New Group Calls For Boycotting Systemd

[interested]

To get Debian to do a general resolution on whether systemd should be used or not would have taken less than 10 Debian developers (I think it is 6 or 7, but am not 100% sure) to request such an resolution. The systemd opponents did not manage to mobilize even these few votes -- much to my surprise by the way. So obviously there are just a handful of people that somehow manage to raise a huge fuss.

They only needed 5 Debian Developers (DD) to call for a GR to overturn the technical committee, and for the occasion, the requirement to do so was lowered from 75% to 50%.

The systemd opponents failed to even get 5 DD names on that list.

Yeah, the systemd opponents are a vocal minority. They have tried negative campaigning against it for several years now, not realising that their tactics hurt them more than it hurt systemd.

The systemd opponents have raised Lennart Poettering's profile to Linux stardom by their their endless personal attacks. Now everybody knows who he is and listens to what he says.

The biggest failing of the systemd opponents have of course been the lack of making a credible alternative to systemd. This drive all upstream projects straight into the arms of systemd. Same with distro maintainers, maintaining init scripts is hard, so claiming that Linux should use SysVinit the next 40 years, doesn't convince them either.

The battle is of course over, and systemd attained a total victory; I don't think there will be any noteworthy general Linux distro in a couple of years, that doesn't support systemd.

[Karl Napf]

No, it does not offend me. I am also not offended by systemd. It is now a hard component in Debian and trying to remove it leaves one currently with a broken system. I am sure this will get resolved, but I might actually follow the protest and switch to a new distro even when it is just for my computer at home. People have the right to protest, they should be heard and their concerns resolved and not be dismissed as a "tempest in a teapot", don't you agree?

Everybody has the right to say their opinions. No question about that.

But when somebody tries to give the impression that there is a shit storm ongoing where there are just a hand full of people shouting loudly, then that is not appropriate. And my impression is that this is what is currently happening a lot. This "boycott systemd" site suddenly hitting the news after it has been around for a long time is one indication for that.

This is especially true over at infoworld. They have articles about the so-called systemd debate where they link to a long list of articles on their own site (most of them even by the same author) to prove that there is a debate in the first place.

[robclark]

So you are saying the users should really write their own system software when they only do not want a particular one and cannot get rid of it. Seems like you are having a snarky attitude towards people who only do not like your software.

whether you like it or not, it is the way of the open source community.. patches talk, bullshit walks

And, well, if it is only the people incapabile of developing their own alternative who complain about systemd, I guess that must say something about the validity of their arguments.

[sdack]

Everybody has the right to say their opinions. No question about that.

But when somebody tries to give the impression that there is a shit storm ongoing where there are just a hand full of people shouting loudly, then that is not appropriate. And my impression is that this is what is currently happening a lot. This "boycott systemd" site suddenly hitting the news after it has been around for a long time is one indication for that.

This is especially true over at infoworld. They have articles about the so-called systemd debate where they link to a long list of articles on their own site (most of them even by the same author) to prove that there is a debate in the first place.

If you like to admit it or not, but we are in the middle of it. You do take part in the discussion and this thread is only one of many. It shows people care even when trying not to, like robclark above who is making an attempt at alienating users to resolve his problems. Funny as this is will it not make people stop complaining about systemd and the reports do not stop. Just today did I get another piece in via RSS:

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/80980.html

How do you plan on making it stop when it just does not want to?

[blackiwid]

You might think I'm a douchebag? Let's talk again in 5-10 years. Major mainstream user-friendly distributions right now (with recent software packages) which barely use systemd functionality like e.g. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Debian 7.x., and Debian 6 LTS. Their support ends in a few years time. Ubuntu 14.04 in 2019. 16.04 will be conquered by systemd. Let's talk again in 2019.

you have to pick your fights wisely, and even if redhat would be the devil like u say, I disagree to taht, but even it would be true I dont care.

The GPL or here the LGPL saves u from evilness, its taht simple its impossible to FORCE people antifeatures through free software. If that would not be true everything we do here would be useless, we should then all by a apple pc and all fights would be lost anyway.

The true cancer is Android at the moment and all this secure boot and uefi garbage.

On most computers today its absolutly imposible to install a gnu/linux. (in the meaning of installing not that u cant port it, but u cant INSTALL it).

I mean here the tablets and phones that have strong cpus gpus and enough space, and even better screens than most notebooks.

I want linux for my desktop u maybe only for servers, nice for u, so if systemd helps saving time in not having to deal with horrific tools from 20 years ago, I dig that really, if it means that most stuff works distri-independend I dig taht.

U cant make everything more complex all the time without a price. now we have a extremly easy system, of course that makes your 25 year experience to fiddle around the horrific design of the old gnu/linux stack go /dev/null thats not good for u, thousends of invested hours are not worth much anymore. But to keep you high payed and keeping your oligopol so that there are not many very good admins out there cant be the duty of gnu/linux.

I am tired of a not changing linux, that deals all 3 years again with the same problems in a slightly differnt way. I am tired of having NO distro that has every package in the right version.

I am tired of grub sucks like hell and only works really with one distro, else u have to make some voodoo to get subgrubs or something simliar.

I am tired to have a fulltimejob administrating my 2-3 home pcs.

But ok if there would be any substancial real arguments against systemd be my guest, but its to big and redhat is evil blabla is no argument.

When the first antifeature comes from redhat devs to systemd the next day there is a fork. Thats why we use foss lisenses.

If people dont stop using canonical when they ad adware and other bullshit, its not canonicals fault, its their fault for beeing lazy.

the gpl makes shure even with that adware example that it does not matter if the company is evil or not, because of that lisense they cant hide it, and with that the freedom of the users cant be taken, except they give it away freely, then its their fault.

if redhat is evil with that commitment to foss, what is then ubuntu, mint yes even archlinux, they all care much less about freedom.

Its just so extremly difficult to argue against some non-arguments, redhat is evil and systemd is to big, how can u argue against that, if the lines of code amount of a project is a problem maybe we should call the kernel evil? Or the xserver that were there for 40 years or so?

It just makes no sense.

Logging today under linux is not functioning its a bad hack somebody made in 5 minutes and never implemented this its a proof-of-concept hack. so changing that is a really good thing, so not 1% of the linux users the professional admins use it maybe.

To the package manager thing, yes it can make u a bit dizzy first, or fears u. But at the moment its only a ADDITIONAL Feature, yes u can make system updates over gnome that reboots your pc and installs some stuff through systemd thats good for noobs. They maybe cannot make good desitions when it makes sense for them to reboot if they need the new kernel with the last update or not. For everybody else dnf works great and dont force u to reboot.

IF AT SOME DAY they force u to reboot, or they force u to stop using deb or rpms or whatever and ONLY their btrfs receive install method is allowed go ahead start a shitstorm and fork it, but till that day appears if at all, I am not willing to talk about stuff that maybe happen in the future and stopp it now (even if I could) just to be save that that cant happen.

Its free software if that gives u no security nothing can. Then u are back into stereotypes redhat must be evil because 100 years ago they did something not so good.

[Karl Napf]

If you like to admit it or not, but we are in the middle of it. You do take part in the discussion and this thread is only one of many. It shows people care even when trying not to, like robclark above who is making an attempt at alienating users to resolve his problems. Funny as this is will it not make people stop complaining about systemd and the reports do not stop. Just today did I get another piece in via RSS:

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/80980.html

How do you plan on making it stop when it just does not want to?

Oh, it did stop. It is summer and not much else is happening, so some news outlets decided it is fun to warm up *old* rants again. That horrible piece of online journalism you link to is a fine example of that.

First it links to the infoworld articles that started this whole "systemd debate" with a little help from itworld, then it links to news sites discussing those same articles and finally it warms up old rants that were previously reported on month ago. No new argument whatsoever -- in fact no arguments at all besides "Lennart sucks", vague references to "unix philosophy" and requests for "everybody to stop doing things that some random person is uncomfortable with".

Even the capitalization of systemd is wrong throughout this so called article, always a good indicator that the author has not bothered to visit the systemd website once.

Do I need to mention that there is no link to any accurate information on systemd (like the project website or Lennarts blog) anywhere in the page?

[Paul Frederick]

"It's new and popular" makes for an exceptionally bad justification in this case.

+1 to that!

[WizardGed]

You cannot say size would be a bad indicator, and then make a claim based on size. That is just nonsense. You may not like one language and like another better, but lines of code is a well established measure in computer science.

systemd is new and only this is why it is not a mess yet. sysvinit has been around for a very long time and has turned into a mess only lately. This is not the fault of sysvinit, but of people who have failed to use it right. It sure is not the fault of sysvinit, when distros have each their own layout for /etc and even keep some files in /usr/share. So when these same people now adopt systemd will they do the same nonsense as they did with sysvinit before. Nothing stopped them before and all you really have is a hope that it now will all get better.

I made no claims based on code size i was simply saying lines of code is the single most ridiculous way to judge a project. Lines of code is only useful if the project has spent time minimalizing actual code repettion and the like while preserving features within scope and control structures and even then very few professors of computer science would care about lines of code. they care about the complexity of the problem and solution. lines of code claims are made by fools that thnk lines of code = better or worse. all that matters is that you've solved a problem with x scope within a reasonable amount of lines. In short: no, lines of code mean nothing unless the project is making the claim there code has been reviewed and has no unnecessary structures, and even then it is a poor metric to measure a project when many other more useful metrics exist.

[sdack]

Oh, it did stop. It is summer and not much else is happening, so some news outlets decided it is fun to warm up *old* rants again. That horrible piece of online journalism you link to is a fine example of that.

First it links to the infoworld articles that started this whole "systemd debate" with a little help from itworld, then it links to news sites discussing those same articles and finally it warms up old rants that were previously reported on month ago. No new argument whatsoever -- in fact no arguments at all besides "Lennart sucks", vague references to "unix philosophy" and requests for "everybody to stop doing things that some random person is uncomfortable with".

Even the capitalization of systemd is wrong throughout this so called article, always a good indicator that the author has not bothered to visit the systemd website once.

Do I need to mention that there is no link to any accurate information on systemd (like the project website or Lennarts blog) anywhere in the page?

If it did stop, then why do you fight it? This alone shows you in no way competent to lead a discussion nor that you actually know what you are talking, to whom you are talking and then do not get taken serious. Who cares for the spelling? And who cares for a missing link? You know where to find it and so does everyone else. Those who cannot find it have other problems and you should also not come here when you think there is nothing.

[Paul Frederick]

The argument that less code means simpler is malarky for example this perl code snippet:

$stringy = "yourname"; foreach $chary (split //, $stringy) { print "$chary\n";}

is the exact same as this python snippet

stringy = ?yourname?
for chary in string:
print(chary)

Pythons looks larger and seems to have more code but that perl snippet is more complex than that python snippet. if i can show that in a couple lines of code that can easily scale upward to a larger project. systemd is larger for good reason it has increased functionality and is safer than the mess that is sysvinit.

Well the mess as you call it that is sysVinit has never let me down yet. So I cannot fathom what is safer than infallible. In any event systemd is a far bigger mess than sysV is. Explain the quantity of files between the two. Systemd uses over 10 times as many as sysV. Oh, that's right increased functionality. Although for a while I didn't even use sysV with Linux. I started out with Slackware. As far as increased functionality goes I don't want my init doing any more than it is already doing. So whatever you're pushing I don't want it! But the fact that you're pushing it is seriously fucking up what I do want!

I can see that what I do, and do not want doesn't matter to others though. It is a shame to see Linux going down a shithole with systemd. But oh well. I don't care when people work on projects if I've a choice whether I use them, or not. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that there is no choice with systemd.

No choice is never what Linux was originally about. I guess shit changes though. Not always for the better either.

For the record your code example was a 3 times difference. systemd is 10 times bigger than sysV is. I know, increased functionality. Shove your increased functionality where the sun don't shine!

"Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." -Henry Spencer