17 Jun
2016
17 Jun
'16
7:09 a.m.
On 16 June 2016 at 22:09, Sean Conner <spc at conman.org> wrote:
:-)
I am one of those weirdoes, you know, and I also used to work for Red Hat.
My laptops and one of my Raspberry Pis run Ubuntu.
It was thus said that the Great Liam Proven once
stated:
Really? Wow. I spend real money on getting my machines to start
faster. I am delighted when new OS releases include faster booting; it
was a major benefit of Windows XP over Windows 2000, and several
Ubuntu releases have done similar.
It's also immensely important to scalability of modern web apps that
the many VMs in their server farms start as quickly as possible.
It's a really big deal to me, and to many people.
It's a modern init. Most of panic is just
headless running around. No,
it's not an old-fashioned simplistic Unix utility. Hey, newsflash,
neither is GNOME, neither is KDE. Neither is much of modern Unix.
I'm not a fan of systemd, but it's not because SysV init is better, but
because of the increasing scope of systemd.
Okay, fine, it's a init that tracks daemons and will restart them
automatically if they stop (or crash, or whatever). That's nice. I don't
have a problem with that. It can parallelize the startup daemons. Okay ...
I never had an issue with how long a system takes to come up as I don't
really shut any of the computers off (even my desktop boxes). But hey,
okay. But no more syslog (okay, I know that's not
technically true, but syslog
becomes a 2nd class citizen here). No, Lennart decided to use a binary-only
logging system that's mostly undocumented (or rather, it's documented in
code that is subject to change from version to version) and there's no need
to forward the logs to another system---use that 2nd class syslog for that
crap if you need it.
But that's it. systemd only requires journald to run. Oh, let's use dbus
for IPC because ... well ... I have no idea what, exactly, dbus brings to
the game that any of the other IPC mechanisms that currently exist in Unix
fail to have, other than being a usermode program and yet another dependency
from what I understand was mostly used as an IPC mechanism for the desktop,
but now required for servers as well.
Linus is *still* fighting the systemd guys because they want to force dbus
into the kernel.
Oh, and because of the say systemd works, it takes over cgroup management.
The Linux kernel provides mechanism, not policy, but now, we have systemd
forcing a cgroup policy on everything. Okay, perhaps systemd is the first
program to actually *use* cgroups but if at some point in the future you
want to play around with it, well ... sorry. systemd is in control there.
Login management is now the domain of systemd.
Oh, and don't forget the little dustup over the "debug" kernel command
line:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=mty1mza
Very interesting -- thanks for that. I was previously unaware of this one.
Over time, syslogd is taking over more and more of the system. And that
would be fine if it were just RedHat (and RedHat derived) distributions.
But no, Lennart is, by sheer force of will, forcing *all* Linux
distributions to use systemd. Hell, it's now trying to force systemd
specific behavior in applications:
https://github.com/tmux/tmux/issues/428
Never mind that said application can run on other Unix systems.
Yes, I'm aware of that spat.
Oh, and forget running GNome on any other system
than Linux with systemd.
I'm OK with that, and I suspect most FreeBSD etc. users are too. :-)
I wrote a piece a few years back pointing out that after GNOME 3, the
GNOME community had exploded and shattered:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_f…
I ascribe this to hostile action from Microsoft. Few agree. :-)
There are a whole host of cross-platform Unix desktops. For a while,
GNOME totally dominated, as I wrote in that piece, but it fell apart.
Or rather exploded. Now there is an opportunity for other desktops to
promote their cross-platform compatibility as a (so to speak) selling
point.
THAT is my problem with systemd. It's mandating
a $#!?load of policy and
dependencies with largly undocumented APIs.
It is an odd move, I entirely agree. I am somewhat mystified that it
is thriving so much when it's relatively immature code, wildly
controversial and widely hated. Most mainstream distros have adopted
it. I don't get it.
I also hear that it's not well-documented, that they're adding a lot
of functionality of questionable relevance to its core function, that
there's little democratic decision making, etc. etc.
I am aware of the problems, or at least of some of them.
And yet... the sky is not falling. Most big distros have moved to it.
They still work. The apps still work. Some people are saying "OK, I
didn't like it, but I learned to use it and actually it's pretty
good."
And there are still choices. There are other distros; there are other Unixes.
This /increases/ the choice, it promotes adoption (or creation) of
minority distros, it is helping the cause of FreeBSD.
Meanwhile, for all that it violates tradition, it brings benefits to Linux.
Overall, I think it's a win.
Today,
it's mainly an x86 OS for servers and an ARM OS for
smartphones, with a few weirdos using it for workstations. So stop it
^^^^^^^^^^^
Wow! Nice insult there. Care to add more? And for the record, I still use Linux as (one) of my
desktops machines.
Used to. Then I bought a cheap used Mac mini.
And you want an older Mac ... why? System 9 is
dead. Gone on. Pining
for the fjords! Move on, man! Move on!
Good question. I have no /need/ and little /use/ for one. But hey, I'm
on a classic computing list for a reason. I like them. It's a hobby.
But overall, I'm glad Apple bought NeXT and got NeXTstep as well as
Steve Jobs back. I'm happy that the company is strong today. It makes
good products, some of which I like and use, some I don't but they've
influenced other products that I like and use.
Much as I loved BeOS, if Apple had bought Be, it'd be long dead.
It was SysV with kickass graphics hardware. Suns
were BSD (at the time,
prior to Solaris) with not-so-great graphics hardware. That's pretty much
the difference.
Hmmm. OK, thanks for the clarification. I am enough of a lightweight
Unix type that I can't generally tell BSD from SysV, so I think I
would not have cared.
-spc (Never did like Suns, but then again, I was
spoiled by using SGIs)
:-)
--
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