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/
You're arguing a point I never made. Experience can be shared without the intent to manipulate/persuade towards a common cause, which is the definition of "rally". A blog post/social media about experience of use is NOT a rally, and a rally is NOT required, and in fact makes a post suspect, because that's means the person is probably hiding negative aspects, with their intent to promote, rather than just showing reality.
You're taking a slant on the rally, to turn a possible downside into something greviously fatal. That's not intrinsic in what I was talking about. We can have clear identifying gathering points, touchstones, blog posts, etc that call the cause without having to hide and conceal. This argument you are making is extremely uncharitable, and assumes bad motives from the start.
This is just a descent into more fervor, saying nothing. Let's skip the stupid lawyerly word picking of zero value contestation. Please.
I think the macro subject stands. In neither the old world where everyone was doing their own thing nor the new one where >50% use systemd to run a significant amount of their systems: in neither case was or is there a strong practice of sharing and doing the work of exchange (certainly not without counterexample, yada yada, and I've already provided some in other threads, namely AOSA, but I stand by my assertion here). We can ignore which path is better, and simply say: both paths should do more to create broad discussion, ideally that is constructive, that covers what is working, the big picture outlook, and the negative sides of the world they're living in.
I think of that as rallying not to zealotry, but as rallying to understanding, trying to draw people in, so we can see and perceive what are in fact stable, alluring points of the world. So that we can let people know what an option might be. I think the Din and Darkness is winning against those who want to gather and protect the light. The anti forces are everywhere and persistent, the doers are quiet and busy. Civilization would be healthier with more deliberate work to share the light, to show and exchange specifics (as most systemd touching blog posts do) but also broader pictures, wider stances.
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.
Well, yes. Why would there be? It's a piece of software designed to turn all distros into Red Hat, and then sell consulting services to manage the untameable complexity. Legibility, composability, these would defeat the purpose.
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.
As someone that tried systemd init early on, without bias (I have no emotional attachment to how things start on my computer), it was incredibly clear that they would win.
Is your Civilization victory a Science, Military or Cultural one? I think that depends on how and if the technology is socialized and spoken of.
If people feel like it's an oppressor, something they don't understand that has rolled in, and now defacto is (is shipped in every distribution of note): it feels like a Military victory. Over them. It sparks no joy.
Appealing to the nerds can be a strong science victory. Preach all your amazingness. I personally can go on and on and on about how awesome it is that systemd offers workload isolation, least privileges, cgroups for juggling priorities. I love that mdns kind of just works for me, and integrates well with my resolver. There's little science-y reasons.
But there lurk Two Cultures problems everywhere. And figuring out how to bridge the technical to the world, how to sing praises, how to get the world to be interested in relating to, engaging in, giving it the ability to share in some of your wonder and awe: that is what turns Science Victory into a Cultural Victory. And it's what good worthy interesting projects deserve. And it should be an act we do, and help build. We should make appeals to the world, try to get them interested in relating to the upsides, and the downsides to, to give them something worth engaging. I feel like the negative creeps have absolutely slammed their way to Two Cultures wins, to appealing to the world with negativity, and I think some more deliberate, caring, thoughtful work and blogging would make a huge difference in building cultural momentum, in sealing in what ought be a Cultural Victory. That those who know systemd reasonably well largley agree with already, but that many people do not see or understand.
> I personally can go on and on and on about how awesome it is that systemd offers workload isolation, least privileges, cgroups for juggling priorities. I love that mdns kind of just works for me, and integrates well with my resolver.
So.... mDNS works out of the box on any glibc system with libnss-mdns and a running avahi-daemon - not "kind of" works, just Works. cgroups are a kernel feature that is quite straightforward to use without systemd. "Workload isolation" and "least privileges" are vague but seem to me to just be describing cgroups again, or just general permissions. I realize that this was an off the cuff remark, not a blog post in defense of systemd, but you must know that every time a systemd skeptic reads a list like this, full of "features" that work fine without it, the impression is only further reinforced that what systemd really provides is marketing.
That you don't know what I'm talking about when I say least least privileges isn't stunning. Because almost no one took any precautions with how processes ran and only some people realize you should! Even though systemd makes it so so easy, and integrates many many different mechanisms and systems for locking down what procesess can do and what they have access to. SuSe has an ok page, but this is barely the tip of the iceberg they are covering. There are temporary users, sandboxed filesystems, all sorts of stuff more! https://documentation.suse.com/smart/security/html/systemd-s...
"cgroups are a kernel feature that is quite straightforward to use without systemd". Oh, you've used cgconfigparser? You run your services via cgexec? You found cgrulesengd to be pleasant and productionally operizationable? Or did you have a bash /etc/init.d/set-my-cgroups with 30 hardcoded lines of things twiddling /sys/fs/cgroups files? C'mon my man. No one did either of these! Or at least very very few! Today Cgroups work incredibly well, out of the box, with no thought, and have a very sensible coherent pattern of use, that benefit all Linux users. And which is incredibly tweakable. Since systemd. Because of systemd. You're not being remotely intellectually honest & your suggestion that this was "straightforward" maybe comes from you being a master sysop with decades of experience for who this came second nature, and if that's so I think you have no idea how most code ran. But I think you are just blowing smoke, making up nonsense.
I too ran years of libnss-mdns and avahi-daemon (another Lennart project btw). It worked for a decade, was fine. I'm glad systemd-networkd (advertising) and systemd-resolved (finding) just integrate these concerns for me, alongside everything else they just integrate amazingly, a drop-in file like everything else if I want. It's easier to scope & keep on top of which networks I do what mdns on. This is the weakest win of these three but it's still to me a sigificant win.
To reframe: I realize that this was an off the cuff take-down, not a blog post in aggression of systemd, but you must know that every time a systemd hater tries to throw salt like this, full of "do we really win" that no one ever did before, the impression is only further reinforced that what the haters really got is nothing.
Systemd composes incredibly well, with the way etc drop in files work. With the consistency of how it has different unit types that work together. With how units can BindsTo= and have After= and other patterns. There's a pretty amazing toolkit here that relates multiple parts together to form a very cohesive explorable and regular system, that many people know and understand. It helps you make really good use of all sorts of kernel capabilities like cgroups, like their namespaces, to help you juggle/constrain annoying system-hogs, to maintain better responsiveness, to lock down access to daemons. This is still just the tip, of a mono-repo of many projects all of which have common operational patterns and nice tooling, almost all (except to much hew & cry & perhaps rightfully so: journald) of which be disabled. "Just marketing" is a statement professing profound disconnect & ignorance.
systemd makes it so so easy, and integrates many many different mechanisms and systems for locking down what procesess can do and what they have access to.
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.
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.