Darknedgy

Just using the example of "df -h" and "mount" ... all the extra stuff that wasn't there 15 years ago, is from systemd. The idea is to auto-enable anything anyone might possibly want, to whatever extent possible, and I don't like it.

I also noticed the /var/credentials/ mounts showing up recently; that's for a systemd feature that neither I nor you actually use, to set encrypted secrets for these services in a way that is exposed only to those services via a centralized framework. If you didn't explicitly use it, it's all empty. But it started years ago with the mounts for efivars, pstore, binfmt-misc, kernel/debug, kernel/security, etc. Sure they're useful sometimes, but they shouldn't be enabled until you have a need and then explicitly enable it. Well, that's my preference, so I always start with minimal debian or arch linux, but even on such minimal systems that have switched to systemd, you get all this stuff enabled and mounted by default.

If you're actually using a tmpfs mount, like perhaps just one on /tmp, then you do want df to tell you how full it is. The problem is that you have 20 fs mounts that are truly useless to you, and IMHO should not be there. And ironically I think systemd developers do have a strong opinionated design vision, and if you don't like it you can pound sand (or use void or alpine for a desktop system I guess), because they have successfully taken over the vast majority of the desktop and server linux ecosystem. Anyway I still like linux for…

I notice you have added an aside :-)

> edit: systemd might be perfect for you or other people, I don't doubt that, it might make things easier for some, in some respects in might do some things better, but if the debate (as it is now) is whether it follows the unix philosophy or not, I don't think one can reasonably make the case that it does

I can and have made that case :-) I guess we'll agree to disagree.

> The way systemd is structured it's next to impossible to use any parts of it outside of systemd

Well that's not true. If you want to swap out a systemd daemon with another one, then you just have to write another service configuration file - see here: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.service.html

> nomenclature is ridiculous (system daemon, what's that even supposed to mean?)

It's the daemon that runs the system. init, you realise, is a daemon process? As in, it's a process that runs in the background that is not under direct user control?

> it suffers greatly from feature creep

A lot of folks quite like the features it has introduced, but that's subjective

> took over logging using a binary format

journald can be configured to do text logging...

> gained basic firewall controls

It's a component of the system, which doesn't have to be used.

> assimilated udev

I just cannot understand why this is such a big deal. udev is a userspace daemon that interacts with the kernel, it has had zero negative effect on anyone and it makes total…

Oh ok. I can't speak for Shapiro as I don't know him outside his research papers and such. However, it seems like he's parroting the blunt, mocking style Linus uses to counter Linus's own claims. That there was a ton of counterevidence [1] since Linus last made those... which the opposition quotes in these debates... means he's intentionally ignoring evidence in favor of speculation. Hence, it might be right to slam him.

Far as coherency, remember that the context is operating systems and applications on one machine. Both AST and [1] show plenty of examples of their approach working without the problems Linus indicates they'll have. Whereas the Linux kernel and apps have experienced most of the problems they (and I) claimed it would due to design and implementation choices. Still experiencing many of the same. So, Linus's confidence in his original beliefs and same misconceptions about alternatives in 2016 isn't justified.

"On a related note, does anyone know whether Linus is interested in operating system research besides linux or if he leaves no time for that? I mean, he started linux as a vocational research project, would seem fitting if he started another one on the side, for experiments. Buit then I'm not sure how much he's writing code or mails."

I have no idea. He didn't indicate it in any I've read but I haven't seen clear statements against it aside from microkernels or anti-UNIX. Seems more like he's got his life-long project he maintains and has made to do…

> distros still using SysV exist if it matters to you

As a BSD user, it wouldn't matter to xem at all. The BSDs never used the AT&T System 5 mechanism, nor its van Smoorenburg clone. It's you the Linux user that it matters to, and even then not nearly as much as you are implying it might matter to someone else. It pretty much hasn't mattered greatly to anyone apart from Linux, and before it Minix, users for 30 years.

There is a fallacy in discussions of systemd, which was called out by the Uselessd Guy years ago. It is the fallacy that only systemd and van Smoorenburg init/rc exist. This is not the case. It wasn't the case for Ubuntu and Fedora. It is especially not so when a BSD is the topic. The BSDs have a quite different family heritage in this area.

But then, AT&T Unix itself actually has a different history to what people who bandy about the erroneous "SysV/systemd" dichotomy think. The init/rc that Miquel van Smoorenburg cloned had actually already been superseded years before Linux was even invented. It wasn't used in the BSD side of the universe at all. But it was only a major mechanism in the AT&T side of the universe for just over half a decade, in the 1980s.

The BSD side of the universe could turn around and observe that they were right all along; were it not for the fact that the other side of the universe largely thought better of the mechanism as well, coming up with the SAF in 1988 and the likes of the SRC in 1991. (-: Of course, the BSD…

It's not a holy war, but it does have a lot of politics, which engineers like to pretend don't exist.

Here is the only solid criticism of systemd I've read that focuses on design (as opposed to bugs that surface from the sprawling throw-it-over-the-wall approach to development): http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0/

Notably, darknedgy hosted/hosts uselessd, which was a lightweight version of systemd. On the whole i think the idea underlying systemd, of graph-based management of services and system state makes more sense that wonky initscripts garbage.

Technical discussion aside, I rarely see mentioned is that, what in my opinion, systemd resembles a lot of "politics-driven-development" i've worked on before. It's sprawling and ambitious--which means bugs--and like a high-politics project there's a certain incentive i perceive to downplay bugs--which also means it's a great way for RHEL to centralize control over things they didn't have say in previously as well as standardize, etc.

I'll go ahead and beat up on it more by saying that if the project is going to be used cudgel-like, I wish it would more loudly start talking about stuff like formal analysis, fuzzing etc., because it would be a great opportunity to promote research-y stuff in the "email your patches" world of OSS development.

Which is fine, but running Arch workstations for nearly ten years now, there's been a lot of gore with systemd... more than i'd like to see in PID1.

Of course, I hate…

The way systemd is structured it's next to impossible to use any parts of it outside of systemd, nomenclature is ridiculous (system daemon, what's that even supposed to mean?), it suffers greatly from feature creep, took over logging using a binary format, gained basic firewall controls , assimilated udev, incorporated a bootloader, ... and some additional things people took/take offence with: introduced to quickly, criticism was shut out instead of being debated, promises were broken, main developers behind it are quite arrogant and often ignorant when dealing with complaints/bugs... et cetera

there is a reason why Lennart is good in stirring up controversy, and it's not because everyone is just against him for no reason.

some further reading/links that might interest you:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/12/459

http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Arguments_against_systemd

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608798/data-center/systemd--harbinger-of-the-linux-apocalypse.html

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608864/data-center/choose-your-side-on-the-linux-divide.html

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608870/linux/you-have-your-windows-in-my-linux.html

http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/10/11/0//

http://suckless.org/sucks/systemd

edit: systemd might be perfect for you or other people, I don't doubt that, it might make things easier for some, in some respects in might do some things better, but if the debate (as it is now) is whether it follows the unix…