Someone please convince me why I should hate systemd because I still don't understand why all the hate exists.
The idea as far as I can tell is that it's responsible for too many things and gives a massive point of failure.
Man, wait until these people hear about the filesystem and kernel.
The very existence of a defined kernel is an insult to the Linux philosophy
In some ways I think the filesystem is philosophically the exact opposite of systemd
I can boot my system with an ext4 root, with a btrfs /home...or vice versa. Or add some ZFS, or whatever. The filesystem is (with the exception of some special backup schemes) largely independent of the rest of the system, despite being of core importance.
On the other hand, I can't change my init system (i.e., systemd) without serious, serious work.
It's also "infectious" software. The way systemd positions itself on the system, it can make it more difficult for software to be written in an agnostic way. This isn't all software, and is often more of a complaint by lower level software, like desktop environments.
https://catfox.life/2024/01/05/systemd-through-the-eyes-of-a-musl-distribution-maintainer/
This isn't a terrible summary of some of the aspects of it.
Another aspect is that when it was first developed, the lead on the project was exceptionally hostile to anyone who didn't immediately agree that systemd definitely should take over most of the system, often criticizing people who pointed out bugs or questionable design decisions as being afraid of change or relics of the past.
It's more of a social reason, but if people feel like the developer of a tool they're forced to use doesn't even respect their concerns, they're going to start rejecting the tool.
What do you expect from an init system? It's like saying my cpu is infectious because my computer depends on it
It's that it also decided to take over log management, event management, networking, DNS resolution, etc, etc.
If it were just an init system that would be perfectly portable. People were able to write software that way with sysv for years.
It's that in order to do certain low level tasks on a systemd system, you need to integrate with systemd, not just "be started by it". Now if a distro wants that piece of software, it needs to use systemd, and other pieces of software that want to be on that distro need to implement integration with systemd.
A dependency isn't infectious, but a dependency you can't easily swap out is, particularly if it's positioned near the base of a dependency tree.
Almost all of my software can run on x86 or arm without any issues beyond changing compiler targets. It's closer to how it's tricky to port software between Mac and Linux, or Linux and BSD. Targeting one platform entails significant, potentially prohibitive, effort to support another, despite them all being ostensibly compatible unix like systems.
I think the init system is the best part of systemd. It is sooo easy to use. You don't have to write the same complicated shell script for your software like everyone else. You just give systemd the path to your executable and that's basically it. It does the rest and you don't have to worry about PID files or forking the actual software. Systemd basically runs it like you did while developing it.
I think what people don't like are all the other parts of systemd that seem to be tightly coupled. I don't know if it is even possible to run just the systemd init without any other systemd package.
The last time I got angry at systemd was when resolvd did some DNS shit I did not approve of.
My understanding is that some people are die hards to the software philosophy of "do one thing really well". systemd at the very least does many different things. These people would prefer to chain a bunch of smaller programs together to replicate the same functionality of systemd since every program in the chain fits the philosophy of "does one thing really well".
For me it’s 3 things
Systemd breaks all three of though by being monolithic and binary. It actually makes you have to jump through more hoops to do things in certain cases. I understand it’s a mindset shift but it really starts making it feel more like Windows with how it works and the registry and event log.
It's different from what the init system was like in the 80's.
"I am a new linux user. After 15 minutes of research on google, I found a few forum posts and some niche websites that said SystemD was bad, so I took it as gospel. Now my system doesn't work as simply as it did with installer defaults? How do I make everything Just Work™ after removing any OS components I don't understand the need for?"
Linus tech tips, is that you?
He is less technically inclined
He read a prompt asking if he wanted to remove his system and said yes
Then complained about it
To be fair it was caused by installing steam. Why System76 didn't test that I don't know.
He uninstalled systemd, now his computer is not doing systemd things anymore by his retelling. Seems like it worked fine. Yet he asks for a solution of a problem. Maybe he needs to state the problem.
This is like the Linux equivalent of deleting system32
Nah, more like deleting explorer.exe.
There's isn't really a Windows equivalent for this, as Windows doesn't give you control on this level.
It'd be as if you could delete services.msc but also the runner behind it.
I removed and sold the wheels of my car, now it does not move.
All these files are backed up in /System32 folder
Lol this reminds me of a time when I had KDE desktop environment installed on vanilla ubuntu. I thought I didn't really need ubuntu's default desktop environment and decided to 'purge' it. I quickly realized my f up when it deleted so many packages and ui started to act weird, I copied the shell's output to a file just incase, and sure enough I couldn't login with ui on next reboot. I was somehow able to login to shell and with some awk magic I was able to parse the text file to get all the packages I deleted and lo and behold everything worked just fine. Linux let's you f'up your OS but it also let's you fix it, it's just a skill issue.
Linux let's you f'up your OS but it also let's you fix it, it's just a skill issue.
Yeah, there's something about Linux that makes me feel like if something breaks in it, the only reason I can't fix it personally is because I lack the skills to fix the problem. Just feels nice, really.
I updated my sources.list to something non-existing at some point and run sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove once and it also basically uninstalled everything. But that didn't even matter, I popped in a recovery disk and could reinstall everything. Pretty great to be able to do all that with Linux, fuck everything up in an instant but after a few hours everything is back again
How the fuck is login and "the command line" still working? Maybe they did not reboot.
The reboot probably sent him straight to a virtual console.
Just install Devuan.
Devuan GNU+Linux is a fork of Debian without systemd that allows users to reclaim control over their system by avoiding unnecessary entanglements and ensuring Init Freedom.
Gotta love this linux rhetoric, man! It's so out there.
I don't want to be in control of starting up all the services during boot.
I want the init system to do that.
Systemd is bloat
/s because people think I’m serious
install that rm -rf theme
Hint: :q!
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