mahadevank

Wow, seems like systemd is a quite a mess.

After an initial look at the codebase, it seems like since its a forever running process, everything was crammed into it from Laptop battery backlight brightness to absurd stuff like certificate validation?

Maybe I'm missing something but something odd about having so much unrelated functionality crammed into a single tool.

Need to look at breaking it into smaller tools that adhere to the Unix tools philosophy.

#opensource #linux #systemd

Mar 23 at 4:47amWeb
Show threadmahadevankMar 23
I think my first goal would be to pull out chunks of code to build individual command line tools and turn common code into libraries.
Show threadjasperspicaceMar 23

@mahadevank
""" Wow, seems like the linux kernel is a quite a mess.

After an initial look at the codebase, it seems like since its a forever running process with direct communication to hardware, everything was crammed into it from Laptop battery backlight brightness to absurd stuff like certificate validation?

Maybe I'm missing something but something odd about having so much unrelated functionality crammed into a single tool.

Need to look at breaking it into smaller tools that adhere to the Unix tools philosophy.

#opensource #linux #systemd """

Why can't systemd critics never go past the #belief that things has to adhere to their special rule instead of embracing the #diversity of tools available in the open-source community.

This is very similar to fights over programming paradigm, which often are just distracting dev from real project issue.

Show threadPope Bob the UnsaneMar 23
@mahadevank been saying this since systemd first took over... It's anti-KISS.
Show threadmahadevankMar 23

@bobdobberson yeah, definitely a whole bunch of sub-commands, that could be refactored as individual tools at the very least.

What's it supposed to do anyway? At the minimum simply be the one process from which every other process is forked, then fork a shell so the user can start using the system.

At most, service management, and then you can have each service do its thing like manage laptop brightness, ntp time sync etc. instead of building it all into systemd

Show threadCyMar 23
Or you could just use S6.

https://skarnet.org/software/s6/
s6 - skarnet's small supervision suite

s6 - skarnet's small supervision suite

Show threadmahadevankMar 23
@cy thanks! I'll check it out and see how much it can work with Debian
Show threadCyMar 23
Oof, see, Systemd tangles itself up in other programs during compilation... they won't work without recompiling. That's why distros force systemd, because it's either required, or you can't use it at all. You might have better luck with a distribution that takes the second option, instead of trying to alter Debian and recompiling it all. Have you considered Devuan?

https://www.devuan.org/

I haven't tried it, but it's pretty close to Debian just without the systemd requirement baked in.
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
Show threadmahadevankMar 23

@cy yeah, i was reading about this. I run a very light system - i3wm etc. It seems that debian offers openrc as an alternative whiich could work but requires a fresh install to force apt to download packages that don't depend on systemd + some packages like docker will still need special attention.

Debian has an active interest in providing alternatives to systemd as an option, so that's a good sign.

I have a few thumb drives lying around, will give these options a shot