This should be renamed to "Branding about..."...Because that seems to be the focus on this destination webpage...and not content specific to the underlying tech of systemd.
But that’s precisely what it allows you to do: plug a socket unit into a service unit, connect a timer unit, then another service as a dependency… and that’s just for the init management. Systemd might not fit your personal stylistic preferences, but most of all it’s consistent.
Yeah, and these LEGO blocks are strewn around the room by a 3-year-old just waiting for you to step on them. It's the worst thing, there is no organization in systemd. No rhyme or reason to it.
The basic core service supervision in systemd is great. And nearly everything else around it is bad as a result: command-line utilities, filesystem mount handling, virtualization integration, network configuration, etc.
Just look at systemctl's `--help` if you don't believe me. Why does it have `service-log-level` to set the log level for the target, but not a way to actually _view_ the logs? Or why does it have a top-level `--firmware-setup` flag?
Where "basic" follows a highly nuanced alternate definition, where if you step out of line without realising it, you lose 3 days debugging a complex undocumented interaction between 4 enterprise crapware daemons only to find out the answer is "you're wrong and won't fix" buried in a 6 year old bug report, when all you did was plug in a USB mouse or try to set the default audio output device, or something else.
Total and utter propaganda, it's underdeveloped steaming garbage
The reason for seeing overcomplexity in systemd components is usually that you never considered the use cases of other people or proper server management - mostly because in the days of olde, everyone cobbled together their shell script Jenga towers in seclusion.
If they don't have the problems that other people are having...maybe they don't need that complexity. Different use cases can use different solutions.
An Army unit crossing rocky and muddy terrain might want tracked vehicles and tanks. I don't need that in a vehicle I drive 10 minutes to the office in the city.
Analogies only go so far. Driving an actual tank with a cannon to the grocery store 10 minutes away is ludicrous, but my smartphone has gigabytes of both ram and storage and a CPU that runs at gigahertz frequency, but weighs about the same as a dumb phone that does far less. It's not the 1970's anymore. We can be inefficient and stop counting every single little bit where it doesn't count. Yes, where it counts, we still want to be efficient and mean and lean, like in transcoding, but for starting up services on a laptop with gobs of ram and CPU cycles to spare, the added expense of the tracked vehicle to the grocery store is what, an extra 100 milliseconds of loading data from nvme storage to RAM? Yeah, don't port kubernetes to a microcontroller. Focus on the interface you have with it and let the complexity just sit there, being harmless.
You know it's underdeveloped because everything is described as "basic" or "simple". There's no such thing in any complex design, yet somehow for all his purported seniority, he keeps pumping out designs using the same description.
This is just the homepage. Bah. I was hopeful this might be more! I would genuinely love for some posting on systemd that can actually talk to this.
There's posts on using systemd for this or that, which are fine, but it feels like the pro-systemd camp doesn't find or make opportunities to rally, to express ths vision, where-as the anti-vision (as ever) sells itself, is a magnet that makes common party out of all dissent.
> pro-systemd camp doesn't find or make opportunities to rally
I'm not aware of this sort of parading in open source software. Do you have a past example? I see it as competent people using things that they want to use, with the "better" being preferred, for whatever reasons (including momentum). "Advocating" for an init system seems like something that should be entirely and completely by merit, with maintainability, debugability, and fragility probably being the top metrics for most systems, speed being important for anything with a human sitting in front of it.
Having everyone have to discover the pro/con's of every system themselves, in the dark, with no social media / blogging around it, seems like a very strange position to me.
Technology should be highly social. Especially open source! It in unique-for-technology ways gives us something real to be social over. We can share and unfold and unpack.
This isn't entirely what you are talking about but Architectures of Open Source is still one of the best "what is this" explorations of the tech world out there. I think good advocacy has a lot of these elements (if not so total) in it. In ways that can show the bigger pictures, which AOSA at it's best does! https://aosabook.org/en/
Given that the overwhelming majority of Linux distros have moved to systemd, it's not clear why the pro-systemd camp would need to be finding or making opportunities to rally.
They're spending their time build and improving systemd's set of building blocks.
The drift, the gap between the advanced guard of seasoned enjoyers and the rest of the world that doesn't know what their missing feels like material that deserves coverage to me?
Just stay heads down and keep doing the world, don't share, dont socialize has been the plan so far in a lot of open source. And I think the outcomes would be better if we tried methodologies other than this. Freaking weird that this is just accepted.
Every now and then there's a blog post or presentation that combines several systemd features to show how the result is a better overall system. The All Systems Go conference https://all-systems-go.io/ is a good place to learn about systemd.
Sure. These sites are fine rallying points, absolutely.
But they are also very old, and there's very few efforts I've seen to pitch and promote systemd. It's found and enjoyed by a lot of people (particularly those who had to deal with the tangled haphazard sprawl of cobbled together systems from the before times), it makes nicely visible what is happening on the system, integrates cgroups and good least capabilities practices.
But it feels to me like there ought be more ongoing and vocal celebration of this, enjoyment of this. More rallying points that trumpet the wins, that page people in to how nicely this helps. I want to see more positive tech advocacy, is what I'm saying. This is a fine site, yes, with lots of discussion. I've enjoyed decades of Lennart blog posts too. But I wish there was more. I wish this submission was a blog post of the same title. A fresh take, a fresh spin, on such a worthy-of-treatment topic.
It's on AA
The basic core service supervision in systemd is great. And nearly everything else around it is bad as a result: command-line utilities, filesystem mount handling, virtualization integration, network configuration, etc.
Just look at systemctl's `--help` if you don't believe me. Why does it have `service-log-level` to set the log level for the target, but not a way to actually _view_ the logs? Or why does it have a top-level `--firmware-setup` flag?
Total and utter propaganda, it's underdeveloped steaming garbage
An Army unit crossing rocky and muddy terrain might want tracked vehicles and tanks. I don't need that in a vehicle I drive 10 minutes to the office in the city.
There's posts on using systemd for this or that, which are fine, but it feels like the pro-systemd camp doesn't find or make opportunities to rally, to express ths vision, where-as the anti-vision (as ever) sells itself, is a magnet that makes common party out of all dissent.
I'm not aware of this sort of parading in open source software. Do you have a past example? I see it as competent people using things that they want to use, with the "better" being preferred, for whatever reasons (including momentum). "Advocating" for an init system seems like something that should be entirely and completely by merit, with maintainability, debugability, and fragility probably being the top metrics for most systems, speed being important for anything with a human sitting in front of it.
Technology should be highly social. Especially open source! It in unique-for-technology ways gives us something real to be social over. We can share and unfold and unpack.
This isn't entirely what you are talking about but Architectures of Open Source is still one of the best "what is this" explorations of the tech world out there. I think good advocacy has a lot of these elements (if not so total) in it. In ways that can show the bigger pictures, which AOSA at it's best does! https://aosabook.org/en/
Why would they? Their leader was always "I know better than you, now f off". This kind of approach doesn't need any rallying or evangelism at all.
They're spending their time build and improving systemd's set of building blocks.
Just stay heads down and keep doing the world, don't share, dont socialize has been the plan so far in a lot of open source. And I think the outcomes would be better if we tried methodologies other than this. Freaking weird that this is just accepted.
There is NO good overall diagram of all the moving pieces in systemd.
But if you yank out the "brand" from the URL you'll get the actual site.
But they are also very old, and there's very few efforts I've seen to pitch and promote systemd. It's found and enjoyed by a lot of people (particularly those who had to deal with the tangled haphazard sprawl of cobbled together systems from the before times), it makes nicely visible what is happening on the system, integrates cgroups and good least capabilities practices.
But it feels to me like there ought be more ongoing and vocal celebration of this, enjoyment of this. More rallying points that trumpet the wins, that page people in to how nicely this helps. I want to see more positive tech advocacy, is what I'm saying. This is a fine site, yes, with lots of discussion. I've enjoyed decades of Lennart blog posts too. But I wish there was more. I wish this submission was a blog post of the same title. A fresh take, a fresh spin, on such a worthy-of-treatment topic.
It tends to be the anti-systemd people who keep saying its not just an init system.
However upstart was totally reasonable.