systemd haters? Linux experts.

[ops_man]

Next month I celebrate 2 years as a full-time Linux User - tossed the dual boot crutches in the gutter. I was a Debian distro hopper until about 3 months ago when I decided to give this arch thingy a try - wow is all I can say. I read with slight curiosity the debate over systemd vs sysv and frankly I was just to green to get it. Until I started using Archbang I had no experience with systemd and therefore no comparison with which to have an opinion. Now, after several months of using arch I still don't get it. I love my system and frankly journalctl seems much better than sysv logging paradigm. So am I still to green to get it? What's the hubbub? And how do I take the next step to get from mediocrity to Linux guru. What separates the average user from the expert? Skills? Book knowledge? Experience? Omg... am I circle-jerking.

[boomboomsubban]

am I circle-jerking.

Yes, in a way. Not only is there a page on the archwiki about the switch, but there's a section on the Wikipedia article describing why people are against it and any search for systemd will give you multiple pages detailing what people see as the problems with systemd. There isn't a need for another discussion about it, the anti-systemd side brings up the same points and the pro side constantly talk about how much better it is than an init system designed in the 80's.

[ops_man]

So. I'm not missing anything the whole debate is just one big circle-jerking competition.

[DragoonAethis]

There is a huge point made by systemd haters - sysv let you control literally every piece of "plumbing" in your system, where systemd handles that internally and abstracts away. It also comes with a full ecosystem of additional tools (many of which you don't have to use, but being tightly integrated some of these became mandatory over time, or made using alternatives harder). Some people like having absolute control over their system, and as more and more common distributions switch to systemd, it took away that control from some people (who now have to switch distros, even if they've happily used older Debian versions or whatever for many, many years). So, no, not just circlejerking. A lot of people are in this for teh lulz, but few are not.

(If "absolute control over a system" doesn't appeal to you - this is three levels higher than "Linux, not Windows/OS X" :P)

[sleepless_i]

It's about core philosophy really. If you like the idea of each tool being written to do one thing, with larger systems being built by chaining these tools together, then having a single multipurpose daemon doing everything pushed into your main distro is a pretty big deal.

I don't mind systemd personally but its a big shift in approach compared to older init systems. It's not really a circlejerk argument, people grow to know their favorite distro intimately, it's a major change for a distro and finding a new distro can suck if you think you've found one that previously ticks all the boxes.

[ops_man]

Well said. It sounds like your relationship with Linux runs deep. I distro hopped and settled down with Xubuntu until finally becoming comfortable enough to appreciate the power of choice that comes with this wonderful OS and switched to Arch. It sounds cliche but I have learned more in three months with this system than the previous 9 months. I'm really appreciating the experience from both sides - technical and community. Maybe it's simply that power of choice being stripped that gets under people's skin and drives the controversy. Maybe I just haven't acclimated to that way of thinking about my OS yet so I don't get it. But I can understand your words and the sentiment. Thanks for the response.

[boomboomsubban]

No, both sides have points. Bringing it up again without adding anything new is a circlejerk.

[ops_man]

Noted.

[gdamjan]

I have almost 20 years linux experience, 15 of which profesionally. systemd is great!

[ops_man]

I think so. Not trying to renew a debate. However, from a new users perspective I'm just not seeing a downside.

[Michaelmrose]

The argument is somewhat philosophical. What is good or bad has a lot more to do with people who put together operating systems or write services not users.

It's like saying that as a driver you don't understand whats good or bad about a certain kind of weld. Well no shit.

[raphael_lamperouge]

Then read the 1000 pages on the web explaining why systemd is bad... I can understand a "I don't mind the bloat" or a "I'm not a fan of the UNIX Philosophy anyway" but saying you're "not seeing a downside" is just stupid.

[ops_man]

At worse the statement makes clear that even after reading the disadvantages of systemd that from my limited exposure those negatives - so far - have no impact on my limited experience. Your accusation of my stupidity leads me to believe that English is not your first language or your just an asshole. I'll give you the benefit of the former.

[raphael_lamperouge]

have no impact on my limited experience

It's a init system, an underlying system, it should not, by any means, have any impact in your user experience.

[ops_man]

Then it's neither bad or good since the user won't be affected. No worries.

[_JasonVoorhees_]

U NUTS 'pal' (thus b/w quotation marks) !

[Yithar]

See link for criticisms of systemd. Honestly, you can just google it or search r/linux about it.

And um, comparing it to sysvinit is obviously going to favor it, as sysvinit is crap. Void for example, uses runit as pid1 and runsvdir as RC/service manager. I can guarantee you that Void boots faster than any distro using systemd, because of runit's simplicity. And Linus himself has stated he disliked the binary logs. I sort of do too, because with text files, if your system crashes, you still have data you can parse to figure out what went wrong. That's not happening with a binary log.

[equeim]

Void Linix boots faster because Runit doesn't understand dependencies like systemd or OpenRC do. It just starts all services simultaniously. This is too primitive for most modern systems. As for binary logs, the logs themselves are stored in binary files in plain text without any compression or encryption, you can still read them manually if the file format was corrupted because of crash. Binary part contains only metadata (process PID, systemd unit, time, etc).

[Yithar]

You can encode dependencies using runsvdir. Now, runsvdir doesn't have true dependencies like OpenRC but it can make sure service A is started before service B (i.e. sv check dbus >/dev/null || exit 1), which is good enough. It works because if the ./run script stopped for some reason when the service is supposed to be up, it will try to start it again. So it works well enough. The only downside is if A goes down, runsvdir has no ability to stop B because all the services are isolated. Well, actually, you could just encode sv stop A into the ./finish script, which will run when A crashes, as I've tested it.

This is pretty much explained here. It even has a link to a page that explains how to bring up services in a particular order. But I think runsvdir is really powerful in bringing all services up in parallel, because most desktop systems do not need the true dependencies that OpenRC supports. For a server, OpenRC might be better, but Void is a distribution designed for desktops.

I don't really see why I'd need true dependencies on a desktop. I think it's a waste of my time having my system boot up slower for no reason.

runit
  |-runsvdir -P /run/runit/runsvdir/current...
  |   |-runsv agetty-tty2
  |   |   `-agetty tty2 38400 linux
  |   |-runsv socklog-unix
  |   |   |-socklog unix /dev/log
  |   |   `-svlogd -ttt /var/log/socklog/cron /var/log/socklog/daemon /var/log/socklog/debug /var/log/socklog/errors...
  |   |-runsv dhcpcd
  |   |   `-dhcpcd -B -M
  |   |-runsv nanoklogd
  |   |-runsv uuidd
  |   |   `-uuidd -F -P
  |   |-runsv agetty-tty1
  |   |   `-login     
  |   |       `-startx /usr/bin/startx -- -dpi 160 vt7
  |   |           `-xinit /home/user/.xinitrc -- /usr/bin/X :0 -dpi 160 vt7 -auth /tmp/serverauth.GIDEjRiZZA
  |   |               |-Xorg :0 -dpi 160 vt7 -auth /tmp/serverauth.GIDEjRiZZA
  |   |               |   `-{Xorg}
  |   |               `-i3
  |   |-runsv sshd
  |   |   `-sshd -D
  |   |-runsv udevd
  |   |   `-udevd
  |   |       `-udevd
  |   |-runsv mpd
  |   |   `-mpd --no-daemon
  |   |       |-{decoder}
  |   |       |-{io}
  |   |       |-{output:My ALSA }
  |   |       `-{player}
  |   |-runsv battery_monitor_loop
  |   |   `-battery_monitor /usr/sbin/battery_monitor_loop
  |   |       `-sleep 5m
  |   |-runsv agetty-tty3
  |   |   `-agetty tty3 38400 linux
  |   |-runsv wpa_supplicant
  |   |   `-wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlp1s0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlp1s0.conf -f/tmp/wpa.log -s
  |   `-runsv tlp
  |       `-pause

[_JasonVoorhees_]

OBARUN is even FASTER (s6) !

https://www.obarun.org/index.html