systemd 250 Released With A Huge Number Of New Features, Improvements

[jacob]

Virtually every car owner you ask is probably going to have at least a couple gripes about their car. This will be true of any complex product or system. You're saying we're not allowed criticize the short-comings of a solution, as long as there are alternatives? That's madness, unless maybe if you live in like North Korea.

At this point, your position is so blatantly unreasonable I probably don't need to say another word.

No, if you have gripes about your car, next time you may want to buy another car or see if your model has improved in the meantime. If you have gripes with systemd, you have the rights FOSS gives you: fork it and make it work your way, or pay someone to do it for you. Those are your rights, nothing less and especially nothing more.

Ah, so if I don't love everything about systemd, then I must be a hater?

Who said anything about haters? I said anti-systemd, meaning literally people who oppose systemd. Oppose doesn't necessarily mean hate, although truth be told, the anti-systemd community has a high percentage of irrational, pathological haters who spread pure conspiracy theories (latest one I've read: systemd-logind monitors all your activities and keystrokes and reports them to the NSA. If you want to ask me about source, head tho sysdfree.wordpress.com).

Back to the topic, this is about an argument against systemd which I find totally fallacious, it's not about hating.

Ah yes, because haters don't deserve anything good. I see what you did there.

Haters doesn't deserve my brain time as far as I'm concerned. Apart from that you obviously don't see what I did, because systemd opponents deserve good stuff in the same way as everyone else: by making it themselves or giving people reason to make it for them. What they don't deserve (more to the point, what they aren't entitled to) is demanding that the systemd project changes its course and objectives just to please them.

They have as legitimate an opinion and as much at stake as everyone else. If Debian hadn't gone with systemd, the pro-systemd crowd would be just as bitter. You can't see this, because you have the illusion of moral righteousness on your side. You don't allow for any possible realities except the present. You can only see what we had before systemd, and presume no progress would've happened had systemd not won out.

If Debian hadn't gone with systemd, the pro-systemd crowd as you call them would have done what they were already doing at that time: use RedHat or Ubuntu. Debian's move to systemd was a Debian decision, not a systemd decision; it was done for the simple reason that that other majors have done it already and Debian didn't want to diverge. My gut feeling is that if Debian hadn't done it, Devuan obviously wouldn't have happened but Debian would be what Devuan is today: a distro living on the margins of the ecosystem with a comparatively small user base and little or no impact on the future direction of FOSS development. Mind you I'm not saying that Devuan isn't useful for those who invest in it, just that it's not a system that upstream projects, hardware makers or app packagers consider of primary importance (unlike say RedHat or actually Debian).

Most people with a stake don't contribute, because it takes a lot of resources. It's exactly how people in a democracy don't all run for political office, or how consumers in a capitalist society don't all found companies building products to compete with ones they deem to be sub-optimal.

The cold hard truth is that if you contribute, or fund a project, or otherwise pay for it or provide it with resources, you have a stake, otherwise you don't. With proprietary software, it's take it or leave it. With FOSS, it's take it, leave it or fork it. But It's not take it or whine.

You're setting the bar for criticism much too high, and then using this to demote those who dare to speak out to some second-class status, where their concerns become less valid.

So once again: concerns are valid if they either come from someone who has a genuine stake, or from someone who offers a solution (merely saying what others should be doing is not a solution). Back in the early 1990s people had concerns about the seemingly stalled development of GCC so they created EGCS (which re-merged a few years later). What they didn't do was complain that the FSF should pour more of its resources into it or that someone else should be doing the hard work for them for free. When KDE started, people had concerns about Qt's licence (strictly proprietary albeit free-as-in-beer back then) so they created GNOME. That's how it works.

I've spent enough time debunking this fallacy. Criticism need not be buttressed by the existence-proof of a counterexample (nor even a concrete counterplan with committed resources).

If you want the criticism to actually be acted upon, then it absolutely does. Why exactly should the 300-odd developers of systemd say hey guys, stop everything, here is one Joe Random who says that this should be done differently because he said so, of course he's not proposing to help but hey?

First, I dispute that it would actually be more complicated, overall. If there would be fewer bugs, that would be one net-positive. Second, if competition yielded better solutions to certain problems, or a variety of solutions which are better tailored to specific usage models, that could be another advantage. It's actually harder for you to argue against the counter-factuals.

I don't know what makes you say there would be fever bugs. Fever bugs than what? And why? Having many moving unrelated parts is conductive to huge integration bugs. That each individual component is simpler because it simply denies the inherent complexity of the whole is no advantage, it's simply burying one's head in the sand.

Put it this way: unquestionably MS-DOS was much less complicated than MacOS back in 1984. Yet I doubt anyone would seriously say that it was the better OS.

Second, I dispute that you represent the interests of 95% of users. You may speak for yourself, and perhaps hard-core systemd adherents. Possibly even most of us who use it probably don't think it's optimal, but merely the best of what options they currently have available.

I represent myself, no-one else. But the proof is in the pudding. Compare the user base of systemd-related distros with the non-systemd ones and you will have your answer. It's not that everyone is either stupid or doesn't know better, it's because in the real world, people don't use OSes, they use applications. They don't care about systemd or runit or openrc or anything, they care about the software that actually makes them money. When systemd makes that easier, then that's why they use it.

First, you already acknowledged there are non-systemd alternatives. So, the non-contributive part is false.

The alternatives are irrelevant in this debate. Systemd introduces feature X, crowd complains that they would like to have it, but it doesn't work on their non-systemd distro, so they demand that systemd makes the extra effort just for them. They don't propose to do it, they never contributed anything to systemd, so as far as systemd features go, they are non-contributive. That they maintain openrc or 66 means nothing to the systemd project.

Second, anyone who's disenfranchised is naturally going to be aggressive. Again, this would be true of the systemd people, had it been rejected.

Disenfranchised from what? No-one revoked their rights under FOSS licences (and no-one has such power), no-one deprives them of anything. But they believe that they should somehow automatically have a say in how systemd is developed or where the Linux ecosystem in general is going. No such franchise exists, that's the pure entitlement. In reality each FOSS ecosystem belongs to those who make it live. Those complainers have no more right to make demands from systemd than systemd developers are to tell Devuan or K1ss how those distros should make it easier to run systemd on them. Imagine for a second the hysteria had anyone suggested that.

Third, the fact that there are more contributions to systemd doesn't mean it's perfect. As the established player, it gets contributions by default.

No-one says it's perfect but getting contributions by default is a very good position to be, wouldn't you agree?

If you want to know entitlement, just listen to yourself. You're so entitled that you think your preferred solution is beyond critique, simply because it's dominant. You seem to confuse dominance with perfection.

For some time, Microsoft Windows was the dominant OS. That didn't automatically mean those who decried it were entitled computer users. Even those who weren't active contributors to another OS.

Funny you should say that when my first post in this thread was a critique of a the current state of a systemd functionality.

[oiaohm]

That's a fair point, but it's also not proof that modular approaches aren't viable. First, SYS-V Init was far from perfect. An improved replacement could be less fragile, resulting in fewer dependency issues like you mentioned.

There is a problem things have not changed in ways you have expected.

Second, that's actually going back pretty far. The Linux world is a lot bigger, now. The ways and places it's being used are a little more diverse, with a lot more resources being invested in each.

This is you have presumed something. You have presumed now that the Linux world is bigger the number of people working on init systems will have increased. Scary point we are about at 1/3 of the people working on init systems today as that was in the 1990s and under half the number that work working on init systems in the 2000s

So the Linux world is way bigger now yet particular areas have even less developers. Remember in the 1990S we used to see at least a 2 distributions a year being created to demo new Init system options.

Yes the activation energy for a new init system is way lower now..

Third, at the time, there weren't modern, stable, well-specified interfaces for most of the modules. That's what you need for a properly modular approach to be viable and sustainable.

This requires a lot of activation energy to create test suites and standards. Please note before systemd there were lot of attempt to make modern and stable interfaces.

Logind in systemd predates systemd and is part of a earlier attempt to standardise in the 2000s. remember back then is double the developers and documentations writers we have now.

Lack of developer time with systemd does limit how much they can do as well. Yes this is activation energy people are not joining systemd want to make it more modular these days. Yes patches to increase systemd modularity have been accepted in the past.

My problem here is who is going to fund the developers/documentations writers to make a modular solution that works for Init. The resources are not magically appearing.

Yes people incorrectly presume Linux increased market share equals increased development everywhere horrible part that is not the case.

[coder]

No, if you have gripes about your car, next time you may want to buy another car or see if your model has improved in the meantime.

Okay, so all of your product reviews are either 1 star or 5 stars? I guess Amazon really messed up, when they gave people the option to rate 2, 3, or 4 stars. Maybe you should tell them.

If you have gripes with systemd, you have the rights FOSS gives you: fork it and make it work your way, or pay someone to do it for you. Those are your rights, nothing less and especially nothing more.

Again with the "fix it or shut up" fallacy, which is a false dichotomy.

Who said anything about haters? I said anti-systemd, meaning literally people who oppose systemd. Oppose doesn't necessarily mean hate,

Whether you choose to use the word "haters", you're drawing a bright line that doesn't exist in reality. There's a spectrum of how people feel about systemd, and it's only loosely correlated with whether they actually use it.

although truth be told, the anti-systemd community has a high percentage of irrational, pathological haters

I'm starting to wonder if the pro-systemd community doesn't have a significant percentage of irrational, pathological lovers.

who spread pure conspiracy theories (latest one I've read: systemd-logind monitors all your activities and keystrokes and reports them to the NSA. If you want to ask me about source, head tho sysdfree.wordpress.com).

Defining an opposing side by its most extreme members betrays your true intentions. You never were here to have a fair-minded or thoughtful discussion about systemd. You're just spoiling for a fight, which explains why you seem virtually impervious to reason.

What they don't deserve (more to the point, what they aren't entitled to) is demanding that the systemd project changes its course and objectives just to please them.

And who is actually saying that? It's one thing to criticize systemd do for being too monolithic and expansive, but I don't realistically think they'll change course because anyone thinks they should. It's just something we have to live with. That doesn't mean I'm not going to voice my dissent whenever systemd undergoes more scope creep.

If Debian hadn't gone with systemd, the pro-systemd crowd as you call them would have done what they were already doing at that time: use RedHat or Ubuntu.

Huh? Ubuntu only went with systemd because Debian did. They already had their own alternative: Upstart. If Debian hadn't embraced systemd, Ubuntu would've continued developing that and maybe Debian would've even let them upstream it.

The cold hard truth is that if you contribute, or fund a project, or otherwise pay for it or provide it with resources, you have a stake, otherwise you don't.

This is another absurd position you clearly arrived at by working backward from your conclusion, and not at all true. Basically everyone who's invested any time or resources in learning or customizing systemd or what it replaced is a stake holder.

With FOSS, it's take it, leave it or fork it. But It's not take it or whine.

You need to stop this "majoritarian" thinking (quotes used because you at least think you're in the majority). You don't have to engage with complaints, but everyone has just as much right to an opinion as you do. Telling them they don't is just bullying.

So once again: concerns are valid if

And who granted you the authority to judge such matters?

You do not get to control what other people think or say. You control only your own thoughts and actions. You need to understand this, and you clearly don't.

People have an absolute right to complain as much as they want. Whether it gets them anywhere is another matter, but that's not your problem.

What they didn't do was complain that the FSF should pour more of its resources into it

I'll bet that's the very first thing they did! It's fortunate they were in a position to fork it and do the work themselves.

If you want the criticism to actually be acted upon, then it absolutely does. Why exactly should the 300-odd developers of systemd say hey guys, stop everything, here is one Joe Random who says that this should be done differently because he said so, of course he's not proposing to help but hey?

First, nobody ever said they had to listen to any of the complaints. That's up to them & Redhat, whether they want to take any of the criticisms on board.

Second, I don't think anything short of a fork or another project out-competing systemd has any chance of bending its trajectory. So, the task is well beyond the scope of what any individual can achieve.

I don't know what makes you say there would be fever bugs. Fever bugs than what? And why?

Modularity forces well-specified and stable interfaces to be defined. That, in turn, supports better testing, since components can potentially be tested in isolation. Finally, when you can mix-and-match components, you avoid situations where a bug or limitation in one can hide a bug in the other.

Arguing against modularity is another one of these counter-intuitive positions one can only arrive at by working backward from the current status quo.

Compare the user base of systemd-related distros with the non-systemd ones and you will have your answer.

Exactly what is that supposed to prove? Yes, it's widely used. So is the Linux kernel. That doesn't mean the Linux kernel is perfect or even above reproach.

As for why each is quite so popular, there's a sort of critical mass that you hit, where anyone looking to be a player in the markets each dominates has no choice but to embrace them. Do you think Microsoft really wanted to embrace Linux? Look how long it took them to do it! They were literally the last ones on the bandwagon! Only Apple is still a holdout, and that's because they exist virtually in isolation from the rest of the computing world and manage to derive value by doing so.

Disenfranchised from what?

Meaning if your preferred distro didn't embrace systemd, then the pro-systemd would feel disenfranchised by that decision.

they believe that they should somehow automatically have a say in how systemd is developed or where the Linux ecosystem in general is going.

Who appointed you as their spokesperson? I can't say that no one thinks that, but you're attributing a single position to a large group of people who surely have a diversity of views on the subject.

No such franchise exists, that's the pure entitlement.

Ascribing an extreme view and then attacking it is called making a strawman argument.

Those complainers have no more right to make demands from systemd

Sure they do. They can complain and demand all they want. Nobody has to listen, but you just want to bully all systemd critics into complete submission.

than systemd developers are to tell Devuan or K1ss how those distros should make it easier to run systemd on them. Imagine for a second the hysteria had anyone suggested that.

Sure they can, but nobody has to listen.

No-one says it's perfect

If you agree that it's not perfect, why do you try to kill any dissent?

Funny you should say that when my first post in this thread was a critique of a the current state of a systemd functionality.

But why are you the arbiter of what critique is allowed and what isn't? Don't you understand that arguing with systemd's critics just amplifies their complaints? If you really think their complaints have no merit, the best thing you could do is ignore them.

[coder]

This is you have presumed something. You have presumed now that the Linux world is bigger the number of people working on init systems will have increased. Scary point we are about at 1/3 of the people working on init systems today as that was in the 1990s and under half the number that work working on init systems in the 2000s

Systemd is not just an init system! That it's quite so much more is one of the main complaints against it!

And basically all you're doing is to prove that it indeed took the oxygen away from most other efforts, in this area.

back then is double the developers and documentations writers we have now.

Lack of developer time with systemd does limit how much they can do as well.

It certainly seems to limit how good their documentation is! I wish they'd put more time & resources into improving their docs, before they add more features.

Seriously, lots of libsystemd functions don't have manpages or even comment blocks in the public header files telling callers some essential things you need to know. I've literally had to read libsystemd source code and their tests to figure out how some things worked. In other cases, even that wasn't enough and I merely had to go on a hunch about what the issue was.

I'm a firm believer that the original developer should be specifying the code, rather than relying on someone coming along after the fact. Only the original developer knows what the intended behavior is. If they leave the docs for someone else to write, that person might document a behavior which is actually a bug, rather than working as intended. If the tester wrote tests according to the original spec, then the tester would likely find the bug, and the result would be a more useful API.

Furthermore, I find the exercise of having to explicitly write out the pre-conditons, post-conditions, errors, etc. actually helps when you get down into the implementation. So, if the systemd developers don't have time even to write header file comments, then clearly they need to slow down.

[oiaohm]

Systemd is not just an init system! That it's quite so much more is one of the main complaints against it!

And basically all you're doing is to prove that it indeed took the oxygen away from most other efforts, in this area.

No systemd comes into existence in 2010. We were in developer and documentation count decline before systemd comes into existence

1990s early you had 3 times the count of developers work in the areas systemd covers. 2000s early is double. 2010 it was down to about 1.5 of now. Yes the loss in systemd time frame is basically the same as the decade before.

The reality is we have not been getting newer developers as fast as losing older developers in this area..

Hard reality is we really only have another 2 decades before systemd itself will hit critical if this loss rate does not flatten out or turn around..

It certainly seems to limit how good their documentation is! I wish they'd put more time & resources into improving their docs, before they add more features.

Seriously, lots of libsystemd functions don't have manpages or even comment blocks in the public header files telling callers some essential things you need to know. I've literally had to read libsystemd source code and their tests to figure out how some things worked. In other cases, even that wasn't enough and I merely had to go on a hunch about what the issue was.

I'm a firm believer that the original developer should be specifying the code, rather than relying on someone coming along after the fact. Only the original developer knows what the intended behavior is. If they leave the docs for someone else to write, that person might document a behavior which is actually a bug, rather than working as intended. If the tester wrote tests according to the original spec, then the tester would likely find the bug, and the result would be a more useful API.

Furthermore, I find the exercise of having to explicitly write out the pre-conditons, post-conditions, errors, etc. actually helps when you get down into the implementation. So, if the systemd developers don't have time even to write header file comments, then clearly they need to slow down.

Yes agree with a lot this. Problem here is the lack of documentation was a problem in the 1990s and comes all the way forwards to current day. Lack proper forwards planing in the area systemd covers yes this predates systemd again.

So yes we have a lot of long term problems in the areas systemd covers. The horrible reality is there is not the developer/documentation writer time to properly fix it any more. When we had the developer and documentation writers they were too fragmented to do it successfully and in the 1990s mandating like posix compatible in init system code even that it never fitted anywhere correctly.

Yes I see lot of complains about systemd. But I don't see the resources being put in to fix any of the problems. Yes the worse nightmare is I see the resources fading out of existence..

Its like the Linux kernel documentation problem where there was nobody being paid todo it. In the init system and other core parts the current world case is fairly majority are leaving it to redhat/ibm to pay the developers to make the init system and other parts for them.

[arokh]

Please post a link.

I would if that would change your opinion, but you're obviously here just to troll.

What other things do you do, besides that? Do you have a full-time job? Is any of your paid time spent maintaining the distro? Do you have a family life? Friends? Are you civically-engaged in your community?

I have a full time job, friends, hobby, relationship, training every day, I go holidays, I read the newspaper in the morning and poop, anything else? Tons of people created their own distro, go ask Patrik Voelkerding. Don't project your own limitations on others.

PS: I also roll my own distribution for my router.

Just because you're willing to maintain a distro, which I'd wager probably uses entirely off-the-shelf components written by others (i.e. not your own init system) is no answer to anyone's complaints about systemd.

Of course I use off-the-shelf components written by others, so does every other distribution on the planet. You can do the same and put whatever off-the-shelf init system in yours. I'm perfectly happy with systemd:

NUC8:~ $ systemctl --version
systemd 250 (250)
+PAM -AUDIT -SELINUX -APPARMOR -IMA -SMACK +SECCOMP +GCRYPT -GNUTLS -OPENSSL +ACL +BLKID +CURL -ELFUTILS -FIDO2 +IDN2 -IDN -IPTC +KMOD -LIBCRYPTSETUP -LIBFDISK -PCRE2 -PWQUALITY -P11KIT -QRENCODE -BZIP2 +LZ4 +XZ +ZLIB +ZSTD -BPF_FRAMEWORK -XKBCOMMON +UTMP +SYSVINIT default-hierarchy=hybrid
NUC8:~ $ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 2.236s (kernel) + 4.661s (userspace) = 6.898s
graphical.target reached after 3.620s in userspace

It's definitely an answer to YOUR complaints, because you have failed to provide any legit complaints. You're simply a time waster, nothing will change your opinion obviously. The time you and other trolls spent flame baiting systemd threads you could EASILY whip together a distribution without systemd and infrastructure to maintain it. The problem is that you'd rather sit on your ass and complain and try to tell everyone else how to run their project.

I'm not arguing that everyone should maintain their own distribution, only those that can't accept reality a decade after the fact. Systemd isn't going away unless you either write a better replacement or do what I have suggested.

Please tell me "CODER", what have you achieved so far with all your bitching and moaning? How is that going for you?

[pal666]

The Linux kernel cannot do all imaginable use-cases. So there is a finite number of use cases. So in theory it possible to standardise for all Linux kernel supported use cases.

linux kernel only does kernel-level stuff, we are talking about user-level software. kernel doesn't care what userlevel does(and btw that's why kernel doesn't provide containers: so that there could be more than one kind). most decisions involve tradeoffs, just like there are more than one editor or shell, there could be more than one program to launch container.

[pal666]

Just because it solved some real problems doesn't mean there aren't legit complaints against it.

just because you are complaining doesn't mean your complaints are legitimate

I just hate the way it's swallowing more and more userspace facilities. The devs literally seem to know of no boundaries or have a willingness to solve some particular problem as a completely separate, standalone project.

solving your particular problem as completely separate, standalone projects is wrong way, as evidenced by history. systemd devs are improving your suboptimal ideas

[pal666]

You seem to be sorely lacking in education ;-(

you seem to be utterly confused about authoritative source of systemd name

[pal666]

Do you allow anyone who watches movies to have an opinion about them, except other film makers? What about allowing consumers to have opinions about products they buy?

everyone can have an opinion, but not everyone's opinion is worth listening to. btw, you didn't pay for systemd