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by gavinhoward 1462 days ago
systemd was the first init/supervision system I used. I was able to understand how to use it pretty well.

I still hate it.

Sorry, but understanding systemd does not preclude hating it.

In fact, it's because of the "haters" that I decided to dive deep into what init/supervision systems are and can be. Without that deep dive, I would have always thought that systemd was great. Afterward, however, I know just how wrong that is.

If a developer's only interaction with init systems was SysV init, yes, of course, systemd is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

But systemd could have been so much better...

Disclaimer: I'm writing an init/supervision system to be so much better. And simpler. Orders of magnitude simpler. Oh, and one that doesn't reach its fingers into every part of your OS.

tl;dr: systemd is better than SysV init, but it's not the end-all-be-all of init/supervision systems.

1 comments

I have similar experience with PulseAudio. First look: it's unstable: Second look: it's fairly well thought out. Third look (using it as a programmer to implement some audio routing thing): it's kind of garbage. I am now using Pipewire, and Pipewire is pretty great and very flexible because it has the right foundations, so it can do anything.