[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 Sat, 9 Dec 2023 04:37:48 -0600

>Replying to Steve.
>
>I don't hate Linux. It's a good OS in some distros. It was my first OS
>other than DOS and Windows.

Understood.

>
>I just hate the direction it is going in. I feel like corporate
>backers are engineering it for the hyper scalers and no one else.

Understood.

>
>I feel like the Linux space is constantly doing new stuff for the sake
>of doing new stuff.

To an extent. Some of the new stuff is good stuff. I'm thankful I no
longer need to constantly troubleshoot with lsmod, insmod and modprobe.
I'm semi-glad I no longer need to use mknod, although the modern
systemd entangled udev might become worse.

The sysvinit init system was trash. It needed to be replaced, or at
least the process manager part of it. Early in the 00's DJB took care of
that with daemontools launched by sysvinit's PID1 via /etc/inittab.
Later runit and s6 added a PID1 to daemontools. Sysvinit plus
daemontools, runit and s6 were all orders of magnitude better than
sysvinit. But nooooo, that insane poettering along with money-grubbing
Redhat made the deliberately obfuscated systemd so as to complexify
Linux, thus providing an incentive to use Redhat's consulting and
education services. Everyone in the BSD world knows, regular
old Unix or old-school Linux is pretty easy to learn, admin and use
without consultants and education. Follow the money. See the following
link and look for the first instance of the word "complexity":

http://asay.blogspot.com/2006/10/interview-with-red-hat-cto-brian.html

Note that the preceding interview was several years before the
"invention" of systemd. It serves as proof that Redhat Corporation
requires complexity to thrive, and that simplicity was/is a poison to
Redhat. When a crazy man created an "init system" with an April
Fools Joke architecture, Redhat made it theirs and used their
billions to make sure the other major distros used it also,
because if they'd been more complex than their major competition,
everyone would have fled Redhat. Follow the money.

So far it sounds like I totally agree with you, right? Well, not quite
totally, but yeah, I agree with you. So why do I urge you not to
criticize Linux? I so urge you because Linux and BSD are close cousins
working in a proprietary world trying to marginalize or end them. We
need to work together just like the US and Britain worked together in
World War II. The US and Britain had very different ideas about many
things, but compared to those they were fighting, they were close
cousins.

Back in 1999 I wrote an article about BSD advocates who put down Linux
on Linux lists. Please understand that it's not about you: You didn't
say what you said on a Linux list, and to say this article applies to
you or what you said would be a ridiculous strawman fallacy. It does
point out, however, that Linux and BSD advocates are much better off as
allies than as competitors.

Anyway, your house, your rules: I was trying to ask you to go a little
easy on Linux by maybe pointing out the problems in the Linux world
without quite as much insult, but your house, your rules.


>Linux serves many good purposes today still it is just FAR removed
>from a real Unix.

Not compared to Windows or VMS or the various non-Linux mainframe OSes.

>One can hate systemd and still like the Linux kernel and some of the
>GNU tools.

I don't know that there are any GNU tools I hate, but I despise
systemd, dbus, Gnome, KDE, the new version of udev, and the land of a
thousand mutes, pulseaudio.

There's an irony here. I'm angrier about all the needless features than
you are, because I have to live with that stuff every day.

By the way, if you ever need Linux for a specific project, I'd suggest
Void Linux, because it lacks the annoying training wheels of Ubuntu and
family, and it's pretty darn Unix like. It inits with runit, which is
ten times better than sysvinit and a hundred times better than systemd.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt 

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