Debian Still Debating Systemd vs. Upstart Init System

[zester]

No, you can't, because that's not a list of dependencies for systemd.
It's ``a list of packages that need to be downloaded in order to build a basic Linux system.''

You missed the point of that post. That was for those of us that build our systems from scratch and then go onto
to write our own desktop environments. The LFS package list shows the reach of systemd and that there is no thirdparty
framework involved, such as Gtk+/Glib, Qt, ...

[corebob]

Nice. It's well put, and Bdale's words surely carry significant weight in Debian.

Also it's interesting to see that Ian is getting on the nerves of even the TC people, for his politicising and lack of technical grounds...

I can't really comment on the technical side as I haven't looked much at it, but I think the "political" side of things matters quite a bit to Debian. At least it used to.

That said, I can't see any real problems with systemd in that regard, except for Lennarts occasional snake-oil salesman arguments of why Debian and other distros have to go with systemd to stay relevant. That kind of arguments really doesn't help.

As a user I have to say I like systemd, but on the other hand I also said that about the Wayfarer program manager running on Windows 3.11, before I realized I was standing on a sinking ship

[finalzone]

As a user I have to say I like systemd, but on the other hand I also said that about the Wayfarer program manager running on Windows 3.11, before I realized I was standing on a sinking ship

Notable difference is systemd future is now with the increasing amount of adoption and it is fully optimized for the core Linux. The current situation in Debian Committee only highlighted the overly political side of some members towards systemd despite the obvious technical superiority above upstart. For them, familiarity matters trying to use the portability excuse. In reality, when it comes to take advantage of the core system like a kernel, the argument of portability utterly fell short as seeing in UNIX and its alike.

[Rallos Zek]

A happy systemd user here. I hope Debian doesn't give in to the political pressure from Canonical and makes the right choice here.

So if Debian picks Upstart are you saying its not the right choice?

They should switch to systemd. It's more mature and has more killer features. Upstart never lived up to the expectations. Let Ubuntu be left alone with their NIH. For kFreeBSD or whatever other Unix kernel they support, they will have to mantain in parallel legacy sysvinit scripts, anyway.

Linux shouldn't have more than one (modern) init system. Just because it's userspace, people can write their own. But then there is one libc, one udev (now part of systemd). And it's not coincidence those are written by experienced veterans (well - except Lennart, which, apart from his personality problems, is a very competent developer, and has that kind of holistic/visionary approach of how the system should be designed).

LOL @ systemd being mature, and Linux should have as many init systems as people and distros want gosh I hate when anti-choicers like you come around. Btw distros are using more than one "libc" Debian for example does not use GLIBC there are other didtros using other libc(s) aswell.

[doom_Oo7]

Ehh and what is running debian if not libc6?

[phred14]

It was never about NIH, it was about CLA.

Luckily it looks like Upstart is going south.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/01/msg00067.html

And that comes the same day as ESR wants to boot the CLAed BZR.

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg00005.html

Happy new year Canonical!!

In the quoted article by Bdale, I read:
"There are things about OpenRC that I find really appealing, but I agree
that it seems too immature to even evaluate well, and thus I don't think
it is a credible alternative to be the default for Debian GNU/Linux."

What seems odd here is that I've been running Gentoo something over 10 years, and I believe it has used OpenRC all that time. I believe I tried running systemd 2 years ago and it wasn't ready for my use yet. So I'm guessing that it's somewhere in the realm of 3 or 4 years old. I don't quite see how on that scale OpenRC can be immature, yet we're on the verge of turning Linux into a systemd monoculture. The blackhats haven't really started on systemd yet, it's so new, and it's seems on track to become THE choice for every major (and quite a few minor) distribution out there. I'm not even calling it a security problem waiting to happen, I'm just saying that it doesn't have enough time in the real world to roll out across-the-board this way.

[Akka]

In the quoted article by Bdale, I read:
"There are things about OpenRC that I find really appealing, but I agree
that it seems too immature to even evaluate well, and thus I don't think
it is a credible alternative to be the default for Debian GNU/Linux."

What seems odd here is that I've been running Gentoo something over 10 years, and I believe it has used OpenRC all that time. I believe I tried running systemd 2 years ago and it wasn't ready for my use yet. So I'm guessing that it's somewhere in the realm of 3 or 4 years old. I don't quite see how on that scale OpenRC can be immature, yet we're on the verge of turning Linux into a systemd monoculture. The blackhats haven't really started on systemd yet, it's so new, and it's seems on track to become THE choice for every major (and quite a few minor) distribution out there. I'm not even calling it a security problem waiting to happen, I'm just saying that it doesn't have enough time in the real world to roll out across-the-board this way.

I don't use gentoo and so maybe I'm miss something. But I think it was only a couple of years ago they switched from baselayout1 to baselayout2 and openrc. I also get the impression they still redesign core features like process monitoring and so on.

[BlackStar]

I don't use gentoo and so maybe I'm miss something. But I think it was only a couple of years ago they switched from baselayout1 to baselayout2 and openrc. I also get the impression they still redesign core features like process monitoring and so on.

This, plus the documentation is lacking compared to both systemd and upstart.

[phred14]

I don't use gentoo and so maybe I'm miss something. But I think it was only a couple of years ago they switched from baselayout1 to baselayout2 and openrc. I also get the impression they still redesign core features like process monitoring and so on.

There was a switch a few years back from baselayout1 to baselayout2. If that's when they introduced OpenRC, then it looks to me as if that was mostly repackaging, not something fundamentally new. The way I administered my systems didn't change significantly in that interval, other than that some config files changed and moved a bit. But in terms of starting and stopping services, it was still "rc-update", and the whole depends/uses/provides scheme was unchanged. There are changes, but on the baselayout/OpenRC side they're reasonably incremental and well-staged.

When Gentoo dropped gnome-3.8 and systemd on us it was sudden and without warning, at least in the usual user-places. There was no news item, nor did I see it in my regular forum topics. I was just doing my regular weekly maintenance (after having missed a week or two) and suddenly there were well over a hundred updates, piles of blocks, and some really major things in the list - including systemd. To this day there has still not been a news item about gnome-3.8 or systemd.

[Brane215]

When Gentoo dropped gnome-3.8 and systemd on us it was sudden and without warning, at least in the usual user-places. There was no news item, nor did I see it in my regular forum topics. I was just doing my regular weekly maintenance (after having missed a week or two) and suddenly there were well over a hundred updates, piles of blocks, and some really major things in the list - including systemd. To this day there has still not been a news item about gnome-3.8 or systemd.

+1

This crippled my machine without warning. Those things renew my hate for Gentoo now and then, but on this particular instance I've had to sift through systemd's documentation and so have found that systemd might be a solution for many problems that plagued Linux all those years.