by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Monday July 03, 2017 @05:36AM (#54733449)
That's a problem with Systemd. It's a pretty decent idea with a sub-par execution and a crappy way of dealing with an inherent problem.
If by "decent" you mean "spectacularly stupid, fantastically bad, terrible to depraved depths, will never work properly", then yes.
The problems with basically anything written by poettering and crew start with them being... let's be polite here, not very good with this "software architecture" thingy. Their approaches to any problem they're setting out to solve, real or imagined, are baroque, juvenile, overly complex, brittle, prone to spectacular breakage, and so is their entire everything else.
Yes, there are problems with the software they're seeking to replace, but that doesn't mean their solutions are anything of the sort. We're seeing time and again that their improvements are in fact detriments and so even as a simple user you're typically better off without.
It also doesn't mean the problems cannot be solved some other way. In fact, we have at least a dozen replacements for sysvinit, fully half of which would certainly better than systemd. So there really is no point to use their software at all except because you like sticking to fantastiterribad ideas.
Among poettering and crew's many failings is that they have no truck at all with "the Unix philosophy". If they are dimly aware of where that came from, at best they'll wilfully do something else, just to "be different". Linux' own dave cutler, with fanclub, if you will.
This is quite damaging. So why are red hat still backing poettering and crew? In short, politics. They're having their lunch eaten by oracle, yet they're bound by the GPL, so they're trying a different tack. And for them it's working fine, to the point that many other linux distributions are following their lead.
Which, frankly, is entirely stupid from the other projects' users' PoV. But too many in the community don't grasp the finer points of what's really going on (did you know red hat and oracle are in a corporate war of domination, with oracle doing a good cuckoo impression?) so they'll just bob along with the currents, to their detriment.
I don't expect poettering and crew to understand that they're red hat's useful idiots in this, mind. They might, but from their works I'm inferring they're just not that bright.
So the simple solution is really quite simpler than your proposal: Do away with the poettering crap. Just out with it. All of it. No exceptions. Yes, some things will break, most of which well deserve to break. Some in fact don't even need fixing. Then we can fix the important broken bits, preferrably in a sensible, simple way that keeps well to itself, and doesn't try to overpower fifty other unrelated subsystems. A little architecture and some (un)common decency go a long way here.
"Their approaches to any problem they're setting out to solve, real or imagined, are baroque, juvenile, overly complex, brittle, prone to spectacular breakage, and so is their entire everything else."
The problem is moving goalposts.
There is a problem, which they spot, and most people can agree this is a problem.
Then they come up with a solution which is clean, neat, simple and wrong.
Simply, the problem is more complex than what they postulated and their solution, while working on most of it, breaks on the e
So their initial analysis of the problem and consequently the design of their solution falls woefully short of reality...
Yes. Something that looks good on paper. The kind of naivety found in Tom Clancy's novels, where a single clever unorthodox political move brings peace to Middle East.
... and they'll never admit they were wrong in the first place, but will just keep trying to polish that turd into solid gold.
I fully agree on this. Excellent summary on the political angle.
For myself, I will just stick with Debian with sysIVinit until the major distros finally wake up and make systemd _not_ the default again. Works reliably, is simple, and I have not yet found anything that I care about being broken as a result. Sure, there is some systemd cruft still around, but that can be mostly ignored at this time.
The problem with systemd (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a problem with Systemd. It's a pretty decent idea with a sub-par execution and a crappy way of dealing with an inherent problem.
Idea: centralized place to optimize startup, management and interconnectivity of all kinds of services.
Problem: some services in their standard form don't quite fit that model.
Solution: let's rewrite them and include as parts of systemd.
The crap part: while the originals were made by experts in that field, the replacements are made by a group of wannabe experts on everything
Re:The problem with systemd (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a problem with Systemd. It's a pretty decent idea with a sub-par execution and a crappy way of dealing with an inherent problem.
If by "decent" you mean "spectacularly stupid, fantastically bad, terrible to depraved depths, will never work properly", then yes.
The problems with basically anything written by poettering and crew start with them being... let's be polite here, not very good with this "software architecture" thingy. Their approaches to any problem they're setting out to solve, real or imagined, are baroque, juvenile, overly complex, brittle, prone to spectacular breakage, and so is their entire everything else.
Yes, there are problems with the software they're seeking to replace, but that doesn't mean their solutions are anything of the sort. We're seeing time and again that their improvements are in fact detriments and so even as a simple user you're typically better off without.
It also doesn't mean the problems cannot be solved some other way. In fact, we have at least a dozen replacements for sysvinit, fully half of which would certainly better than systemd. So there really is no point to use their software at all except because you like sticking to fantastiterribad ideas.
Among poettering and crew's many failings is that they have no truck at all with "the Unix philosophy". If they are dimly aware of where that came from, at best they'll wilfully do something else, just to "be different". Linux' own dave cutler, with fanclub, if you will.
This is quite damaging. So why are red hat still backing poettering and crew? In short, politics. They're having their lunch eaten by oracle, yet they're bound by the GPL, so they're trying a different tack. And for them it's working fine, to the point that many other linux distributions are following their lead.
Which, frankly, is entirely stupid from the other projects' users' PoV. But too many in the community don't grasp the finer points of what's really going on (did you know red hat and oracle are in a corporate war of domination, with oracle doing a good cuckoo impression?) so they'll just bob along with the currents, to their detriment.
I don't expect poettering and crew to understand that they're red hat's useful idiots in this, mind. They might, but from their works I'm inferring they're just not that bright.
So the simple solution is really quite simpler than your proposal: Do away with the poettering crap. Just out with it. All of it. No exceptions. Yes, some things will break, most of which well deserve to break. Some in fact don't even need fixing. Then we can fix the important broken bits, preferrably in a sensible, simple way that keeps well to itself, and doesn't try to overpower fifty other unrelated subsystems. A little architecture and some (un)common decency go a long way here.
Re: (Score:2)
"Their approaches to any problem they're setting out to solve, real or imagined, are baroque, juvenile, overly complex, brittle, prone to spectacular breakage, and so is their entire everything else."
The problem is moving goalposts.
There is a problem, which they spot, and most people can agree this is a problem.
Then they come up with a solution which is clean, neat, simple and wrong.
Simply, the problem is more complex than what they postulated and their solution, while working on most of it, breaks on the e
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Something that looks good on paper. The kind of naivety found in Tom Clancy's novels, where a single clever unorthodox political move brings peace to Middle East.
Ego.
Re: (Score:2)
I fully agree on this. Excellent summary on the political angle.
For myself, I will just stick with Debian with sysIVinit until the major distros finally wake up and make systemd _not_ the default again. Works reliably, is simple, and I have not yet found anything that I care about being broken as a result. Sure, there is some systemd cruft still around, but that can be mostly ignored at this time.