would you like to try this free OS that installs and acts just like windows instead of buying windows for 100 bucks? Lol its just marketing.
Not trying to start an argument here but I do want to point out that your argument foundations on blaming other competitors instead of looking at what can make the platform you're passionate about more palatable.
There are many, MANY, reasons people will choose Mac and windows on their own accord.
Your argument hand waves that away to make a boogieman out of mac and windows, and erodes the true viability of Linux as a platform by not looking at how it can improve, and instead focusing on how the competition "is bad".
Taking the ego stance that Linux "would be great if it wasn't being held back by the bad guys" doesn't actually help Linux desktop adoption...
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To be fair, Windows and Macos support is like this too. Its random forum suggestions from even less technical people.
The distros official resources are comprehensive and don't have the issue of being outdated and fragmented.
Debians official resources are often outdated, fragmented and not comprehensive in the slightest. I had to scour email list and random blog post if I had to deal with some Debian tooling problems. It's only saving grace, is that it fairly widespread, and that there are these random blog posts.
Debian, Arch, Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu, Redhat, Manjaro all have docs and wiki on their primary websites. Slackware has docs, Gentoo has a wiki. Anything that's not on a distro's site needs to be carefully considered before tampering. Almost all of those distros have a warning in their installation instructions to only listen to the information in their docs and wiki, and to a lesser extent their forums. Hell, even nosystemd.org tells you what systemd is, what it's for, what replacements there are, and the proper way to get rid of it in bold text under the header "How do I get rid of systemd?"
Listening to hackneyed advice from unvetted sources just because they have strong opinions is a problem that any and every computer will face. That's not a problem with linux anymore than the hoardes of trolls on random social media sites telling you to "delete System32" is a problem with Windows.
I want Linux to be customizable AND safe. But safe in the way that someone takes the time to learn how what they plan to do will effect their system, not safe in the sense of "impossible to bork"
As for elitism: if it's "elitist" to indirectly poke fun of someone who deleted a core system component without understanding what it does without a backup, then so be it. It feels more like that word is levied by people whose ego is too big to take respobsibility for the mistakes they made, and instead blame others for laughing when it bites them in the ass.
Idk where these swaths of elitists that refuse to help are. OOP went to stackexchange and likely got a helpful answer complete with explanations, as that is the community standard. Over on [email protected] , I see people offering help with problems all the time without shitting on them. If I go to the aforementioned OS forums, or really any software-specific forums, I see people helping or pointing people to where they can get help.
And I'm not denying that assholes who say shit like "did you even bother googling?" exist. They're nasty people with no patience, but they're by no means the community standard unless they're the only ones you pay attention to...
Or unless you see a screenshot of a question from a different website posted in a meme-sharing forum and expect the comments to offer advice, instead of laughing at the person who shot themselves in the foot and went to a hospital instead of seeking help at the DNC HQ
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Linus tech tips, is that you?
He is less technically inclined
He read a prompt asking if he wanted to remove his system and said yes
Then complained about it
To be fair it was caused by installing steam. Why System76 didn't test that I don't know.
Its partial fault on all sides that added up.
Ubuntu shipped with that issue for some time and fixed it after some time.
Pop os iso on the download page contained it.
The package came from ubuntu but this issue was not visible since up to date pop os does not have this issue. Only the version in iso. So Pop os too made some mistake.
Linus tried to install steam. The installer does not allow removing necessary packages. He tried to install anyway ignoring all warnings, in cli.
It says if you are so sure, type "Yes, Do as I say!" with all cases and punctuation correct. Why would you be required to type a very specific phrase to install steam? Its a clear warning for confirmation. He too makes mistake by ignoring all warnings.
Not to blame anyone but all of them did partial mistake that added up
Holly shit this has 700 upvotes
I think I would have preferred sudo apt-get remove --purge systemd
Yeah, some old habits never die.
I just shot my OS in the heart, why isn't it working?
I removed and sold the wheels of my car, now it does not move.
I removed the transmission from my car but now it won’t drive
That's what you get for transphobia my dude
He uninstalled systemd, now his computer is not doing systemd things anymore by his retelling. Seems like it worked fine. Yet he asks for a solution of a problem. Maybe he needs to state the problem.
This is like the Linux equivalent of deleting system32
Nah, more like deleting explorer.exe.
There's isn't really a Windows equivalent for this, as Windows doesn't give you control on this level.
It'd be as if you could delete services.msc but also the runner behind it.
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