The Tragedy of systemd

I linked it elsewhere in this thread, but you should really watch this talk, particularly 12:45 through 16:20: ▶ this video tl;dr: systemd isn't meant to be an init system, it's meant to manage services, and the alternative world where you don't have a unified system for managing services and events actually sucks.

There is a wonderful talk by Benno Rice a few years ago. Insightful and entertaining. Not focussed only on the negatives, BTW. link ▶ this video HN discusion: link LWN comments: link

▶ this video (The Tragedy of systemd) is an interesting talk on this topic from the view of someone (Benno Rice) in BSD land. Highly recommended. EDIT: this is mentioned in the article, thanks koalacola

It’s interesting you say that? It runs completely counter to my experience coming from the “BSD-style” rc.d init Arch used to use, and migrating to systemd. Any specific issues? I didn’t see any. No offense. One factor may be that Arch prioritizes not patching upstream - helped save them from targeting here, and it doesn’t go overboard with default configs, which I’ve long appreciated. Not to distro-war, I’m very grateful for Debian. My background is finding Linux in the mid-00s and breaking many SuSE, Ubuntu, and one or two Debian systems before finding something I could understand, repair, and maintain in 2008 Arch. systemd accentuated its ability to stay relevant with enterprise Linux, made it even easier to package for, and has been a useful tool in diagnosing service issues and managing bad software for me. I’m not sure how often it’s posted here but Benno Rice formerly of FreeBSD Core Team has an excellent and amusing discussion of systemd’s technical merits. ▶ this video

> Turning Linux into Windows by replicating svchost.exe shouldn't be applauded by the Linux community. ... We've got Linux's PID 1 (for most distros) controlled by a MS employee, who replicated Windows' svchost.exe. And people are all excited? systemd was pretty consciously patterned after launchd, not svchost. The goal was, and for good reasons, to make Linux behave like a more integrated Unix-like that already existed: MacOS. Benno Rice has an excellent presentation on systemd that's worth watching through to the end; unlike most of the table-pounding (and "it's just svchost.exe!!" is exactly that), he provides what I think is a pretty fair--and, interestingly to me, a BSD-grounded--view as to where systemd is strong and is weak. ▶ this video

If you haven’t seen this talk[0], I think it covers in a fair shake the positives, negatives, and what even a post-systemd world would have to deal with. [0]: ▶ this video

I always appreciated this presentation for being a reasonable and balanced take, if you're interested in other examples: ▶ this video

I never had any horse in systemd/init.d and wasn't too familiar with the issue until I watched this presentation. systemd seems reasonable enough after considering it. ▶ this video

For those looking to understand some of the history of the anti-systemd feelings, I found this presentation useful: The Tragedy of systemd ( ▶ this video )

There was a great talk by a FreeBSD developer about systemd, and specifically the (in his eyes, somewhat unwarranted) hatred it has attracted and why ▶ this video

You have probably already seen this, but I found this an interesting explanation to the why question: ▶ this video

Wouldn’t have to be systemd, macOS has launchd for init, FreeBSD could come up with its own thing. This is a good talk I saw recently (by a FreeBSD contributor) on why these sorts of systems have become more common, and why they seem so sweeping in scope. ▶ this video (In fact systemd and launchd are so tailored to their respective operating systems that FreeBSD likely would have to do their own init replacement if they cared to.)