[Jedd]

I know it's pretty weak to say so, but that universality is a result of the stage of the migration -- that particular problem will undeniably reduce over time.

But you're right that there are some work flows and use cases where it'll bite you big time. A recent migration to systemd on my Debian lvm-on-dmcrypt laptop caused me some hours of pain, so I'm not unsympathetic.

Back in the early 90's I was involved in managing a very large network of MS-DOS + Windows 3.x machines. The migration to Windows 95 introduced the same concerns, with similar responses. That's the nice thing about working in IT long enough.

[onli]

Thanks for the sympathy ;)

> The migration to Windows 95 introduced the same concerns, with similar responses.

For me, that is the second big large negative point, apart from the missing universal access (which like you said might get better over time, maybe). This route of having a binary journal with its dedicated journal viewers feels awful lot like being on windows. It's the same negative feeling I get when I get in contact with Gnomes regedit clone. Stepping back to Windows 95 is hardly progress.

[Jedd]

Yeah, I may has mis-worded that sentiment. My point is, and I'm not the first to have noticed, that much of IT seems to be profoundly cyclical. Not necessarily bad, other than the implication we don't really learn from the mistakes of each cycle. Compare and contrast the trisolarans.

Anyway, memory may be failing, but the big problem was one of configuration data (typically small volumes) that used to be kept in .ini (text) files, now being shuffled into the registry. There wasn't a size or complexity issue that drove that move, unlike the challenge of managing and merging many large log files from disparate services on multiple hosts.

In the particular case the toolkit did eventually catch up, but it took a very long time (3-5 years for us, I think, to recover the same level of deployment, configuration, automation). With Journal, in contrast, the toolkit's already there, and ultimately I'm just not convinced that 'I don't have Journal tools installed on this computer' is a persuasive argument against the tool.

I'm not saying there are no compelling arguments, just that one isn't.