About the true purpose of systemd
I've been involved with #GNOME, #KDE, #freedesktop and #postmarketOS, ...
I've met @pid_eins and other prominent figures behind closed doors
I can confirm from first-hand experience that systemd is indeed a conspiracy to make better operating systems with Linux
I'll explain my concerns.
- At first, I thought that it was just an alternative to sysvinit, runit ... even though existing init systems / process managers were fine.
The freedom of choice like we all want to have.
But no! It's not just a init thing. It's about controlling the system. Note that I felt in love with the name.
- Systemd : 1 package with many functionalities (tools) controling many building block for a Linux system (part of this definition came from its website)
- No code is really bullet-proof, and a single package that has control over many parts of the system can lead to a larger attack surface and a bigger impact IMHO, No ?
- And hey, why the heck do we have to deal with binary log ?
Why not the usual plain text stream. We have to rely on systemd tool to operate on them. As a sysadmin I have to do some "witchery" operations on logs stream and it is not helpful in many cases as I want to use other tools for some direct manipulation on it.
- Speaking about choice, will we always have the choice to go for another init system if the packages in the distribution we used to work on is totally dependent on systemd ? What if this extends to the whole Linux community ?
Doesn't it sound like a kinda systemd-centric ?
Couldn't it be a bit freaky ?
Where is the good old "Free" ?
Adding to that, the "Open Source" starts to fade on some software that used to be Open, actually.
- All of that doesn't help for saying that systemd will make Linux a better OS.
@etchedpixels @sonny @pid_eins OFC if your System is as brutally simple as @OS1337 that may be viable...
Foe everyone else who just needs to "get s**t done" it works...
https://infosec.space/@kkarhan/112073130036144096
@[email protected] @[email protected] EXACTLY THAT! #systemd sadly is a "necessary evil" at worst given the #SysVinit sucked and still sucks... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_AIw9bGogo
@grillchen @sonny @pid_eins How do you feel about gnome hard-depending on gtk and plasma on Qt?
I think systemd as a project is good in part because its doing a lot of work that freedesktop.org did for DEs. For example, getting disparate distros and projects to agree on conventions for how to cleanly separate OS files from per-machine configuration.
thank you!
@Okanogen @sonny @pid_eins Same reason why we’re doing away with Xorg and switching to Wayland.
Because despite the old-school init systems being touted as simple, elegant, stable and just way better than systemd (by some people, anyway), you don’t see a lot of people rushing to maintain and develop them.
OpenRC is pretty much the only viable modern non-systemd init system for general use, but it’s being developed with Gentoo in mind.
@Okanogen Things rarely get thrown out deliberately in FOSS though. You either have people who are willing to work on a thing, or you don't, and then it becomes abandonware.
It's not like there's a secret cabal that prevents developers from working on other init systems and keeping other pieces of software compatible with them. It's just that the majority of people working on Linux have decided to move on. And democracy often means accepting the majority vote, even if you disagree with it.
@Okanogen As far as I understand (correct me if I wrong), the unique NIC names are a good idea for the same reason why using /dev/disk/by-id/ is better than using /dev/sdx. The latter is volatile can change when adding new drives to your system, updating the drivers, reinstalling your OS and even rebooting. The former is linked to the unique hardware and will always stay the same, even across different installations.
You can also easily disable that feature: https://documentation.suse.com/smart/network/html/network-interface-predictable-naming/index.html
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