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I say this with love for the global Linux community, but we need to be able to laugh at ourselves from time to time. (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by bernhoftbret@lemmy.world to c/linuxmemes@lemmy.world
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[-] Broadfern@lemmy.world 11 points 4 months ago

Why are we afraid of systemd again? /gen

I came in late w/ arch-based systems so legitimately don’t know the lore.

[-] rtxn@lemmy.world 16 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Off the top of my head, in no particular order:

  • Systemd and its components are responsible for too many essential system functions. Init, services, mounts, timers, logging, network config, hostname, DNS resolution, locale, devices, home directories, boot, NTP sync, and I'm sure there are others, can be handled by systemd or one of its components.
  • Systemd violates the UNIX philosophy of "do one thing and do it well". Systemd is a complex solution to a complex problem: this thread has several comments by a former Arch Linux maintainer that explains why they've switched to systemd, and why the earlier method of using single initscripts was unsustainable.
  • It is owned and maintained by Red Hat, known for its many controversies.
  • Some people just don't like modern things and think that the Linux ecosystem peaked in the 1980s.

Most (though not all) of the popular complaints are completely unreasonable. Those people usually see themselves as moral and righteous and expect the world at large to follow their personal creed. I especially consider the UNIX philosophy to be outdated, and strict adherence to it to be an obstacle for modern apps and systems.

I have some issues with systemd, and I don't like that one for-profit company has such a massive influence over the entire Linux ecosystem, but I have to acknowledge that it works, it works well enough to counter my personal issues, and that the people whose opinion matters the most (specifically Debian and Arch maintainers) chose it for a good reason.

[-] lauha@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Now I want a shirt that says "Linux ecosystem peaked in 1980s"

[-] mech@feddit.org 3 points 4 months ago

Some people just don’t like modern things and think that the Linux ecosystem peaked in the 1980s.

Linux was released in 1991.

[-] rtxn@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It's called a hyperbole.

(edit) But, honestly, it's still kind of accurate. Many of the most significant software suites that define the Linux ecosystem in more recent decades were written in the 80s or earlier. X (the display protocol) was released in 1984, and X11 was finalized in 1987. GNU Emacs was released in 1985. Vi, in 1976. UNIX System V, from which sysvinit and compatible init systems were adopted, was released in 1983. It's not a stretch to say that certain people want to regress to the 1980s state, even if the kernel wasn't around.

[-] loweffortname@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 4 months ago

This sign won't stop me! I can't read!

[-] Neptr@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

My personal reasons for disliking systemd (note: I still use systemd):

  • The lead developer of systemd has said multiple times that we should be fine with break POSIX if it means developing faster.
  • systemd has massive attack surface, making it easier to exploit and result in privilege escalation. It is a highly complex and large codebase that really shouldnt be given the trust of PID 0
  • systemd is not portable or modular.
  • It only just barely got musl support. Hope to see it improve in the future.
  • systemd is much slower than other inits (eg. dinit, s6, openrc)
  • systemd being the go-to init encourages developers to more heavily depend on it, making it difficult for distros without systemd

The biggest feature I like about systemd is run0, though I wish it was a drop in replacement for sudo. Secondly, I do like that services can be sandboxed.

[-] nesc@lemmy.cafe 0 points 4 months ago
  • It's developed for linux and there is literally 0 linux distributions that are POSIX-compliant, also standard is dead.
  • It doesn't, also moving it to any other PID won't make any difference.
  • It is modular (IIRC there is only three mandatory parts) and portable.
  • Was completely on musl side (also musl is as much not portable and modular as systemd 🙃 and in every practical way worse than glibc).
  • It's not an init, nor does it present itself like this. Do you have any benchmarks that show this slowness when doing comparable operations?
  • Why exactly depending on a stable system component is a bad thing? Distros without systemd are moving against the stream, obviously there going to be some problems.
[-] ferrule@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

For me the portability issue wasn't really solved. I still work on embedded devices where I need to squeeze out every cycle and every byte of memory i can. Running systemd is an automatic no go, but in the *nix way of doing things I do have other options, so that's good.

But the more people depend on the systemd ecosystem rather than an open standard, the availability for me to use other projects goes down. Again there are usually options, but it's sad to see no one really thought about that when everyone jumped on board.

I also love the BSDs and other Unix systems. I remember decades ago downloading FreeBSD on my Gentoo box and was able to load the same Gnome desktop on both systems. Two totally different operating systems running the same UI. It sucks that targeting systemd might make software not run on other *nix operating systems

[-] Barbarian@sh.itjust.works 16 points 4 months ago

"You can't have programs that do multiple things! Any program that is multi-use is ebil. Standardized syntax and functionality between different related systems? NO! PROGRAM DO ONE THING!"

[-] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 4 months ago

even when said "one program" is actually 69 (nice) different binaries

this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
208 points (98.1% liked)

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