I've never used anything but systemd. I feel fine about it, but I think I'd feel the same way about not using it.
I totally agree. I used to hate systemd for breaking the traditional Unix philosophy, but the reality is that a tight init and service-tracking integration tool really was required. I work with and appreciate systemd every day now. It certainly didn't make things simplier and easier to debug, but it goes a long way towards making a Linux system predictable and consistent.
Poettering can go fuck himself though - and for PulseAudio too. I suspect half of the hate systemd attracted over the years was really because of this idiot.
systemd is easy to work with, other init systems introduce kinks, I rather break philosophy than deal with that shit
Is it really breaking it? As far as I'm aware, it's more like gnu. It has components and you can select what you use (here meaning distros and packagers).
People mistake this for a monolith because it's all named systemd-thing. Integration, like you said, was and is needed. But what if all those separate utilities and services are actually disconnected and speak some protocol different to pipe? Does it make it less unixy?
And poettering is an absolute good guy here. Pulseaudio wasn't perfect, but did it improve things compared to what was there before? Sure it did. Even now, pulesaudio protocol is used within pipewire and it works just fine.
Perfect is the enemy of good. And while all these tools might not be perfect, they are the best in the Linux world.
“It’s more like gnu”
You are correct. GNU has the bad habit of only working with itself as well. Systemd only works with Glibc so it fits in well.
The reality is that GNU is just a subset of the Red Hat Linux platform these days. Systemd is another part. GNOME is the other big chunk. They are all designed to work with each other and do not care if they work with anything else.
poettering is an absolute good guy here
Agreed. But he's also an abrasive know-it-all. A modicum of social skills and respect goes a long way towards making others accept your pet projects.
pulesaudio protocol is used within pipewire and it works just fine.
I wasn't talking about the protocol, I was talking about the implementation: PulseAudio is a crashy, unstable POS. I can't count the number of hours this turd made me waste, until PipeWire came along.
It's refreshing to read to someone that actually says "I was so wrong"
I was wrong also with systemd, I hated it mainly because I already knew init.d, where files are, where configs where etc. Some years later hate is gone, I'm not a power user, but I just now know how to handle my things with systemd and all is good.
You do realize that it's not a binary between systemd and SysV, right? There are modern replacements for SysV other than systemd, like dinit, OpenRC, s6 and they all strive to address the shortcomings of SysV
And they are all playtoys, unused in production by anyone serious for a reason.
I'd say the main bad part of systemd is how it's used and now expected everywhere.
If you search for some Linux guides or install something complicated or whatnot, they always expect you to have systemd. Otherwise, you're on your own figuring how things work on your system.
This shouldn't really happen. Otherwise, yes, it's great, it integrates neatly, and is least pain to use.
In my opnion, systemd is like core-utils at this point.
It's so integrated into most things and the default so many places, that most guides assume you have it.
There is no authority delegating responsibilities of writing tutorials for Linux. It is the responsibility of nobody and everybody. If you can't find one for your problem, write it yourself when you have figured it out.
I still doesn't like it...
I've been using systemd on most of my systems since it was released; I was an early jumper to upstart as well.
The thing I don't like about systemd is how pervasive in the OS it is. It violates the "do one thing, do it well" Unix philosophy, and when systemd went from an init system to starting to take everything over, I started liking it less.
My issues with systemd is that it isn't an unmitigated success, for me. journald is horrible: it's slow and doesn't seem to catch everything (the latter is extremely rare, but that it happens occasionally makes me nervous). There are several gotchas in running user services, such as getting in-session services working correctly (so that user services can access the user session kernel keyring).
Recently I've been using dinit on a system, and I'm pretty happy with it. I may switch all of my systems over to it; I'm running Arch everywhere, and while migrating Arch to Artix was scary the first time, in the end it went fairly smoothly.
Fundamentally, systemd is a monolithic OS system. It make Linux into more of a Windows or MacOS, where a bunch of different systems are consolidated under a single piece of software. While it violates the Unix philosophy, it has been successful because monolithic systems tend to be easier to use: users really only have to learn two command-line tools, vs a dozen. Is it categorically better, just because the user interface is easier for new Linux users?
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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