Mastodawn

okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin

@sonny @pid_eins
Define "better".
I would define "better" as more stable, predictable, fast with minimal disk and hardware, easily installed quickly and customized, easy to troubleshoot, secure, compatible with the tools I've been using for decades.
I get all this out of a systemd free OS, so this is a fix for a problem I never had.
Although, now I DO have problems because many packages are now dependent on systemd. Why? Why the desperation to drop support for other init systems?

Wolfgang Mar 10, 2024

@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 VerminEnemyFromWithin Mar 10, 2024

@notthebee @sonny @pid_eins
Who is "we"? And if something doesn't work for you, good for you, don't use it. I'm not forcing you to use i3WM, am I?

@Okanogen The lack of people willing to maintain the broken mess that is X.Org speaks for itself. Same goes for the older init systems. It's not that there's a desperation to drop support for them, it's just that none of the people who are very vocally anti-Systemd, are rushing to work on support for those older init systems. In FOSS, that's how it usually works. There's rarely an active decision to axe some feature or product to piss people off or please the shareholders. But there's often a lack of resources and people willing to work on the thing.

@notthebee
Other "broken messes" struggling to find developers include InfluxDB. I recall grep couldn't find anyone willing to maintain it at one point. Perhaps "We" should throw those out, too? Toss on the dustbin of history? Because the Kool Kids don't get a thrill unless they are moving fast and breaking things?
Here's a list of other orphaned toys nobody cares about.
https://www.debian.org/devel/wnpp/work_needing
That said, I've been hearing this tired song for at least ten years, and yet things keep working....

Debian -- Packages in need of a new maintainer

@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.

@notthebee
So "the majority" is the metric for what is right? What is valid? The majority of..... who? Your buddies?
The vast majority of computer users are on Windows, or if you count mobile devices, Android or iOS. With all those combined, by that metric there's almost no support for systemd at all.

@Okanogen Right, but we're talking about Linux here. And the majority of Linux distros use systemd as their init system.

mil Mar 11, 2024

@Okanogen @notthebee @sonny @pid_eins I would like that “we”, for educational reasons, to be forced to use a tiling WM like i3 or xmonad until proficient. There is more than one way. Wayland & systemd kill this polyculture. Most users are used to remote managed desktop - a problem if your wm or compositor is nested - which one gets my Window switch key sequence? How do I control that? “Better” Architecture looses to Muscle memory,

@mil I for one would like to force (for educational reasons) people who oppose things like Wayland and systemd, to spend some time maintaining the X.Org or init.d/upstart/etc. codebase

@notthebee @mil
Oh! Let me help you, then. Despite some deliberate roadblocks thrown in their way, these folks are on version 5: https://www.devuan.org/

Welcome to devuan.org | Devuan GNU+Linux Free Operating System

Free GNU+Linux base OS. Devuan is a fork of Debian without systemd. Devuan provides a safe upgrade path from Debian, to ensure the right to Init Freedom and avoid entanglement.

Devuan GNU+Linux

@Okanogen @mil I'd like to see *all* people complaining about systemd do that, not just the ones that are already doing it. The devs of Devuan/Artix/Gentoo have already made their mind, but I think that once other people see how much of a PITA that is, a lot might change their mind.

@notthebee @mil
Nobody is giving you an assignment, my dude. So ALL people? Everywhere? All people who are less than pleased by journald and networkd? You want to give all people the assignment to become a developer?
If you're so mad about it, why don't you just buy a Mac? Problem solved.
But regarding PITA, I don't know chief, the hard part was done in 2015.

@Okanogen @mil was the one with assignment, I just turned it around 😁

As for buying a Mac – way ahead of you on that one! Still managing Linux/FreeBSD infrastructures at work though, and the limitations of oldschool init systems compared to systemd really stand out in comparison, imo.

@notthebee @mil
I would like to see anyone try to use networkd for EVERYTHING. Also, never use cron, only systemd timers. Lol. I mean, nobody wanted to maintain that "horrible mess" of ifupdown, until ifupdown2 came around, and cron? So old. Teh oldness. And who can forget "unique network interface names? Wow! Thanks for enpd194u2992uu4. That's a big improvement!
I spend a lot of my admin day working around systemd limitations on servers, including unhelpful journald msgs.

@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

Predictable network interface naming

Predictable naming scheme survives system reboots.

@notthebee
I'm well aware of how to work around systemd developer's "brilliant ideas".
Network cards never go bad/need failover on boot on some people's systems, apparently. If I can put a nic address in, why do I need a "unique device name"? It had one already. Solutions in desperate search of a problem. Regarding drives, they are two separate problems, and yes it is (generally) better to load drives by blkid or unique name.
We're still allowed to use fstab, right?

@Okanogen if you like fstab, you’re gonna hate zfs

@notthebee
ZFS....
Wow.
You should definitely run a Fedora software raid on top of that.
#YOLO

@notthebee @mil
Upstart? Lol. There's a reason I use -Ubuntu in searches.