A Major Music Company Now Backs Systemd In Debian

[Delgarde]

Best thing would be choice. Because some people might hesitate to use thing Lennart Poettering touched. Because some of these things are broken or they require a trail of dependencies you don't want. Besides, it leaves BSD (and possibly others) before closed doors which isn't all that nice. I understand the demand for fast booting but there should be ways to do that without all the hassle.

Allowing choice goes without saying on Debian... that's been clear from the start of the discussions, with nobody seriously considering the idea of disallowing alternatively, or killing the non-Linux platforms.. The questions are simply over what should be the default, whether the default should be the same on all platforms, and what do they have to do to make that work?

E.g if desktops like Gnome and KDE start requiring logind, and logind requires systemd as PID 1, how do people use those desktops if they're running upstart/openrc/sysvinit? Right now, neither desktop has a hard requirement on logind (though some stuff supposedly breaks without it), but that's likely to change... both Gnome and KDE are interested in taking more advantage of such systems, so I think it's only a matter of time before it becomes a hard dependency.

[GreatEmerald]

It's probably not a good idea to base technical decisions like that on popularity...

What's Debian waiting for, though? Pick a default solution and move on - there's no decision that will leave everyone happy anyways.

But the Spotify post isn't just "we use systemd, so you should default to it". No, it is "we use systemd, because: a) it's more intuitive, b) it scales well, c) it's more powerful". They gave technical arguments, not just popular opinion. Also, the Upstart developers specifically asked people whether the event system is intuitive or not for outsiders, and that's the answer to the question.

As for what they're waiting for, it's TC members to vote. Two people (or maybe one?) so far are not decided as far as I've heard.

I am happy that Gentoo leaves me a choice of init systems to use. On my HDD installations I also tend to use e4rat and parallel startup and it boots up fairly fast.

I'm happy about two things with the init system status on Gentoo: the fact that there is choice, like you said (their reluctance to move away from OpenRC was beneficial in what I'm doing now, that is, a Gentoo chroot on a locked bootloader Android device, whose kernel does not support PID namespaces required for correct functioning of systemd); and the fact that finally the Gentoo developers are treating systemd as an equal to OpenRC (they now added special kernel options that help select things needed for systemd or OpenRC, the installation handbooks were updated to refer to the systemd setup page for those who want to use it, packages now include systemd unit files etc.).

[ninez]

Agreed! I simply love sysvinit, because it is very simple and works well, but lately, I'm not too worried for what init system Debian chooses, because I hardly do a fresh boot, I mostly hibernate. The worst problem here is that we are talking about replacing something true and tried with something that just may not work, from the same developers of Pulseaudio, ConsoleKit, PolicyKit..., which are the only things that gives me lots of headache even on Debian Stable.

ime, i used sysvinit for a decade and was quite confortable/happy with it. (and also used upstart a bit too). When systemd first was coming to Archlinux (as default + switch on update), i was a bit concerned / even a bit intimidated, since i hadn't used systemd at all; and it seemed like a big change. After reading up a bit on it, i upgraded and familiarized myself with systemd. ~ In the end, systemd has really proven itself to me, as a viable replacement to sysvinit, that comes with a lot of advantages/benefits - and i am yet to have experience any drawbacks. While i know, lots of people always cite PA/Lennart as an argument against systemd, which IMO isn't really that great of an argument, and certainly/obviously not a technical argument, at all. i think systemd stands on it's own two feet / own merit.

Also, from many many tests I have done about one year ago, init+readahead-fedora or init+e4rat still boots much faster than systemd with its own readahead, so this one benefit is mostly psychological.

Well, i am not a different distro (which could easily have an impact) - but previous to upgrading to systemd, i was using sysv+e4rat for a long time - But systemd booted noticeably faster on the very next boot (after upgrading, without analyzing/tuning systemd at all). Obviously, you can use e4rat with systemd, if you like as well... Systemd also provides a way to analyze boot times, right down to individual services starting times (ie: systemd-analyze blame) + you can use bootchart, etc.

myself, i couldn't imagine migrating back to sysvinit (or at least, i wouldn't want to). I've grown comfortable and happy with systemd. writing service files is simple. Systemd provides lots of information / has a nice set of tools... It's pretty good imo and has yet to cause me any issues - if anything, it's just improved my overall experience (and largely isn't even noticed / just does it's thing, well).

[kigurai]

I however am angry with them for not paying artists more. But that might be the publishers' fault. Publishers are obselete and should go away.

Apparently it is a very simple system for handing out royalties. I fail to see how you could make it more fair either. http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotif...lties-overview

[Pajn]

It's pretty obvious by now that they plan on moving to the webbased player, anyway. The Preview works fine until the webplayer gets feature parity. I however am angry with them for not paying artists more. But that might be the publishers' fault. Publishers are obselete and should go away.

That is unfortunately the publishers fault. The publishers saw a big investment chance in Spotify and sold their music very
cheap by instead getting stocks in Spotify.

[xeekei]

Having a free OS on their server farm, but not bothering to *support* a proper client on that same OS. F*** Spotify and their perpetual "preview" client for Linux.

It's pretty obvious by now that they plan on moving to the webbased player, anyway. The Preview works fine until the webplayer gets feature parity. I however am angry with them for not paying artists more. But that might be the publishers' fault. Publishers are obselete and should go away.

[Pajn]

Best thing would be choice. Because some people might hesitate to use thing Lennart Poettering touched. Because some of these things are broken or they require a trail of dependencies you don't want. Besides, it leaves BSD (and possibly others) before closed doors which isn't all that nice. I understand the demand for fast booting but there should be ways to do that without all the hassle.

Choice wouldn't work, that would require a lot of work to create job files for Upstart and SystemD as well as initscripts for other non Linux systems that can't use SystemD.

[Pajn]

Why do they still include SELINUX? It's not used at all.

Doesn't Fedora (and probably RHEL) have it activated by default?

[mrugiero]

Best thing would be choice. Because some people might hesitate to use thing Lennart Poettering touched. Because some of these things are broken or they require a trail of dependencies you don't want. Besides, it leaves BSD (and possibly others) before closed doors which isn't all that nice. I understand the demand for fast booting but there should be ways to do that without all the hassle.

Remember, a default is not the same thing as "swallow this, like it or not". "Default" only means that, if you don't change the configuration, it will use it. For Debian kFreeBSD systemd will probably not be the default, for obvious reasons. I'm inclined to think they will keep sysvinit as default for kFreeBSD, or maybe, being optimistic in the time frame to make it usable, launchd.

Then such developers are worthless. Like it or not Spotify is a customer, to keep good customers you need to at least listen to their opinions and rationally evaluate what is being said.

Customers pay the bills. Users, not necessarily. As far as the article let us know, they are just users.
NOW, I do think that you always need to listen opinion and rationally evaluate what is being said. Not because they are customers or users, but because you are a rational person.

[oyvind]

Having a free OS on their server farm, but not bothering to *support* a proper client on that same OS. F*** Spotify and their perpetual "preview" client for Linux.