On 02/03/2014 05:11, Eric Newcomb wrote:
> Technical issues aside, I went through the list of members of the
> tech-ctte, found here:
https://www.debian.org/intro/organization. I
> searched each name on the list on Google, and I can't honestly find
> any evidence that the committee is
"stacked" with Redhat and/or
> Canonical employees. I'd like to see some proof of these assertions
> before I'd give any credence to claims of conspiracy.
I also disapprove of such claims. It's unfortunate that the CTTE split
in the way that it did. But I followed the discussion on bug 727708 with
considerable interest; it was a serious, open technical discussion. You
need proper evidence, not just suspicions, to start chucking around such
claims.
> I am not even close to advanced enough to have much of an opinion on
> the matter, but if anyone would like to explain to me why they feel
> that System V is superior, I'd be interested to hear your arguments,
> provided they're based in fact, technical information and practical
> knowledge, and not in nostalgia, emotion or resistance to change.
First off, I'm not a Debian Developer. The way Debian is constituted,
it's ultimately up to DDs to decide what direction Debian takes (so I
understand). So my remarks below should be read in the light of the fact
I'm not a DD, just a user - I don't speak ith any authority.
I don't believe that SysV is superior to *any* other init system. I
think very few people are arguing that it's really superior to systemd.
I think it's unfortunate that the CTTE didn't consider OpenRC at all.
Systemd scares me. As far as I can see it does a lot of things right (in
some cases these are things that no other contender does right); I'm not
going to try to
enumerate those things, that's been one elsewhere. But
the way systemd has been designed, in particular the way it has borged
dbus and syslog, is a real problem for me.
I try to build systems that only run those daemons the system really
needs. This is partly for security, and partly because I have several
systems that are resource-challenged. Many of those systems have no GUI,
and until now needed no dbus. I try to run nothing that depends on
polkit or consolekit (it's a coincidence that those components are also
Lennart's work).
But the systemd approach is to use dbus for all IPC; and dbus is now
part of systemd. Dbus is complicated; I don't begin to understand it.
SystemD places dbus at the heart of PID1, and that IMO was a
questionable technical decision.
SystemD isn't just an init system; it also uses the CGROUPs kernel
feature to manage user sessions. I don't understand why that
functionality was incorporated into the init program. An init system,
IMO, should restrict itself to bringing up services.
I *really* don't want binary logs. I realise that I can make the new
journald pass all log output to a text-based syslog daemon; but then I'm
running a journald that I don't need.
Similarly I have no need for a logind: even those of my systems that
have a GUI are not multi-seat.
If only systemd had been designed as a smorgasbord - a set of components
designed to work in concert, but each being susceptible to being
omitted
in favour of its predecessor, then I would have been much less
uncomfortable about it.
I think it's great that Debian provides the only mainstream platform
that supports The Hurd an kFreeBSD kernels, although I don't use them.
The choice of systemd as a default init system will inevitably
marginalise those kernels in Debian, which I think is sad.
I do hope that those working on writing standalone components that
implement the various systemd interfaces are successful (and soon). I
will probably be sticking with Wheezy/SysV as long as possible, or until
the prospects of those efforts becomes clear. I wish I had the chops to
contribute to those projects - I believe they have the potential to
match the strengths of systemd,
while avoiding the birds-nest of
dependencies that makes systemd seem such a heavy, take-it-or-leave-it deal.
Of course, the CTTE's decision concerned the *default* init system for
Jessie. Other init systems will continue to be packaged. So it's not an
apocalypse.
But systemd does *so much*, and so many other distros have decided to
adopt it, that I fear that applications will come to rely on its
features; the other init systems will be marginalised, and eventually
wither. We will then all become dependent on Red Hat for a large part of
our critical infrastructure. Red Hat is a billion-dollar commercial
operation, with goals that are very different from Debian's. So I fear
the CTTE's decision may in time come to harm the Debian project.
Anyway, those are some of *my* reasons for viewing the CTTE's decision
with apprehension. I hope you think they're based in fact, and not
nostalgia or emotion.
Incidentally, the arguments I've given arise from the way I generally
use GNU/Linux. People who use GNU/Linux mainly as a desktop, on beefy
hardware, will tend to have a greater appreciation of systemd's
strengths, several of which benefit only desktop users.
NOTE that the subject-line is incorrect; *eight* people decided the fate
of Debian.
--
Jack.
[🔎] 53130DBF.2010702@jackpot.uk.net" target="_blank">https://lists.debian.org/
[🔎] 53130DBF.2010702@jackpot.uk.net