[zeveb]

After awhile, anyone who deals with Lennart just starts yelling, because he is impossible to reason with. He's very intelligent, and absolutely convinced that his is the One True Correct Right Way. It doesn't matter than hundreds or thousands of voices oppose him; I don't think it would matter if every single human being on earth opposed him.

What makes it worse is that he's often not completely wrong. Linux did need something like PulseAudio, something like Avahi and something like systemd. But his reach exceeds his grasp (which probably applies to us all, as I've found on my own projects), which leads to the well-known problems of PulseAudio & systemd.

I don't actually want him to quit the Linux world. But I wish he would scale back his ambitions just a tad, and consider that maybe — just maybe — other people have some good points, and valid concerns.

And also Windows/DOS are not terribly good design exemplars.

[SahAssar]

I get what you are saying, but

> It doesn't matter than hundreds or thousands of voices oppose him; I don't think it would matter if every single human being on earth opposed him.

makes it seem like everyone that uses systemd hates it or sees the same flaws as you or the other people yelling.

I and many others started admin'ing during or slightly before the systemd transition (ubuntu14->16 and rhel6->7) and have found it a much easier path to running services in a sane way than before. It was certainly possible before it, but with systemd I can do it a lot better and easier than I would have been able with previous inits.

For every person saying that systemd made things worse I expect there to be 10 silent sysadmins that appreciate what it did. I have no evidence of that, but that is my experience.

[loudtieblahblah]

It does a lot more than manages services.

It breaks screen and tmux functionality, leaks DNS when connected to a VPN, it riddled with "wontfix" security vulnerabilities stemming from a refusal to be POSIX compliant.

Systemd replaced udev for crying out loud.

[SahAssar]

That might be true and still not contradict what I said. A lot of the systemd critics still seem to not see what it actually did for most people using it. You're free to hate it and some of that is certainly justified, but don't assume that the contrary opinion is based on uneducated or misguided opinions.

Most of what I see/use of systemd I like. Some of it I don't, and some of it is a dumpsterfire. I think I could say the same or worse for any ambitious software project.

As for the security issues I certainly place those in the dumpsterfire category and I'd like for the systemd team to handle them better.

[inferiorhuman]

You know what? Systemd generally works for me. Sure there's teeth gnashing at having all my userland tools upended. I've frustration at the unit file specs. But it mostly works.

That, however, does not mean that systemd is anything other than a giant fucking dumpster fire. Looking at how Lennart interacts with other Linux devs, how he reacts to bug and security reports, looking at the lack of code review and the shoddy design decisions that get baked into systemd… it appears as if systemd mostly works through sheer luck. That sort of approach may be acceptable when you're talking GNU vs X emacs, but it's absolutely the wrong approach to such a critical piece of software.

The other thing I'm missing is any improvement. All of this upheaval has been for what? Assuaging Lennart's ego? Not good enough.

> You're free to hate it and some of that is certainly justified, but don't assume that the contrary opinion is based on uneducated or misguided opinions.

When the article being discussed consistently wrongly characterizes and dismisses technical arguments against systemd I think it's fair to say it's a bit more than misguided.

> As for the security issues I certainly place those in the dumpsterfire category and I'd like for the systemd team to handle them better.

Yeah, no. Security as an afterthought is a bad approach in general but it's even worse when you're talking about low level bits like PID 1, the kernel, boot loader, etc. This right here is enough reason to run, screaming far far away from systemd.

You know the best part though? I've had plenty of frustration with upstart (especially with features they've decided to remove over the years). None of this compares to the heavy handed, anti-social bullshit that seems to engulf systemd. Hell, I recently bought a replacement laptop. I even entertained the idea of a Linux machine. Systemd and its effect on Linux on the desltop was one of the top reasons I went with another MacBook Pro.

[apple4ever]

I agree. I love systemd as compared to the other ways (though I think launchd is pretty nice too).