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by theandrewbailey 20 days ago
It violates the Unix philosophy of 'do only one thing and do it well', but personally, it has never been a problem for me.

I had a nightmare last week wherein I read a headline that systemd was writing its own kernel. When I woke up I realized it was a possibility, after all it has replaced GRUB. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-boot
6 comments
gf000 20 days ago
Linux kernel, X server, web browsers all seriously violate the Unix philosophy.

And to be perfectly honest, it's nothing more than a philosophy - it's not some universal truth, e.g. a browser by definition is not doing "one small thing" and complex workloads are better organized by monolithic software to a certain degree.

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ChocolateGod 20 days ago
I've noticed a trend that the same people who complain systemd does too much also have a strong affinity for the X server... with it's built in print server!
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zamadatix 20 days ago
There is a lot systemd violates in regards to the traditional Unix philosphy rules. The one about do one thing well is probably the most arguable though since systemd is more a set of functionality across a ton of binaries, each with a more focused purpose. Where it differs is in how those interact vs a "normal" collection of Linux binaries where it's expected to be easy to swap out an individual component and still talk to the rest without implementing things like binary formats.
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happymellon 20 days ago
> It violates the Unix philosophy of 'do only one thing and do it well'

How? This is really where it's basically a marketing fail.

Even your own link for system-boot shows that it is it's own rebranding of gummi-boot. It's not part of the init system, they just have an identically named project which has 100 utilities in it. It's dumb and it's community hostile.

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Yizahi 20 days ago
Funny how people in this topic at the same time complain about systemd being multi-featured and then complain about abandonment of X11 in favor of of the more focused Wayland. :)

It seems to me that the real differentiator is not the number of features but software release date :)

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Jnr 20 days ago
> after all it has replaced GRUB.

With unified kernel images there is no need for grub or any other bootloader anymore. And UKI simplifies boot configuration and helps improving security in some aspects.

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TiredOfLife 20 days ago
Is there any piece of modern linux that follows that Unix philosophy?
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