Lennart: The State & Future Of Systemd

[johnc]

Nobody cares about GNOME. They are a completely irrelevant group.


It was pretty clear that systemd developers never had any interest in coexisting with alternative init systems, to put it diplomatically. That's why they weaseled their way into parts of the Linux stack that made it practically impossible for downstream developers to not adopt their methods. And then in due order we hear, "Oh look! Everyone's using systemd!" And when Slackware is forced to pick up systemd, you and people like you will be right on here saying, "Oh look! Slackware adopted systemd because it's so much better than everything else!"

Lennart is an amazing egomaniac. One would have to be way, way, way clueless to not see that. And that's not healthy for the ecosystem.

[interested]

Before systemd there was no outcry -- absolutely none -- on behalf of Linux admins to adopt a binary log file mechanism. None.

First, binary log files are a fact on Posix compliant systems (see utmp).

Second; syslog text logs have been a broken concept for decades, so many projects and syslog variations have been tried over the years to try to get some sanity and structure in those log files, but they have mostly failed. Even basic things like multi language support have been impossible.

No-one in their right mind would design a modern OS with such a primitive logging structure as Linux has suffered from for decades. It is only the familiarity of the system that makes SA's blind for how mad and primitive syslog really is.

All the usual GNU text utilities like grep, tee, sed works perfectly together with systemd's journal, so you loose nothing, but gain all the advantages of a modern, structured and indexed log file that provides a single view of all logging activity on the entire system.

[Truth]

I love the fascist view of the systemd proponents. "Conform or be thrown out! It must be our way!"

I love how utter desperate Microsoft must be to hire rapists such as yourself to troll systemd.

Are your Redmond masters really this intimidated of functional free open-source software?

So scared that they have to hire trolls to try and derail FOSS from moving past hacky kludge systems from the dark ages.

[interested]

Nobody cares about GNOME. They are a completely irrelevant group.


It was pretty clear that systemd developers never had any interest in coexisting with alternative init systems, to put it diplomatically. That's why they weaseled their way into parts of the Linux stack that made it practically impossible for downstream developers to not adopt their methods. And then in due order we hear, "Oh look! Everyone's using systemd!" And when Slackware is forced to pick up systemd, you and people like you will be right on here saying, "Oh look! Slackware adopted systemd because it's so much better than everything else!"

Lennart is an amazing egomaniac. One would have to be way, way, way clueless to not see that. And that's not healthy for the ecosystem.

Your dig against Gnome is so typical for all systemd-haters. Claiming that "nobody cares about GNOME" is just such a distorted view of the world. You guys can't even see how much damage such nonsense is doing for the non-systemd cause, you just alienate everybody with your hateful attacks. The point is you should be working to make Gnome and KDE work on non-systemd distros, not saying that nobody cares about the two most popular Linux DE's.

You just have to make up nonsense like systemd preventing upstream developers from supporting anything else. Utter rubbish, but such conspiracy thoughts nicely explain away why no non-systemd development is taking place.

But you also fail to realise, that while such conspiracies are comforting for your world view, they imprison you into inaction and apathy; why even try if systemd developers secretly control the world making it impossible for any alternative development taking place?

[gens]

It is just an observation of the factual state of things. The point being that non-systemd users spend all their time trolling systemd threads instead of working on alternatives to systemd.

So Slackware will either have to develop all the needed infrastructure to keep on functioning as a non-systemd desktop distro, or they will whither away. So of course Patrick will choose systemd at some time or another, Slackware simply hasn't got the developers for doing anything else.

Again, a main problem is that systemd haters spend all their time hating systemd instead of getting their act together and start developing. Upstream desktop projects like Gnome have warned for years that some action was needed if non-systemd distros still could be fully supported.

But instead of organizing help for Gnome or KDE so they can continue to support non-systemd distros, the systemd-haters just spew conspiracy hatred against those DE's. So besides not getting any patches, those DE's gets slandered too. A great motivation for them.

k, lets stop "trolling" that slackware and gentoo will never adopt systemd and lets lay down some facts

first: gentoo devs like openrc
second: slackware aims to be as simple as possible, gentoo has to be as simple as possible (since it's from scratch; bdw add LFS too the list)
third: that is tied to the second is that systemd is not simple and will never be
fourth: saying what Patrick will do is not up to me, true, but is also not up to you, and he stated he is not in to it so
fifth: do you know what systemd aims to assimilate ? what is the "work" that needs to be done ?
sixth: slackware abandoned gnome for the reason it was too much work to even compile let alone make work properly, so the "gnome3 reason" does not apply


don't just talk out of your arse
give some concrete facts when you say that everybody will have to comply
like there are some 3 alternatives to udev, nothing else will never be forced by any desktop other then gnome3
and it might be a shock, but not everyone wants to run only gnome3

saying things like "gentoo/slackware will comply" is just plain stupid, and yet you call out many people as trolls
why ? are you trying to teach someone some thing ? i don't understand, please explain

PS gnome devs stated they WONT accept patches to support non-systemd systems, so stop that too

[gens]

PS gnome devs stated they WONT accept patches to support non-systemd systems, so stop that too

also KDE will always work, with full functionality, without systemd
so i got time to talk on teh forums when someone is spreading assumptions as the truth (even thou i don't use kde)

[Luke]

How about this alternative?

I love the fascist view of the systemd proponents. "Conform or be thrown out! It must be our way!"

"Systemd works well in my systems, I had no trouble porting my code to it, and I didn't find any obvious threats in looking over the source code?" Do any of the systemd haters out there think I did something wrong by installing systemd so I could port my own code to what so many distros are switching to, then deciding to keep it when I liked how it works?

[stevenc]

think I did something wrong by installing systemd so I could port my own code to what so many distros are switching to, then deciding to keep it when I liked how it works?

That is actually a pretty good point against systemd I think you made by accident. If it is really so good, the change would have been voluntary. It's a pain to have to keep up with obnoxious change.

[valeriodean]

also KDE will always work, with full functionality, without systemd
so i got time to talk on teh forums when someone is spreading assumptions as the truth (even thou i don't use kde)

Well, I remember some notes from the Kwin's maintainer about the use of systems features to do something after the Qt 5 port is archived, so your statement could have a shortest life than your expected, after all. We will see.
I just want to add one consideration: an init system + demon management that doesn't use all the linux kernel's features and capability for the sake of compatibility with other kernel is, to me, a giant mountain of shit that should immediately burn with fire.
+1 to systemd.

[interested]

fourth: saying what Patrick will do is not up to me, true, but is also not up to you, and he stated he is not in to it so
fifth: do you know what systemd aims to assimilate ? what is the "work" that needs to be done ?

In the interview with Patrick people usually are referring to when talking about Patrick stance on systemd and Slackware, he doesn't say at all that Slackware will never change to systemd, in fact he says the opposite:

"volkerdi) Yeah, I see a few things coming down the line that may cause a shakeup to our usual way of doing things, and could force Slackware to become, well, perhaps less UNIX-like. I guess the two big ones that are on the horizon are Wayland and systemd. Whether we end up using them or not remains to be seen. It's quite possible that we won't end up having a choice in the matter depending on how development that's out of our hands goes."

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/interviews-28/interview-with-patrick-volkerding-of-slackware-949029/

So Patrick says it is quite possible that Slackware will change to systemd (and Wayland), but perhaps the change will be forced upon Slackware, simply because they don't control what Upstream projects do. If you read on you will see that Patrick doesn't dismiss systemd at all, but just he has some reservations about it.

If you have anything newer than this rather old interview where Patrick states his opinion about systemd and Slackware, please post a link.


I must say that I find your lack of insight into what needs to be done in order for non-systemd distros to function as modern desktop distros, rather typical. Seriously, to my knowledge only to user login systems for Linux exist at the moment; ConsoleKit that are bit rotting away, and systemd's "logind". There are also some forks of systemd's "logind" like Ubuntu's "systemd-shim", but again, this is systemd code, just like eudev is forked systemd code.

"systemd-shim" is a hack job that no longer works with contemporary DE's, simply because it present itself as an ancient systemd version of logind, that doesn't support cgroups etc.

I know of no other Linux development that tries to make a proper alternative to either systemd's logind, or ConsoleKit.

This is again a problem for upstream DE's like KDE. They are replacing their ancient display manager KDM with a new version called SDDM. SDDM supports systemd's logind (of course) since it is under active development and is bound to be ubiquitous on most Linux distros. It doesn't support ConsoleKit, simply because it makes no sense for the overstrained KDE developers to support the old, bit-rotting version of ConsoleKit. And as expected, they don't receive any help from non-systemd distros in any form to support them. Nobody steps up and send in patches so SDDM can support ConsoleKit, nobody develops any alternative to ConsoleKit either.

The predicable end result is, that KDE's new display manager, SDDM, only support systemd distros. There is no conspiracy behind it, just the plain fact that non-systemd users like you utterly fail to see that they actively need to support upstream projects if these projects shall continue to support them.

PS gnome devs stated they WONT accept patches to support non-systemd systems, so stop that too

Simply wrong. Some systemd-haters have been ranting about that, but it simply isn't true. Gnome developers are actively going out of their way to support Gnome 3 on non-systemd platforms like OpenBSD.