Lennart Talks Up The Power Of systemd-sysext For Testing /usr Changes

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Lennart Talks Up The Power Of systemd-sysext For Testing /usr Changes

Systemd lead developer Lennart Poettering is out with his first blog post since last September. Today he's relaying the power of the systemd-sysext component shipped as part of systemd for loading/merging "system extension" images on the system for manipulating the exposed /usr...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=systemd-sysext

[tildearrow]

I hope this may be useful for accelerating boot times on HDD (e.g. by loading the OverlayFS into memory and then mounting it using sysext).

[evert_mouw]

Hopefully systemd will manage each executable in /usr/bin/ with multiple extensions. I say one extension for each file also in /etc/, there should be no limit to what systemd does. /sarcasm

What's wrong with including binaries in your $PATH or copy stuff to /usr/local/ or use overlayfs and others without systemd? Or just Snap / AppImage / Flatpak?

I somewhat like systemd but it's becoming a bit much.

[-MacNuke-]

What's wrong with including binaries in your $PATH or copy stuff to /usr/local/ or use overlayfs and others without systemd? Or just Snap / AppImage / Flatpak?

Why not just read the blog post?

Nobody is stopping you from doing it in another way.

[sinepgib]

I hope this may be useful for accelerating boot times on HDD (e.g. by loading the OverlayFS into memory and then mounting it using sysext).

I didn't get it, how do you mean?

[Nuc!eoN]

Frankly, the time of systemd is up.

[jacob]

What's wrong with including binaries in your $PATH or copy stuff to /usr/local/ or use overlayfs and others without systemd? Or just Snap / AppImage / Flatpak?

Snap, Appimage and Flatpak solve a different problem. Overlayfs without systems is certainly possible, but what benefit would that bring, exactly?

[CochainComplex]

I already like it. PATH indeed works but sometimes it simply doesn't. And those sometimes are really annoying if systemd makes it easy reliable and quite secure - why not?
Don't get the systemd hatred anyway.

There are enough distros without systemd and without Wayland....whatsoever

[skeevy420]

Heh. I found a typo that tildearrow missed in the third paragraph.

Among hte many possible use-cases for systemd-sysext

I feel like I'm 3 out of 100 that thinks this is a good idea.

tildearrow I think it'll be negligible for HDD boot speeds since reading from a HDD will still the bottleneck. Tossing a bunch of sysext stuff into ram post-boot for regular application speed increases, sure.

[skeevy420]

Snap, Appimage and Flatpak solve a different problem. Overlayfs without systems is certainly possible, but what benefit would that bring, exactly?

Standardization.