Re: If Linux Is About Choice, Why Then ...
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On Sat, Apr 08, 2017 at 12:06:19AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 04/07/2017 08:19 PM, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> >[snip]
> >>Why no one looks at their project and sees the people
> >>involved when making a statistic up for the amount of dissatisfied
> >>systemd users I don't know.
> >
> >That's an argument for another day.
>
> Back when the systemd FLAME WAR was prominent, I followed a link to
> a justification link written by someone on the systemd development
> team.
It's much, much more complicated than that.
Note that UNIX systems have been decidedly multi-user, even long
before the SysV init (considerer "old" these days) even existed.
So we always had multi-user: the trend is rather the other way:
since everyone has his/her own gadget, complex things like desktop
environments tend to do silly things spoiling the multi-user roots
of UNIX.
There was another widespread init (BSD), which still has its places,
and which (ironically) brought things to the table which were given
up by SysV (namely process monitoring). What SysV brought was some
kind of modularity: you had one file per "package" instead of having
one huge file you had to edit each time you changed a package.
But it paid a price for that, and it could have been done much
better.
Personally I find SysV ugly, but in ways which could be made better.
What systemd brings (mainly[1]) to the table is the decoupling of
different "parts" of init: just imagine you have one service (let's
say a web server) which depends on some other thing (say a file
system being present via ummm... NFS, but it could be a RAID or a
memory stick, you get the idea). With a SysV init you can't express
that: you would have to script it explicitly. With systemd you
can express that the web server is only to be started once that
file system appears.
So I'd rather say systemd is an adaptation to a much more volatile
hardware landscape (which previously was only known in big iron)
comming to the masses these days (just think USB). It corresponds
to a more "dynamic" configuration.
There are, of course alternative ways to skin the cat.
Note that I'm a decided systemd opponent, and that might shine
through the above. Feel free to correct any misrepresentation.
regards
[1] Yeah: a "declarative" configuration, which may be considered
as a plus (less obscure side effects) or as a minus (stronger
separation between "priests" and "mortals").
- -- tomás
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