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| systemd or openrc - which one do you use? |
| systemd |
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15% |
[ 22 ] |
| openrc |
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81% |
[ 117 ] |
| other, say which in the comments below |
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3% |
[ 5 ] |
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| Total Votes : 144 |
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jhon987
Guru
Joined: 18 Nov 2013
Posts: 302
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 Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 10:34 am Post subject: systemd or openrc - which one do you use? |
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This is not a hot topic is it once used to be, I guess. Nevertheless, I'd like to get some statistics about you guys who are visiting the forums, what are your thoughts and preferences?
To sweeten your time, here's a short story about how I've come to use the init I use today:
Prolog
When I started using Linux (not that long ago), I started with Ubuntu, I had GNOME and didn't even knew what init is.
For a few years I was happily using gnome (testing other DEs every once in a while, yet always defaulting to gnome), though GNOME 3 got me into a little mixed feelings about it.
Nonetheless, when I installed Gentoo it was clear to me that GNOME and systemd are going to be coupled with my hardware and it didn't even crossed my mind to go astray like a lost sheep.
But the turn came to me like a twist of fate, it found me and not the other way around. When I was dealing with a weird Xorg / Nvidia / compositor bug (which BTW still exists - I check from time to time) that causes all kinds of screen painting delays, I was forced to try another DE just to see if I can get better results or better yet eliminate the bug entirely.
Little did I knew, I would end up using KDE - the last DE on earth (exaggeration) I'd thought I'll go with.
The init part
It all happened because I've updated grub and, mistakenly, overwritten grub config file.
On the next boot I've found myself using openrc without even knowing I'm using it... I figured that out eventually.
At this point I thought "heck if I'm not using GNOME anymore, I now have the freedom to choose any init I like, maybe I should try openrc so I could do Gentoo the Gentoo way".
At first, I was combining the two (systemd & openrc), yet I knew my experience won't be complete until I devote my machine entirely to its new (processes) master [needed to install integral openrc parts such as consolekit and udev which conflicted with systemd].
But once I did...
Boy I tell ya, now that I'm using openrc I've realized I was Gentoo-ing the wrong way this whole time. If my system used to be fast up to recent, then now it's flying!
Maybe it's just excitement of a new achievement, yet it feels faster and very real to me currently, and the best part about it is I now no longer bound to the hardcoded dependencies gnome and systemd were forcing me to use (see my bottom comment here - https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1007172-highlight-.html).
So even though most Linux distros are defaulting to systemd and Debian has recently decided to switch over to it too for detailed reasons (https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/systemd?highlight=%28%28Debate%29%29), I got to say I'm pretty happy with openrc, at least for now.
What are your thoughts?
Last edited by jhon987 on Wed Dec 31, 2014 10:36 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54851
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 1:55 pm Post subject: |
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jhon987,
Apart from your sheep metaphor, which I would swap for lemmings, I pretty much agree.
I just know this thread will end badly - we already save several locked threads on the topic, so I don't mind sharing my opinion, since you asked.
The whole reason for systemd to exist is for Red Hat to make money.
Systemd is a wrapper around GPL code that allows the GPL code to be used via a remote procedure call instead of conventional linking.
That will allow Red Hed to ship binaries that call (not link to) GPL code without needing to provide the sources.
While it complies with the requirements of the GPL, its purpose is to provide a way to evade the spirit of the GPL.
Distros adopting systemd will, in the fullness of time, become Red Hat/Fedora clones. Well, they may get to change the eye candy but under the skin, they will be clones because as Red Hat make more an more things depend on systemd it will get harder and harder to replace it all in one go. The only useful path to preserve GNU/Linux, is to not switch to systemd and either abandon (Gnome) or rework things that depend on it now.
Debian had to make the choice between systemd and Gnome. Its my opinion that they made the wrong choice.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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John R. Graham
Administrator
Joined: 08 Mar 2005
Posts: 10733
Location: Somewhere over Atlanta, Georgia
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 2:22 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | The whole reason for systemd to exist is for Red Hat to make money.
Systemd is a wrapper around GPL code that allows the GPL code to be used via a remote procedure call instead of conventional linking.
That will allow Red Hed to ship binaries that call (not link to) GPL code without needing to provide the sources.
While it complies with the requirements of the GPL, its purpose is to provide a way to evade the spirit of the GPL. |
That's the first time I've read it described that way. (There has been a lot of traffic to keep up with on this topic, so I may have just missed it.) So, Red Hat is planning to pull an Android on mainstream Linux? Wow.
For me, it's been an easy decision to remain philosophically pure as I'm not a Gnome person. Gentoo has also made the transition to eudev completely painless. Now, if emacs suddenly had an unavoidable dependency on systemd (fat chance of that, though), I'd be beside myself.
- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters. |
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jhon987
Guru
Joined: 18 Nov 2013
Posts: 302
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 3:02 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | jhon987,
... I just know this thread will end badly - we already save several locked threads on the topic, ... |
Hi NeddySeagoon,
Thanks for your valuable input. Just for the record, I want you to know it's not my intention to create any flame wars or rotten threads for that matter.
Am just looking for some different views from other perspectives than mine, hopefully folks here will keep it clean and to the point.
It's interesting for me to see what other people think since, as I said (in the short story), I just moved full time to openrc and am really liking it, so it's astonishes me as to why so many dignified distributions (Arch, Debian, etc...) out there has chosen to go that path - making GNOME and systemd default.
Perhaps you've just supplied the answer... |
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davidm
Guru
Joined: 26 Apr 2009
Posts: 557
Location: US
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 3:14 pm Post subject: |
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I use openrc on gentoo but on other binary distros I used in they past they used systemd and I had little choice unless I wanted to do a lot of hacking. I'm satisfied with openrc right now and the desktop feels much more stable (but this could also be because I am running stable Gentoo and not KDE frameworks).
My opinion on it is that I question whether the systemd project has the developers needed to properly maintain it. Especially when they are continually adding massive amounts of features every year. I'm also a bit suspicious of their intentions as others have said.
I think it's great that Gentoo offers us a choice. That said, the only thing I really hated about systemd was journald. In a year or two if systemd seems stable perhaps I might switch to it. I have no irrational hate towards it. Only some suspicions as to the motives behind it and skepticism relating to bugs and being able to properly maintain it upstream. |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54851
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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John R. Graham,
I don't know (from the inside) what Red Hat are planning but it all fits.
Then, I'm old and cynical too.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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Ant P.
Watchman
Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 6920
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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| John R. Graham wrote: | | NeddySeagoon wrote: | The whole reason for systemd to exist is for Red Hat to make money.
Systemd is a wrapper around GPL code that allows the GPL code to be used via a remote procedure call instead of conventional linking.
That will allow Red Hed to ship binaries that call (not link to) GPL code without needing to provide the sources.
While it complies with the requirements of the GPL, its purpose is to provide a way to evade the spirit of the GPL. |
That's the first time I've read it described that way. (There has been a lot of traffic to keep up with on this topic, so I may have just missed it.) So, Red Hat is planning to pull an Android on mainstream Linux? Wow. |
I see a different story, but it's worse — they've been desperate for some years now to give Oracle a black eye, and they're doing this now by salting the earth with horrible "enterprise" software; a twisted wreckage of XML and Javascript tangling everything from the kernel to the DE together in a way that only they can understand and support (for the right price, of course). Every other distro that got drafted into this by GNOME's awful developers is just collateral damage. |
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NeddySeagoon
Administrator
Joined: 05 Jul 2003
Posts: 54851
Location: 56N 3W
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:18 pm Post subject: |
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| Ant P. wrote: | | John R. Graham wrote: | | NeddySeagoon wrote: | The whole reason for systemd to exist is for Red Hat to make money.
Systemd is a wrapper around GPL code that allows the GPL code to be used via a remote procedure call instead of conventional linking.
That will allow Red Hed to ship binaries that call (not link to) GPL code without needing to provide the sources.
While it complies with the requirements of the GPL, its purpose is to provide a way to evade the spirit of the GPL. |
That's the first time I've read it described that way. (There has been a lot of traffic to keep up with on this topic, so I may have just missed it.) So, Red Hat is planning to pull an Android on mainstream Linux? Wow. |
I see a different story, but it's worse — they've been desperate for some years now to give Oracle a black eye, and they're doing this now by salting the earth with horrible "enterprise" software; a twisted wreckage of XML and Javascript tangling everything from the kernel to the DE together in a way that only they can understand and support (for the right price, of course). Every other distro that got drafted into this by GNOME's awful developers is just collateral damage. |
Just when it seems that things can't get any worse, they suddenly do :(
It will get so horrible, that even the creators won't be able to maintain it.
Oracle Unbreakable Linux is jut a patched RHEL though.
_________________
Regards,
NeddySeagoon
Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail. |
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dlaor
n00b
Joined: 27 Jan 2008
Posts: 55
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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I've been using systemd for some years now on Gentoo.
After using gnome 2.* + openrc + alsa + etc. for a long time I moved to gnome 3.10 + systemd + pulseaudio + etc. some time after they got stabilized. I use my computer mainly for writing research papers and I find that in doing so the latter combination works very well, like the former one did.
Now and then I come to these forums to keep an eye on things. I understand some people's "hesitation" with regards to systemd, and it is comforting to know that I can fall back to openrc if necessary. (Looking at these forums it is clear to me that it won't go away soon!  )
All the best for the coming year! |
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Ant P.
Watchman
Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 6920
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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| NeddySeagoon wrote: | | Oracle Unbreakable Linux is jut a patched RHEL though. |
That's the part RedHat hates the most. Someone *else* turning a profit off rebranding and reselling FOSS? How dare they! |
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The Doctor
Moderator
Joined: 27 Jul 2010
Posts: 2678
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 8:20 pm Post subject: |
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I use OpenRC because it is stable and does one thing well.
I tried systemd after reading it was 'the way of the future' and ended up with a laptop that couldn't boot after an update. And by this, I literally mean spent 5 minuets doing nothing before I pressed the power button and being incapable of reaching an emergency shell, even on latter attempts.
As far as I can tell, systemd is full of important features that either already exist or that serve no purpose. It also refuses to accept more than the most basic configuration. Given this and a general agreement of what NeddySeagoon said I'll be sticking with OpenRC for as long as possible, even if that means maintaining it in an overlay. I doubt it will come to that as others are far more capable of doing that and I'm betting systemd will collapse under it's own poorly developed weight soon enough.
_________________
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.
Apologies if I take a while to respond. I'm currently working on the dematerialization circuit for my blue box. |
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John R. Graham
Administrator
Joined: 08 Mar 2005
Posts: 10733
Location: Somewhere over Atlanta, Georgia
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 8:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Ant P. wrote: | | I see a different story, but it's worse — they've been desperate for some years now to give Oracle a black eye, and they're doing this now by salting the earth with horrible "enterprise" software; a twisted wreckage of XML and Javascript tangling everything from the kernel to the DE together in a way that only they can understand and support (for the right price, of course). Every other distro that got drafted into this by GNOME's awful developers is just collateral damage. |
Ironically, having written a couple of non-trivial udev rules, I don't think anyone could describe the rules definition syntax and process as anything much less than horrible. Although it's a relatively straightforward manual state machine definition syntax, this is most definitely horrible to do by hand. So, I would love to see a re-imagining of the userland dev tree management system concept with a more approachable scripting language at its core. However, Javascript makes me want to run screaming into the night. (Whereas RMS's choice for "the official extension language for the GNU operating system" merely leaves me strolling casually toward the shadows, while rolling my eyes.)
- John
_________________
I can confirm that I have received between 0 and 499 National Security Letters. |
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Fitzcarraldo
Advocate
Joined: 30 Aug 2008
Posts: 2056
Location: United Kingdom
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 9:40 pm Post subject: |
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OpenRC. No complaints at all.
_________________
Clevo W230SS: amd64, VIDEO_CARDS="intel modesetting nvidia".
Compal NBLB2: ~amd64, xf86-video-ati. Dual boot Win 7 Pro 64-bit.
OpenRC systemd-utils[udev] elogind KDE on both.
My blog |
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Anon-E-moose
Watchman
Joined: 23 May 2008
Posts: 6224
Location: Dallas area
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2014 10:05 pm Post subject: |
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| John R. Graham wrote: | | So, I would love to see a re-imagining of the userland dev tree management system concept with a more approachable scripting language at its core. |
Me too.
_________________
UM780, 6.12 zen kernel, gcc 13, openrc, wayland |
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jonathan183
Guru
Joined: 13 Dec 2011
Posts: 318
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:14 am Post subject: |
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| OpenRC and mdev for me ... I stopped using Gnome when Gnome 3 came out, but if I did want to use it then I'd install Funtoo. I stopped using KDE when KDE 4 came out ... so now I use IceWM. You can search for other threads covering things like consolekit which are optional |
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khayyam
Watchman
Joined: 07 Jun 2012
Posts: 6227
Location: Room 101
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:29 am Post subject: |
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| John R. Graham wrote: | | So, I would love to see a re-imagining of the userland dev tree management system concept with a more approachable scripting language at its core. |
John ... mdev perhaps? ... no particular language required.
| Code: | % grep "^sd" /etc/mdev.conf
sd[a-z].* root:disk 660 */opt/mdev/helpers/storage-device
% file /opt/mdev/helpers/storage-device
/opt/mdev/helpers/storage-device: POSIX shell script, ASCII text executable
% grep nics /etc/mdev.conf
# Run settle-nics every time new NIC appear.
-SUBSYSTEM=net;DEVPATH=.*/net/.*;.* root:root 600 @/opt/mdev/helpers/settle-nics --write-mactab
% file /opt/mdev/helpers/settle-nics
/opt/mdev/helpers/settle-nics: POSIX shell script, ASCII text executable
% ldd /sbin/mdev
linux-gate.so.1 (0xb76ed000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0xb7533000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb76ee000) |
best ... khay |
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wuzzerd
Guru
Joined: 05 Jan 2005
Posts: 467
Location: New Mexico
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 2:15 am Post subject: |
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Openrc. After giving sysD a chance with it's own disk partition, I decided I was too old to relearn everything
about Linux since Redhat IV, which effortlessly removed Win 95 from a new machine. My blood pressure went up whenever I tried to fix something by looking in the logs. Too bad about RH I think most of us had respect for them many years ago... |
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Ant P.
Watchman
Joined: 18 Apr 2009
Posts: 6920
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 2:22 am Post subject: |
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| mdev looks nice and sane, I'll try to switch to it some time. Bit worried about removing udev on my desktop/laptop (I have a *lot* of custom USB peripheral config baggage that'd need porting), but it'd make a lot of sense to have it on my LAN server which rarely hotplugs anything. |
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overkll
Veteran
Joined: 21 Sep 2004
Posts: 1249
Location: Austin, Texas
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 2:27 am Post subject: |
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OpenRC and Gnome 3.14.1 on Funtoo here
Wow, I just noticed that I joined these forums over 10 years ago. Damn, time flies! |
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jonnevers
Veteran
Joined: 02 Jan 2003
Posts: 1594
Location: Gentoo64 land
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 4:46 am Post subject: |
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| I like some aspects of systemd. |
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roki942
Apprentice
Joined: 18 Apr 2005
Posts: 285
Location: Seattle
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 4:47 am Post subject: |
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Well I started trying to install Linix when I upgraded to a 386 processor but was never able to get it to work till I tried Gentoo on my 1st Pentium processor (go figure that )
Standard Gentoo has stay on my desktop ever since. Though on a 2nd drive I have tried and use AV Linux and others to see what I was missing but it was only a matter of weeks before I got as fed up with them as I did with MS.
The only thing I didn't run Gentoo on was my Acer Netbook because of the compile times. I used CrunchBang and later ArchBang because it's a rolling release. I was very happy it and used it until I started running into problems like not booting into X. I actually have no complaints at all about ArchBang. The guy who runs it was really great in helping me debug it via his forums, but it all came down to thing like silm and systemd not working together any more and the like.
To be fully honest I have to say there is one thing I'm very grateful to systemd for ..... it got me to finally learn how to compile my netbook on my desktop  |
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jhon987
Guru
Joined: 18 Nov 2013
Posts: 302
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 8:12 am Post subject: |
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| overkll wrote: | OpenRC and Gnome 3.14.1 on Funtoo here
Wow, I just noticed that I joined these forums over 10 years ago. Damn, time flies! |
Congratulations for your 10th year!
How did you made GNOME 3.14 and OpenRC work together? is there a wiki?
Edit: scratch that, I just visited Funtoo page and WOW the website has gained a real facelift since the last time I saw it. anyways, it says install gnome 3.14 without systemd - right on the front page so... |
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steveL
Watchman
Joined: 13 Sep 2006
Posts: 5153
Location: The Peanut Gallery
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Ant P. wrote: | | I see a different story, but it's worse — they've been desperate for some years now to give Oracle a black eye, and they're doing this now by salting the earth with horrible "enterprise" software; a twisted wreckage of XML and Javascript tangling everything from the kernel to the DE together in a way that only they can understand and support (for the right price, of course). Every other distro that got drafted into this by GNOME's awful developers is just collateral damage. |
Ah that makes sense. Though the "GPL"-lib only accessible via an "LGPL"-dbus wrapper is dangerous, and can only be deliberate license-evasion afaic, or facilitation thereof.
Like most things, there's usually more than one reason, or "desirable" effect, at least as far as the proprietary corporation is concerned, if not the users.
| John R. Graham wrote: | | Ironically, having written a couple of non-trivial udev rules, I don't think anyone could describe the rules definition syntax and process as anything much less than horrible. Although it's a relatively straightforward manual state machine definition syntax, this is most definitely horrible to do by hand. So, I would love to see a re-imagining of the userland dev tree management system concept with a more approachable scripting language at its core. However, Javascript makes me want to run screaming into the night. (Whereas RMS's choice for "the official extension language for the GNU operating system" merely leaves me strolling casually toward the shadows, while rolling my eyes.) |
Oh man, don't get me started on guile in gmake.. What would your preferred configuration for the above look like?
I could see something like: | Code: | id:'foo' [
dev='bar'
] |
where conditions come first (so foo is the kernel id, if such a thing exists, for example) and settings are in the block, perhaps with more refined conditions if the first line is getting busy; so that's device node /dev/bar. (And for something that simple, a one-liner would work.) But I'd be interested as to how you'd do it. |
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asturm
Developer
Joined: 05 Apr 2007
Posts: 9337
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 2:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Well, both. Poll fail. |
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tld
Veteran
Joined: 09 Dec 2003
Posts: 1852
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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OpenRC here for sure. I've always been impressed with it overall. It handles dependencies well and sure does everything I need.
It kills me how all the Redhat derivatives have always had arguably the worst approach to init scripts etc, like some sort of self fulfilling prophesy purely intended to "prove" how much we "need" systemd. |
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