Another Init System: Sinit - The Suckless Init System

[devius]

Simplicity is what we really need. Simplicity!

You are going to love the Sinclair ZX81!!

[mrugiero]

https://xkcd.com/927/

As great as the comic is, it is irrelevant here. It doesn't aim to replace the others in their niches, but to fill an empty one, which is to provide the bare minimum you can need. In software, if you want to replace the others, you usually go with the kitchen sink approach, because you try to make everyone happy. Hint, that aim is in most cases unachievable.

there was some interesting mention of the "ucc" compiler on the suckless.org mailing list some time ago.

Why not tcc instead? It's alright for them to want to build their own minimalist OS, but why duplicate work on that piece if there is already someone working on it?

[cb88]

As great as the comic is, it is irrelevant here. It doesn't aim to replace the others in their niches, but to fill an empty one, which is to provide the bare minimum you can need. In software, if you want to replace the others, you usually go with the kitchen sink approach, because you try to make everyone happy. Hint, that aim is in most cases unachievable.


Why not tcc instead? It's alright for them to want to build their own minimalist OS, but why duplicate work on that piece if there is already someone working on it?

Because tcc and it's development model is pretty crappy... check out rob landley's thoughts on it. He will probably end up strapping QEMU's TCG onto the tcc frontend eventually.... He's calling that project qcc. Suckless is more likely to use Clang... while it isn't the best it sucks less than either tcc or gcc. The code is better than tcc or gcc and it the code it produces is often as good as or better than gcc as long as you aren't using something like OpenMP.

[staalmannen]

Suckless is more likely to use Clang... .

Most likely the suckless people do not favour Clang or newer versions of gcc, since they are based on C++. Since lots of them admire Plan9, I guess kencc would be the best.

[Rallos Zek]

Suckless Init System has just been formally announced yet it is already a better init system than systemd. Goes to show how much suckage Lennart Poettering and his gang of jizz slurpers try pass off crap code as good for Linux.

[schmidtbag]

This Suckless init system looks very good. I'm sick of bloated programs I don't need an init system that is everything but the kitchen sink, I just need to boot the f***ing computer. Simplicity is what we really need. Simplicity!

I agree - it astonishes me how much developers severely over-complicate everything. I understand some things are designed a certain way because they're supposed to be proprietary (and therefore hard to "crack") or because they're supposed to be extra efficient, but some people find the sloppiest and weirdest ways to do the simplest things. If I look at the source code of the average HTML page, I could probably take out 10% of the entire code and the page will look exactly the same.

I do a lot of programming in python and it disgusts me how even a quick library example could end up being 100 lines of code when I could reduce the entire thing (excluding comments and white space) to about 20 lines of code and have the exact same results. You can add all the functions, classes, and variables you want but cleanliness and simplicity is easier to read (and easier on the computer) than simply organizing it as an "industry standard".

[doom_Oo7]

I do a lot of programming in python and it disgusts me how even a quick library example could end up being 100 lines of code when I could reduce the entire thing (excluding comments and white space) to about 20 lines of code and have the exact same results.

I'd take 1k lines of C++ over 20 lines of Brainfuck anyday

[Veto]

I'm sick of bloated programs I don't need an init system that is everything but the kitchen sink, I just need to boot the f***ing computer. Simplicity is what we really need. Simplicity!

I'll fix that for you: init=/bin/sh There you go!

Personally I need an init system that will:

• Reliably boot the computer to a desktop fast and without starting up everything but the kitchen sink.
• Reliably start the services I need and their dependencies.
• Suspend/resume/shutdown fast and reliably (without hanging services/network/NFS/...).
• Doesn't start seven instances of a service before it is needed (if ever!).
• Restart services reliably when they hang or when changing configuration.

I can personally attest that neither SysV init nor Upstart will fulfill these simple requirements. From a distance it looks like SystemD actually might - and even simplify a lot of the Unix legacy cruft in the process.

Even though Lennart Poettering might not be the most diplomatic person (neither are a lot of people on these forums!), he actually seems to have the will and talent to bring Linux into the present. Compared to simple raw Alsa, PulseAudio actually works for me and provides some of the needs of a modern desktop (multiple inputs/outputs, mixing, Bluetooth headsets, ...).

Why is it so many people are so keen to talk trash about something they can just choose not to use - and before they likely even know what they are talking about?

[Ibidem]

Who said he would be moving to coreutils?

FYI, "Strake" has made a number of contributions to toybox (su, grep, nl, and renice).

[pal666]

Simplicity is what we really need. Simplicity!

your stone axe is waiting for you