The Politics of systemd

Shamus397 · Apprentice Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Posts: 218 Location: Ur-th

Starting with some observations:

If you've been following the Linux Action Show for any length of time, you'll know that Chris Fisher, one of the hosts of LAS, is heavily promoting the adoption of systemd and in the "outtakes" of the latest show, (episode #299) was giving some of his reasons why having Debian choose to go with systemd was a good thing for Linux. Personally, I felt that all of the reasons he gave were pretty weak and did not require systemd (they included mainly cgroups & socket activation).

Now Mr. Fisher is an Arch user, so it's no surprise that he's on board with systemd. But I noticed something strange go on with Mr. Fisher recently. In a fairly recent episode they did a review of Gnome 3.10 (as a part of Fedora 20) and they were quite underwhelmed with what it had to offer--to me it felt like it was an honest review. But two weeks later, Mr. Fisher did an about-face and followed up with an episode titled "In Defense of Gnome 3" and decided that he was going to start using Gnome exclusively, after having been a long time KDE user.

Now this is just wild assed speculation on my part, but it seems to me that what happened was that Mr. Fisher realized that Gnome 3.10 was heavily reliant on systemd, and that if systemd adoption was going to go anywhere, he had to do an about face on his stance on Gnome, no matter how bad it was (he was also doing some cheerleading in the outtakes of the new and rather lackluster Gnome apps). Shows like the Linux Action Show shape popular opinion in and outside of the Linux community, and I seriously doubt that Mr. Fisher's repentance towards Gnome 3.10 was accidental.

What strikes me as strange is all this push towards getting Debian to use systemd as its init system. Leaving aside the fact that systemd is anything but a simple init replacement, it seems to me that what's happening there has more to do with politics than with technical superiority, as their choice is being forced on them by the Gnome developers who have embraced and tied their desktop to systemd.

So what does any of this have to do with Gentoo? Well, for starters, if every other distro goes and drinks the systemd Kool-aide, what choice does Gentoo have but to follow, especially if crucial parts of the system are no longer developed because they've been assimilated into systemd (like udev was)? It's already happening in Funtoo, they are being forced by systemd to create an alternate distro based on it so that Gnome users will be able to use Funtoo.

All of this would be moot if systemd was just a simple init replacement. But it isn't. Adoption isn't happening because systemd is technically superior, it's happening because of simple power plays by actors who don't care about anyone's agenda but their own and their legion of fans who shout down anyone who doesn't like the direction they're being taken.

ulenrich · Veteran Joined: 10 Oct 2010 Posts: 1483

Mr. Fisher probably needs a poor cliff hanger to keep his audience

Also Kde will go direction systemd:
https://plus.google.com/+MartinGr%C3%A4%C3%9Flin/posts/GMtZrNCeaLD

Debian did technically discuss:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=727708
https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2013/12/threads.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-ctte/2014/01/threads.html

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2014 11:42 pm Post subject:

Shamus397,

Olde Fashioned Gentooee works for me and it boots in only 40% of the time of a udev based system.
The install is a bit ugly - I need to do a set of stages.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Shamus397 · Apprentice Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Posts: 218 Location: Ur-th

That post by Martin Gräßlin highlights exactly whats wrong with the forcing of systemd everywhere: he says that because systemd is a politically charged topic that he can ignore anyone who is against it, regardless of whether or not their arguments have any merit.

That alone should be cause for rejecting systemd outright--technical reasons for adopting systemd are A-OK!, but technical reasons for rejecting systemd? GTFO, you're just a whiny baby who has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the glorious systemd future we have prepared for you!

And the lack of clue on the part of those supporting is telling. For example, Mr. Gräßlin said:

Greens · n00b Joined: 23 Aug 2013 Posts: 27

What software could we expect to become dependent on systemd?

You already mentioned udev and Gnome3. Redhat really starts seeming like a typical business more and more. They shit out a piece of software, a lot of people don't like it, it creates dev stress now having to support multiple implementations, and the end result is buggier software and lower quality for Linux as a whole.

The problem with Redhat is is that they just keep pushing it out, and try to force it "my way or the highway" style. They act like they're not in the wrong because their way is the only one true way, when in reality them childishly going against decades of standards and making a lot of people pissed off, causes nothing but fragmentation, stress on devs to work with multiple implementations, bugs and security vulnerabilities from having to do that, incompatibilities, and lower overall quality for Linux as a whole.

If they don't like a piece of software, they have a bad habit of creating their own thing instead of improving the original software. When the problems I'm talking about arise from that, instead of blaming themselves for needlessly and constantly stirring the shit so badly, they act like it's everyone else's fault for not just using their product and not even giving the choice to use anything else, which is what they want.

broken_chaos · Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 12:41 am Post subject:

cyberjun · Apprentice Joined: 06 Nov 2005 Posts: 293

Check this post on phoronix. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTYwMzg It seems systemd has hit its first vulnerability. Comment 83 of this bug mentions this: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1043212#c83

--cyberjun

BitJam · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 2:05 am Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 12:22 pm Post subject:

BitJam,

For recent kernels, PARTUUID works on MSDOS partitions too.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3522

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2014 3:37 pm Post subject:

depontius,

From about 3.6.10 or 3.6.11
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

Shamus397 · Apprentice Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Posts: 218 Location: Ur-th

More politics: In Mr. Bethencourt's (a KDE developer) blog post here, we have him saying that systemd should persevere because of "attacks" against systemd. He even admits that he has no technical reason to support it:

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3522

Shamus397 · Apprentice Joined: 03 Apr 2005 Posts: 218 Location: Ur-th

Linking my post in this thread, as it is relevant to the political dimension. Also, link to ridiculous bug by ulenrich, one of the people responsible for the label-them-then-attack-them-with-that-label style of "debate". Seems the rhetoric of those pushing SystemD has become more and more shrill these days, at least around these parts.

djdunn · l33t Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 812

and kde may or may not go with systemd dependency, KDM is on its last legs i doubt it will make it to kde v5

http://aseigo.blogspot.de/2013/03/logging-into-plasma-workspaces-2.html
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“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”

― Plato

Yamakuzure · Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:03 am Post subject:

Could people please quote relevant parts as well and not only tiny bits that help them raise an issue there isn't?

djdunn · l33t Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 812

anything Martin Gräßlin says is based upon kde using kdm as kdm is the project he works on, however the plasma team dont think that kdm will be the window manager for plasma2 which we will probably see around ~kde5

so concerning systemd and whatever window manager is going to succeed kdm its all hypothetical at this point.
_________________
“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.”

― Plato

baaann · Guru Joined: 23 Jan 2006 Posts: 558 Location: uk

roki942 · Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 7:20 pm Post subject:

djdunn · l33t Joined: 26 Dec 2004 Posts: 812

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:23 pm Post subject:

roki942,

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mrbassie · Posted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 3:53 pm Post subject: