[nodata]

No more easy editing/understanding grub.conf

True, the grub2 config is horrible.

No more easy to understand /etc/init.d

It's a bit more complicated, but not too bad:

Instead of "/etc/init.d/thing restart" you type "systemctl restart thing"

Instead of chkconfig --list, you type "systemctl list-dependencies"

Writing the equivalent script with systemd is much cleaner with less hacks, particularly for launching as different users and doing locking.

No more text log files for system log (journalctl instead)

By default. It's fine once you get the hang of the new syntax:

journalctl --since=today --follow

Watch out for default XFS filesystem instead of EXT4 because it is slower in real world use for databases, etc.

Depends on the workload. Speed is only one part of it. For some benchmarks by phoronix see http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_315...

[ck2]

I'll wait for more benchmarks to be certain but this database test of the 3.10 kernel (which 7 uses) of XFS vs EXT4 is not promising:

http://openbenchmarking.org/prospect/1305166-UT-FILESYSTE20/...

[jerven]

A 160 GB disk is not a real comparison for enterprises. XFS really starts to perform better on disks 1Tb as well as 8 cores and above. EXT4 really starts to creak when moving to filesystems that are 16TB and above. Something that is going to be common in the 7 years that Cent-OS 7 is around.

Of course with the amount of backports of patches that any RedHat kernel has the comparison to mainline version numbers is almost useless :(

For my workload the performance difference is 15% better for XFS than EXT4 on the same 3Tb of SSD with the same workload.

[Alupis]

RHEL pretty much is the standard for enterprise-y distros. I'm pretty confident they weighed the XFS decision very heavily, and in the end chose it for good reason.

In fact, here's an article on the SUSE blog from a year ago discussing why XFS is a great choice for enterprise:

https://www.suse.com/communities/conversations/xfs-the-file-...

[lotsofcows]

systemctl: I don't think anyone cares about a change of command name / syntax, it's the removal of flexible, small, readable, plain text files that is the problem. That the underlying init system of linux no longer follows the linux philosophy boggles the mind.

[frio]

I have to disagree. I've written some stupidly big init.d scripts in my time. Replacing them with:

    [Unit]
    Description=My dumb script
    
    [Service]
    Exec=/usr/local/bin/dumb-script

And no longer caring about PIDs, forking, etc. has been very refreshing.

I agree, however, that systemd feels too monolithic, and I question the wisdom behind journald.

[pling]

Yes they reinvented some text files as the NT event log...

TBH the first thing I do is ship the logs off the box so journald seems a waste of space.