• Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
      153·
      8 days ago

      There are many legitimate complaints. Bundling a bunch of services into a single binary goes completely against Unix philosophy. Systemd changing from text to binary logs is my pet peeve.

      Copying how Windows does things isn’t necessarily the best.

      • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
        17·
        8 days ago

        It’s not people disliking it that makes no sense to me; everyone has their opinions.

        I just can’t imagine having the level of anger displayed by some of the most vocal of the anti-systemd crowd.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
          72·
          8 days ago

          If your favorite thing is being ruined and you can’t stop it, I can understand frustration being displayed as anger.

          It’s the same when Windows users get angry at things like OneDrive. It’s forced on them and they don’t want to have to work around removing it like people having to work around how Gnome is integrated into systemd.

          • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
            4·
            8 days ago

            If your favorite thing is being ruined and you can’t stop it, I can understand frustration being displayed as anger.

            That’s the joy of open source though: you can stop it. You are free to use another init system, fork projects, etc. With Windows, you can’t do any of that. Since it’s closed source, workarounds that may be temporary are all you can do.

            • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
              3·
              8 days ago

              That’s the joy of open source though: you can stop it.

              Not really. Unless you are prepared to devote your life to changing the source code to what you want, you have to accept it. And because you forked you are no longer downstream and will have to spend the rest of your life keeping up with patches.

              It’s not much different than Windows. You could write a OneDrive uninstaller but you will have to spend the rest of your life with patches every time MS updates and breaks your uninstaller.

            • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
              01·
              8 days ago

              That’s the joy of open source though: you can stop it. You are free to use another init system, fork projects

              That and a big company looking to manufacture a perceived advantage by aggreasively pushing their shit into the mainstream - good fit to be taken over by IBM - who can bankroll the slapdash dev and bully ISVs, and you’re set.

          • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
            11·
            8 days ago

            your favorite thing is being ruined and you can’t stop it,

            Hardly a ‘favourite thing’; it’s like making a water slide out of a river : Wantonly wrecking something simple, effective and usable for this mishmash isn’t ruining something sacred as much as it is destroying something for no reason to dramatically create something lesser the world didn’t need. Except with more hype, payola, ageism, strong-arm adoption and cult worship.

      • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
        10·
        8 days ago

        Richard P. Gabriel, in his essay “The Rise of Worse-is-Better,” expounds on this theme (see Appendix A). His thesis is that the Unix design philosophy requires that all design decisions err on the side of implementation simplicity, and not on the side of correctness, consistency, or completeness. He calls this the “Worse Is Better” philosophy and shows how it yields programs that are technically inferior to programs designed where correctness and consistency are paramount, but that are evolutionarily superior because they port more easily. Just like a virus.

        The highest achievement of the Unix-aesthetic is to have a command that does precisely one function, and does it well (…) This philosophy, in the hands of amateurs, leads to inexplicably mind-numbing botches like the existence of two programs, “head” and “tail,” which print the first part or the last part of a file, depending. Even though their operations are duals of one another, “head” and “tail” are different programs, written by different authors, and take different options!

        From The Unix Hater’s Handbook

        (I like Linux, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows)

        • everett@lemmy.ml
          1·
          8 days ago

          That head/tail thing is kind of a goofy argument. For one thing they aren’t duals; tail is naturally more complex because the end of a file often changes and the application can optionally keep showing you the new output. Also, the fact that they’re separate applications in the first place is arguably better than the a one-application approach, which would always require a command line switch to select between outputting the start or end of a file. And finally, while I guess this could vary between implementations of head and tail, mine has identical switches for all the common options.

          • hirihit640@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            7 days ago

            They could have been two commands that call a single parent command with different options. For example, imagine if cat had an option -N to restrict the number of lines that was printed, and also an option -t to start from the end. head would just proxy to cat -N and tail would proxy to cat -N -t. Combining the three into a single implementation reduces total LoC and opportunity for bugs. Also reduces total maintenance burden.

            I believe busybox is like this actually - a ton of Unix commands in a single package. It’s used by Alpine Linux, a tiny and performance linux distro commonly used by docker containers.

            • Kairos@lemmy.today
              0·
              7 days ago

              The way they do it is fundamentally different. Head just reads until number of newlines is the target number. Tail has to first read the entire file and keep a buffer of the file and/or offsets for each line ending to determine what the last 10 (or so) lines are.

              This idiot (Gabriel) probably thinks exclusively in the real world paper line analog.

              I also just looked at each program’s command line options and they’re identical. Less things only Tail can do (because they’re fundamentally different operations)

              • qqq@lemmy.world
                2·
                7 days ago

                This idiot (Gabriel) probably thinks exclusively in the real world paper line analog.

                Typical of Internet discourse to just immediately brand someone you disagree with an idiot… That “idiot” is one of the designers of common lisp, among other things. You’re allowed to disagree with a smart person too you know

                • Kairos@lemmy.today
                  02·
                  7 days ago

                  OK. Designers of programming languages can be idiots.

                  Lisp is a bad language IMO. Way too mathy. Nobody programs like that anymore for a reason.

        • Kairos@lemmy.today
          0·
          8 days ago

          “This program sucks because it doesn’t come with the world’s most confusing GUI and doesn’t do a trillion things”

          If you ask this person what “technically inferior” actually means you’d probably get a different answer every day.

      • shininghero@pawb.social
        81·
        8 days ago

        There’s also a few cases of feature and scope creep, including the infamous systemd-resolved.
        Your job is to launch services, manage logs, and do timers and relaunches on a service crash. DNS is out of scope, leave that to existing services.

        • caseyweederman@lemmy.ca
          2·
          7 days ago

          You’ve misunderstood something.
          systemd-resolved is one of the services that uses systemd’s service management system
          You’re saying “don’t use this service management system to manage your services”

      • mmmm@sopuli.xyz
        6·
        8 days ago

        The other day on a thread here about “people who use other init systems, why?” and i wrote about my experience with systemd and git downvoted for mysterious reasons. Other people that did the same as me also got their downvote sixpacks. And now they want to make it seem like it’s just the people that hate systemd the annoying ones…

        • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
          1·
          7 days ago

          Hey, just wanted to let you know that I downvoted your comment. Mainly because I think it’s funny when people can’t come up with compelling arguments and complain about being downvoted instead, but also because I’m part of the conspiracy making sure that people vocally complaining about systemd seem really annoying and wrong.

        • [object Object]@lemmy.ca
          0·
          8 days ago

          There are too many people who use downvote to disagree with cogent and well written points.

          I try to only downvote if something is obviously trolling, in bad taste, or wildly stupid.

      • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
        5·
        8 days ago

        You know it’s not a single binary, right ? Systemd is a bunch of different, mostly single usage, mostly optional, binaries. As far as Unix philosophy goes, Systemd is definitely following the principles, which is not the case for the Kernel for instance.

        As for the binary logs, I used to hate it, but then, not having to manually parse logs for filtering is really nice.

        I do have my issues with Systemd, but it not following the Unix philosophy is not one of them.

      • hirihit640@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        7 days ago

        I was annoyed with binary logs until I found cases where compressing logs was literally 10x or more improvement, like if you ran into a bug that just repeatedly spit the same log.

        And I know logrotate compresses text logs too but if you’re going to compress logs into tar.gz, might as well just make it binary by default and have a nice interface (journald) on top

    • realitaetsverlust@piefed.zipEnglish
      52·
      8 days ago

      It’s popular to hate systemd. Just as it’s popular to hate PHP. It makes people feel like they’re part of an “elite group” that are above these things. Most of the time, people can’t even explain why they hate it. Just ask someone why he hates systemd and in 95% of all cases, you won’t get a straight answer, except, of course: “It ViOlAtEs LiNuX pHiLoSoPhY” yes timmy and how does that affect you while browsing and playing games, because that’s all you do on your PC.

      I’m not saying that there are no reasons to dislike systemd for some people. There might be a handful of them who genuinely dislike it and have justified reasons for it. However, an overwhelming majority of the people that hate it don’t even have a fucking clue what it is, let alone why it’s dislikeable, they just read on twitter or reddit that it sucks. And that’s it. It’s a bit like a big streamer saying: “Game XYZ is shit” and a majority of that streamers following will think its shit.

      • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        8 days ago

        As someone who designs systems as part of his job, “it violates Linux philosophy” is a perfectly valid reason to hate something as critical and low level as an init system.

        I think “hate” is a strong word, mind, but following consistent design patterns and constraining scope matters. The problem is that it’s one of those things that doesn’t tend to matter until shit hits the fan.

        The scope creep exponentially raises the efforts needed to properly test, troubleshoot, secure, and just generally work with the project code. The unique design creates rough edges for integrations with other pre-existing systems and tools, while also raising the effort needed for troubleshooting when something goes wrong.

        There’s also the whole “Chesterton’s Fence” aspect to a lot of it, where the project runner’s overall attitude has been dismissive of existing conventions and separation of functionality.

        There’s a lot of perfectly valid reasons to dislike it. That said, I think full on hate is extreme for an aspect of the overall Linux “system” and “user experience” that most users never interact with. Like having an opinion on the order your BIOS handles things in.

        • mabeledo@lemmy.world
          2·
          7 days ago

          Which part of the “Linux philosophy” does systemd “violate”.

          The scope creep exponentially raises the efforts needed to properly test, troubleshoot, secure, and just generally work with the project code.

          I keep seeing these words, “scope creep”, in this thread, and I don’t think most people understand what they mean.

          The scope of systemd is an init and service manager, and any basic service required for a minimal, coherent system to work. If you think that it goes too far, then we should be talking about the Linux kernel and all the stuff it has that could run on userland and doesn’t, or coreutils, which essentially is the shell equivalent to systemd without the integration.

          • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
            1·
            7 days ago

            I keep seeing these words, “scope creep”, in this thread, and I don’t think most people understand what they mean.

            Which could apply to GNOME or KDE given they do more than just desktop environments.

    • nil@piefed.caEnglish
      03·
      8 days ago

      I don’t particularly hate systemd, but when they said they are considering incorporating age verification stuff I switched to void.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      03·
      8 days ago

      the virulently anti-systemd crowd are among the ones that baffle me the most.

      Tell me you need to learn more about scope creep, Unix and system design using different words.

    • BladeFederation@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      8 days ago

      The effort required is to install a distros without it. That’s it. Some without it are even quite popular, like MX Linux.

      Clarification: I don’t care either way about systemd, just saying, it requires no effort to avoid.

      • ThunderComplex@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        8 days ago

        Yeah I meant the effort required to change a already running distro to use something other than systemd seems too daunting. ofc if you have the luxury to reinstall a fresh distro its very easy

        • BladeFederation@piefed.socialEnglish
          0·
          7 days ago

          I’ve gotta say, I didn’t expect this argument on a Linux enthusiast sub in the Fediverse. A few hours to restore backup files and configuration files is not a luxury lol. I mean, I get really busy sometimes and don’t even have a few hours to spare to re-image, but damn. I find time eventually. You probably have a backup system in place already too. If you care enough to complain, you care enough to fix the problem.

          I am baffled by the “daunted” comment. I thought about commenting “skill issue”, but this just isnt even the case here. You’re already past that. You moved off Windows or macOS, you probably tried several distros before landing on one. I can’t imagine the venn diagram of people who care about systemd and the people who are afraid to try a new distros are anything but two separate circles. And I can assure you non-systemd distros are not really any different in practice. I think I ran into one niche app that wouldn’t work without systemd on antiX. Otherwise, same old same ole.

          • ThunderComplex@lemmy.today
            0·
            7 days ago

            Honestly this is just a me thing with my brain. I have VERY high PC setup inertia. If my system’s running, I’ll keep it that way. And if there’s a problem (like my current Linux being actually fucked), first reflex is to get a panic attack.
            Was probably wrong of me to generalize my inertia here especially in the Linux community so I’ll apologize for that.

  • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    7 days ago

    It’s like that very very old joke…

    Geek: “So then I brought the girl home…”
    Excited crowd: “and then?”
    Geek: “then I pushed the keyboard and sat her on my desk…”
    Excited crowd: “woah, you have a PC? What processor do you have? Do you overclock? What cooling do you use?”

    • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipEnglish
      0·
      7 days ago

      He presents well, but many of his arguments beg þe question – þey assume false premises. I’m not going to dissect þe entire hour-long video, but as an example þe main premise he starts wiþ is þat people who don’t like systemd don’t like it because it isn’t familiar. I doubt þis is true except in his BSD domain. I’ve been using systemd since before it grew into þe monstrosity it now is, and I’m equally comfortable writing systemd services and timers, and am familiar wiþ þe commands. I’ve learned to not like it as it’s grown and gotten worse, and I’d guess þat a survey of anti-systemd people will show most of þem use systemd enough þat þe presumption of disliking it because it’s “different” is wildly wrong.

      I also take exception to his discounting þe value of mix-and-match systems. It’s funny þat he disparages “contempt” and þen tosses out negative statements like “having to cobble togeþer a bunch of different pieces of software,” as if somehow diversity and choice is bad. It’s such a strange mentality for someone from þe BSD community.

  • OldChicoAle@lemmy.world
    1·
    8 days ago

    Linux users: come join the community! It’s free, safe, and accessible!

    Also Linux users: you fucking swine? You do WHAT?!

    Like just be happy more people are joining the community and contributing. Shesh

    • iocase@lemmy.zip
      1·
      7 days ago

      I once saw a guy standing on the edge of a bridge, about to jump. I ran over and said, “Stop! Don’t do it!”

      He said, “Why shouldn’t I? Nobody cares about me.”

      I said, “Well, do you run Linux?”

      He said, “Yes.”

      I said, “Me too! Desktop or server?”

      He said, “Server.”

      I said, “Me too! Debian-based or RPM-based?”

      He said, “Debian-based.”

      I said, “Me too! Debian stable or Ubuntu LTS?”

      He said, “Debian stable.”

      I said, “Me too! systemd or an alternative init?”

      He said, “Alternative init.”

      I said, “Me too! runit, OpenRC, or s6?”

      He said, “s6.”

      I said, “Me too! s6 with s6-rc as the service manager, or s6 with 66?”

      He said, “s6-rc.”

      I said, “Me too! s6-rc with the full supervision tree defined declaratively, or with hand-rolled run scripts?”

      He said, “Hand-rolled run scripts.”

      I said, “Die, Poettering apologist!” And I pushed him off.

  • printf("%s", name);@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    33·
    8 days ago

    Nothing like a lewd late afternoon meme to stir up my anxiety and dysphoria. 😭

    Now, to the matter at hand. systemd is great. I only moved away from it because being handed all the automation on a silver platter was hampering my Linux learning. Everything had preconfigured .service files and [...]ctl commands.