Systemd Dreams Up New Feature, Makes It Like Cron

[leif81]

I never hear anyone bitch about Ubuntu's Upstart, Apple's launchd, or OpenRC.

People only seem to be bitching about systemd.
Maybe there is a reason?

It's sad, but if Lennart didn't document and communicate systemd so thoroughly and frequently the project would slip under the radar and no one would realize they were using it -- but their system would magically be a little bit better.

[johnc]

The whole point is that the decision should be made based on the quality of the code, and not because essential kernel interfaces (udev) are being crippled to screw the competition.

This is the part I'm fuzzy on. Isn't udev just its own package out doing its own thing? Or has it been pulled into the systemd tree and if so... umm... why? That would be like pulling X into systemd.

[Serafean]

I'd recommend waiting until your distribution has defaulted on it. Integrating it properly does require some attention to detail. If it is the default you can expect that work to be completed. If not, there might be a bit of pain involved. I forgot the details, but there are various packages can rely on systemd. Some of which need to have their systemd support enabled at the same time. If you do not (e.g. package X with, and package Y without), you'll see some bugs. Those are just packaging issues, but could give a bad impression.

He's talking about Gentoo, default systemd won't happen anytime soon. AFAIK, systemd is pretty well packaged in Gentoo, at least it was a year ago when I tried it out.

As for systemd, It does do a lot of things, but it doesn't force you to much. journald : you can use syslog. Powermanagement : you can use your own (I know because I do). This cron stuff seems to be the same case. As is mentioned in a follow up mail and on the feature page

"It doesn't affect anybody who doesn't use this. "

It works different from what people are used to, doesn't focus on the Lowest Common Denominator in various Unixes, but focuses on Linux and all the features it has to offer. I personnally like it.

[Vim_User]

This is the part I'm fuzzy on. Isn't udev just its own package out doing its own thing? Or has it been pulled into the systemd tree and if so... umm... why? That would be like pulling X into systemd.

It has been pulled into the systemd tree. Because Lennart said so. And they made it impossible to build udev without systemd, if you want to to use it without systemd you first have to build it with systemd and then copy out the parts you need.

That is how they are not forcing others, how they are not being hostile.

[funkSTAR]

THAT is the main problem with systemd -- its hostile management.

Bullshit. The CoreOS movement is about a bunch of hackers deciding their maintainership is better handled in a unified tree based on common goals. Pick it up if you like. If you dont like it; Go eat shit from all the drama queen forksters and CLAed walled gardens. Mind you though they are doing a shit job because they waste their time on moronix flames and keeping compability between their ever more fragmented shit.

[Ericg]

I never hear anyone bitch about Ubuntu's Upstart, Apple's launchd, or OpenRC.

People only seem to be bitching about systemd.
Maybe there is a reason?

People dont complain about Launchd cuz its had how many years to be perfected? OpenRC isn't all that much better than sysV since parallelization is broken half the time from what i've heard. And there's no one to complain about Upstart since Ubuntu's userbase (User-friendly, newbie friendly, Linux distro) dont know what to complain about.

systemd gets flak because its the only one adding features and therefore the only one in the news.

When was the last time sysV got a new feature? Probably a long time ago-- not in the news. People forget about it.
When was the last time Upstart got a new feature release? Not recently. Last time I saw a news posting on phoronix about an upstart feature release was about a year and a half ago.

When was the last time OpenRC got a feature release? I couldnt even tell you because I dont see it in the news AT ALL on ANY site.
When was the last time systemd got a new feature release? like a week ago.

All four systems bring up init just fine. But systemd is the only one thats actually moving forward. (You can argue that its moving in the wrong direction, but atleast its MOVING.) All the other projects are sitting there twiddling their thumbs.

[Ericg]

This is the part I'm fuzzy on. Isn't udev just its own package out doing its own thing? Or has it been pulled into the systemd tree and if so... umm... why? That would be like pulling X into systemd.

udev was pulled into the systemd tree, sometime around systemd 189 or 187 I think. (It was when systemd picked up udev version numbering). It was pulled in because systemd handles module loading and so they were looking to have a closer relationship between the program that detects hardware (udev), and the program that handles making that hardware work (systemd, modules).

You can have udev without systemd, but you cant have systemd without udev. And if youre one of the extreme fanatics who shun anything REMOTELY linked to systemd, you can rely on gentoo to provide eudev which is about..10 releases behind I think. They forked off of udev/systemd 189 or 187 and systemd is currently at 197

[johnc]

udev was pulled into the systemd tree, sometime around systemd 189 or 187 I think. (It was when systemd picked up udev version numbering). It was pulled in because systemd handles module loading and so they were looking to have a closer relationship between the program that detects hardware (udev), and the program that handles making that hardware work (systemd, modules).

Was this because udev was no longer maintained and therefore could be picked off, or just a matter of all the udev maintainers agreeing to move under systemd?

edit: I just get an overall uneasy feeling that Red Hat (and to some degree Intel) has a bit too much influence in the Linux ecosystem. It's not just this systemd case... it's a variety of things.

[finalzone]

Theeeeeeeeeen...who knows XD

Edit: maybe its listed as an F19 feature because it'll have it at launch-time? When F18 got released systemd didnt have it and therefore wasn't considered a "Feature." F19 will have systemd 197+ at launch time and therefore it IS considered a feature?

Some features are specifically disabled by default for Fedora 18 for these reasons (directly taken from the updates-testing description)
From the updates:

A few exceptions to the upstream summary apply to the package in Fedora 18. Several upstream changes could
introduce incompatible behavior within a Fedora release, so they are not included in this update:
* `rescue.service` can still start `sushell` if configured so by `/etc/sysconfig/init`. Upstream
supports only `sulogin`.
* The udev support for predictable network interface names is present, but it is not enabled by default. The
udev rule file `80-net-name-slot.rules` is simply not included in the package. If you want to try the
feature, obtain the file from the upstream repository and place it in `/etc/udev/rules.d/` yourself.
* The Fedora-specific `http-daemon.target`, the LSB facilities "MTA", "smtpdaemon", "httpd" and the
`single.service` alias were removed upstream, but are still present in this update.
* Building of the merged `nss-myhostname` is disabled. Fedora 18 keeps using the separate
`nss-myhostname` source package.

[RahulSundaram]

Was this because udev was no longer maintained and therefore could be picked off, or just a matter of all the udev maintainers agreeing to move under systemd?

Kay, the primary udev maintainer was one of the earliest contributors to systemd along with Lennart and others and they discussed and determined together than systemd and udev merge will benefit both the projects because of the tight relationship between them.