Re: Survey answers part 3: systemd is not portable and what this means for our ports
[I am almost certainly going to regret this.]
On 07/20/2013 12:52 PM, Paul Tagliamonte wrote:
(On my phone, I hate this ui, sorry for the CC Russ)
On Jul 19, 2013 5:30 PM, "Russ Allbery" <rra@debian.org> wrote:
I would *hope* a lot of Debian developers would do things like
that, for any of the options! There's no substitute for actually
trying the software and seeing how easy it is to use, how well it
works, and how difficult it is to support. There are a bunch of
good reasons to install packages, even if one isn't going to use
them regularly. Among other things, it's often the easiest way to
read the documentation so that one knows what people are even
talking about!
Yes. This. I was a pretty avid syatemd "hater", but having used it
for a solid 6 months, I can't imagine using anything else. I find
myself installing systemd as one of the first things I do when I get
a new install.
If you're laying down systemd criticism - *try* systemd for a month.
For my part, despite having not personally used it I'm not (and haven't
recently, and I hope ever, been) opposed to systemd's functionality, or
even necessarily to its design - just to its apparent philosophy, and
where that philosophy might take it (and anyone who adopts and therefore
comes to rely on it) in the future.
Leaving aside fears about what upstream might decide to do at some point
(e.g. the "make udev require systemd" proposal), much of that objection
simply comes down to how difficult it looks like it would be to switch
*away* from systemd, once it becomes entrenched.
Making the switch away from the entrenched sysvinit is visibly very
difficult, at least as a social matter, even in the environment we have.
systemd et al., by virtue of the integration which is apparently one of
their selling points and the "proprietary"[0] interfaces they seem to
use, look like they would create an environment where a similar switch
to "whatever comes next" would be even harder - at least partly as a
technical matter, rather than a social one.
Similarly, in an environment where systemd is entrenched, setting up a
system which doesn't use it (for whatever reason that might be
desirable, e.g. a "toy" system of some sort or an experimental
environment or a system with extremely limited resources) without losing
other functionality looks like it might be considerably harder than
setting up something which doesn't use sysvinit without losing
functionality not provided by the init scripts currently is.
I could easily be wrong about both of those, and I hope I am, but so far
I don't think I've seen anything which even tries to convince me
otherwise.
[0] Meaning approximately "we create our own language and talk it to
ourselves, and anyone else who wants to talk to us has to learn our
language", not intending to imply "undocumented" or "legally restricted"
or anything of the sort. This isn't a very good term for what I mean,
but I couldn't find a better one.
--
The Wanderer
Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.
Every time you let somebody set a limit they start moving it.
- LiveJournal user antonia_tiger
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