[Semibug] SystemD is literally the kitchen sink of Linux ; Linux starting to feel more and more alien as the years go on

[Steve Litt]

Kyle Willett said on Wed, 6 Dec 2023 15:59:51 -0600

>https://www.phoronix.com/news/systemd-255
>
>Read this article on a slow day at work and yes I realize there are
>distros other than RHEL like Gentoo that use OpenRC, but work uses
>RHEL.
>
>I used FreeBSD for the first time around 2004-2006. It was version 4
>or 5 something. (I don't know if I still have the CD sets to tell).
>It has largely stayed the same.  Just steady improvements.
>
>I started using OpenBSD in 2019 and while it sees incredible changes;
>the way the user interacts with the system is largely unchanged.
>
>Linux on the other hand is so alien from 2004! Back when Linux ran 2.4
>series kernels and the early 2.6 series it was a cool OS.
>
>Now to quote the article: "Most internal process tracking is now using
>PIDFDs rather than PIDs when running on a supported kernel."  What the
>heck is a PIDFD instead of a PID.  All Unix users know what a PID is
>it is universal but Linux has to be different.
>
>Since Microsoft and Red Hat and other big companies have gotten so
>heavily invested in Linux development it has lost its heart and soul.

Obviously this is a problem. And this whole Freedesktop.Org thing is an
atrocity.

Systemd is absolutely unique in this list of problems. It's an obvious
attempt at vendor lock-in. It's outrageously difficult to rip out
systemd and replace it with another init system, because systemd's
tenticles are everywhere and Redhat/IBM money is influencing software
authors to write their software with for systemd PID1 only: No other
init systemd need apply. Systemd is a huge black box of massively
entangled mess, not troubleshootable by a normal computer expert.

There are plenty of massively entangled messes out there. KDE is one: I
kicked all KDE programs and libraries off my computer in 2015 because
it's a black box of gratuitous entanglements. But notice the
difference: I was able to kick KDE off my computer. If your computer
came with systemd, you don't have that luxury. Allow me to draw a BNF
for that (I'm in a BNF mood today):

entangled_messes ::= systemd | other_messes
other_messes ::= KDE | Pulseaudio | dbus | voluminous_browsers
voluminous_browsers ::= firefox | chromium | epiphany

Everything above can easily be removed or replace except systemd and
maybe dbus, but so far dbus' role can be minimized. Systemd is in a
class by itself.

I was a Debian guy in 2014 when Debian decided to switch to systemd, so
I knew I needed to jump distros very soon, because my whole business
depended on my Linux desktop machine. It was slim pickings back then. My
short list was:

Gentoo
Funtoo
Devuan (not written yet)
OpenBSD
Void Linux

A little fooling around ruled out Gentoo and Funtoo. Installations
could be hours, demanding a lot of user intervention, and the install
could fail if you compiled your kernel wrong.

Devuan wasn't written yet, and besides, I considered the Debian distro
and Debian community such trash that I didn't want to depend on a
distro that depended on Debian.

I was settling down with the idea of OpenBSD. I'd used it on a laptop
in 2007, and it was nice. Subjectively, it was solid. No glitches,
freezes, indeterminacies, or other BS. Xfce was a white knuckle, "hope
it works this time" experience on Debian, but on OpenBSD it was rock
solid and consistent every time.

I should mention I tried FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Dragonfly, and just
couldn't get them installed. I know other people's experiences are
different, but I couldn't install them, and if you can't install it,
you can't use it. So as far as BSD, for me OpenBSD was the only game in
town.

By autumn 2014 I'd settled on switching to OpenBSD, and was excited
about it. I attended a talk by an OpenBSD expert at a conference, and
asked him a question about a show-stopping need of mine. I asked him if
OpenBSD had a *hardware assisted* VM like Linux' excellent qemu. I had
tried qemu on OpenBSD, and it was so slow it was like being on a 300
baud modem. His answer to the question: No.

I went on the OpenBSD mailing list and asked if they were working on a
hardware assisted VM. Nobody other than Theo said no, and there never
would be because it's a security risk. OK, his distro, his rules. But
here's my situation: No matter what distro or OS you choose, there will
be vital programs that don't have packages and are unbuildable or are
crashy. For those, you need to run them in a VM built for them (I think
this was before stuff like Docker). I hate systemd on my desktop that
operates my business, but I have no problem with it on a Ubuntu or
Debian VM whose job is to host 3 or 4 programs that can't run on my
native setup. But I need that ability or my business could shut down.
Indeed, the first 9 months after I switched to Void Linux, I had to
host the process by which my eBooks were personalized on a Ubuntu VM.
Can you imagine if I hadn't been able to sell books for nine months?

I switched to Void Linux in the spring or summer of 2015, and have been
there since. It's a close to the metal, no training wheels Linux distro
that can be set up with no frills at all, which is how I like it.

Somewhere in the early 2020's I heard a rumor that OpenBSD now had
their own VM system that had hardware assistance and was as fast as
Qemu on Linux. But I've also heard from OpenBSD experts that OpenBSD
still has no hardware assisted VM mechanism.

Obviously nothing I've said is relevant if I were just hosting http(s),
smtp, dns, dhcp, and maybe (or maybe not) Jitsi. But when you use
hundreds of different programs every week, you'd better have a good VM
to run business critical programs that don't run on your metal-mounted
OS.

If you guys know anything about OpenBSD having a good, hardware
assisted VM mechanism, I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21