Cautionary warning about systemd

Some interesting reading. @Aravisian is correct that the Linux world should be cautious about the adoption of systemd. Even M$ is getting into systemd.

https://unixsheikh.com/articles/the-real-motivation-behind-systemd.html

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1105854.html

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The thread on the Gentoo forums is a bit too lengthy for me to get into right now, but the other article was an interesting read. There's one point that is being criticized but I actually think should at least get come discussion:

Unifying pointless differences between distributions.

What are some examples of these pointless differences?

Ubuntu did have something different, Upstart but ditched following coercion by Red Hat where Mr Poettering worked until moving to Microsoft. He also was behind pulse audio and was idiot enough to name a pulse audio service 'rtkit' which when I first saw this was a rootkit. It is also rampant idiocy in the Windows application world where an accessible program had a registry key named 'Lord of the Rings'!

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Opinions about SystemD can run pretty hot. It is important to note that such heat is rarely generated needlessly.
There are hundreds of different system components that you never heard of. No one is complaining about them. They do their job quietly.
It can be difficult to know what to think when reading the heated statements about SystemD. And SystemD proponents like to paint the image that the SystemD detractors are somehow rabid and deranged.
Which, why are these detractors not fussing about all those other components that you never heard of?
It is because SystemD is different.

There is far more politics and pride mixed into SystemD's promotion and adoption than there is Logic or Reason.
And these politics like to employ certain Buzzwords:
Container
Modern
Polished
When you see such words being pushed your way - Stay Aware. You are being led. And even, misled.

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People who have no issue with SystemD are that way because DEVELOPERS of literally every major distro choose to use it. People who know far more about this than any of us will ever dream of.

Pretending we know more is nothing short of foolish in my honest opinion.

Who are you saying is "pretending?" Do you believe that Developers are simply inherently more knowledgeable than anyone? And that any of us that speak are Foolishly ignorant?
I am a Developer.
Am I now Special and my Big Brain to be simply believed?

Argumentum ab auctoritate.

Debian adopted it, with much tension and this resulted in several of their lead developers resigning in protest. The result of this was that Ubuntu kind of had to adopt it and this trickled down to all distros based on Ubuntu.
As I said:

One of the developers that pushed so hard for SystemD's adoption by Debian admitted after leaving Debian that he had not even tested it. He only pushed it because he was friends with the SystemD devs and was trying to help them achieve what they wanted.

Is SystemD good? Look over the issues presented on this forum... The vast majority are SystemD issues. Pulseaudio. Wifi / Bluetooth Modules not meshing with the kernel. So on and so on.

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Defi

The maintainers of Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora, etc are FAR MORE knowledgeable than me or you will ever dream of being. I am a programmer who has been using Linux primarily for 16 or 17 years and am far more knowledgeable than your average user but I know that those developers know far more about these matters than I will ever dream of.

If you can not accept that applies to you as well idk what to tell you.

In other words, you reject any opposing points based on your assumptions. Got it.

You will reject any rebuttal, based on your belief that the Canonical or Debian developers are far more knowledgeable than you or I.

Any further discourse from you on this topic is therefor pointless.

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Agreed.

Going against LITERALLY the most knowledgeable people on the matter is pretty crazy. Kinda seems to set the "precedent" as you would say.

Believing the most knowledgeable people on the topic can also be a recipe for disaster if those people have been captured, recruited (knowingly or not) to a nefarious purpose outside the bounds of the original purpose of the init system (such as the ability to create a user named 0day and having root privileges... hard-coded into the init system (not considered a bug, devs refused to fix it); such as Lenovo using systemd and UEFI to phone home unbeknownst to users; such as having Google, CloudFlare and Quad9 DNS servers hard-coded in; etc.). Even my own problems getting DoH / DNScrypt set up on ZorinOS results from systemd interfering and overriding what I'd set up. Want DNScrypt to work? Then you can't run systemd-resolved. Want DNS resolution to work at all? You must run systemd-resolved.

There are those developers who merely adopted systemd because it was there and it appeared to work... they tested no other alternatives, so they didn't know that s6 has far higher security, far fewer bugs (especially edge cases) and no corporate capture.

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There is no logic in your assumptions.

Perhaps some developers contain more knowledge on certain aspects, but no one is vastly more knowledgeable. That simply is not how it works, at all. Please look up the definition of Imposter Syndrome.

And I already pointed out: Knowledge has nothing to do with the adoption of SystemD. It was far more Political.

Other than being an attempt at a jab, this statement makes no sense in the context of this topic.

I really would encourage you to think pretty hard about your stance whenever you disagree with another person. You resort to rejection outright based on having already made up your mind, rather than considering whether the opposing arguments have merit, evidence or reasoning.
By your argument, if it had merit, that Vastly More Knowledgeable people were involved, I can easily point out that these Vastly More Knowledgeable people resigned in protest over the adoption of SystemD. So it wouldn't really help your position any.

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{golf clap} :clap:

And no, I'm not {golf clapping} sarcastically... I'm clapping quietly as The Master works so as not to overly distract him.

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This is exactly true. There were no developers at Canonical or Debian that were knowledgeable about or specialized in SystemD. It was utterly new. And largely - untested.
But up until SystemD, most new things introduced were relatively harmless. Many considered it just another trial. A few, however, who went over the code, warned strongly against it. And as already mentioned several times, ended up resigning.

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This is the definition of cherry picking.

I find it interesting that you think a company like Canonical who will go against the grain when they see fit is just being swept along by this.

Spoiler If SystemD was not the best solution it would not be on Ubuntu.

I am done with this conversation as I agree it is not going anywhere. But I really do ask for you to take a harder look at this and ask is basically 95% of the community wrong?

I also would ask you to give a little more respect to the developers who make all of this happen. Thinking we know the inner workings and politics as well as they do is about like being an "Armchair Quarterback"

Just a side note do not say anything about my stance on disagreements. I am not the one who is arguing that they essentially know better than the actual developers of every major distro because the wool was pulled over their eyes.

This is because Canonical's Ubuntu is based on Debian.
Debian adopted SystemD.
In order for Canonical to buck the trend, they would need to change their bases init system. While this is doable... Why would they bother when they lacked pressure to do so? Quite the opposite, they were being pressured to adopt it.

How did you get this figure of 95%?
Can you cite your source?

I am relying on those very developers Own Words. Some even described the "pressure" as more along the lines of Haranguing.
https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2018/12/msg00032.html

Your entire argument is that because they are developers, they must, therefor know far better than we do. This does not logically stand.

You make a great deal of assumptions about the developers and about me as an individual, then reject any opposition based on those assumptions. This is not a very accurate stance to take.
It does not allow for testing of merit. It does not fact-check. it does not allow for any questioning or rebuttal.

No, as it does not cherry pick data while rejecting other data. Instead, it is showing the fallacy in your claim and where it falls short.

Interesting read (but not much more than that):

A slight distraction but partially relevant and albeit in a Windows environment. My best man was a hardware service engineer for a large company. Whilst under a desk at a call out, he uttered words that cost him his job (unbeknown to him his regional manager had entered the office where he was working) responding to user criticism of the application in use. His fatal words were "If I had my way developers would be chained to their desks until they had eradicated all bugs and flaws in the software."

Good article here:

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No, this thing means that you did not read @Aravisian 's posts well.
It's a more "political" reason, done by redhat, than the "most working solution" philosophy.

That being said, do not claim Aravisian is less smart than a canonical developer.
You do not know him well if you say so haha

If you honestly believe that @Aravisian knows what is better for Ubuntu than a Canonical dev as I said to him idk what to tell you.

Canonical WOULD NOT use SystemD if it was not the best for they want. They change Debian packages to fit their needs all the time but y’all discovered the one thing they are afraid to change….. Not likely. It is crazy to me how y’all seem to think there is some big conspiracy that literally every single major distro has went along with.

As I asked them I would ask you to PLEASE have a little more respect for the developers that make all of this happen. As y’all are acting like they are naive fools who were/are being misled. Because I don’t know if you all realize this but what y’all are sa

You can respond if you like I will not respond to you again.

Really don’t want discuss this anymore but I can’t let this slide.

ZorinGroup is using Gnome exactly as Gnome was intended. That is why extensions exist in the first place. So you could tweak it to your specific needs.

There isn’t any “disagreement” as you are putting it.

@rolltide101x , really the only thing I think that can improve what this topic is becoming is to focus on the things we can discuss.
We can avoid assumptions since they are not defensible.

Instead, it would be far more productive to compare the things that make SystemD Desirable (The good),
The things that make it undesirable (The bad),
and what we can demonstrate about the pressures involved to adopt it (The ugly).

This is not a conspiracy. A conspiracy requires that parties conspired in secret. Rather, this is a case of conformity.

Let me give an example that applies to Zorin OS and this Crowd. The ZorinGroup does not fully support Gnome. The ZorinGroup disagrees with stances that Gnome Developers take. As such, the ZorinGroup restores functionality that Gnome removes, using Extensions or other means.
I, vocally oppose what Gnome presses as their standard (and which is covered quite well in @swarfendor437 's link above). This makes me different from the ZorinGroup. I believe in Shunning Gnome whereas they believe in fixing it in their own distro.
This disagreement is not a big deal, as each point has their merits and both points can work.
The ZorinGroup is not conspiring with Gnome. Gnome has not directly contacted the ZorinGroup and demanded that they use Gnome. There is no conspiracy, there.
However, the many actions Gnome has intentionally taken over the years to assert itself as the Dominant Linux Desktop (and is still doing, including LibAdwaita) has supplied that pressure, heavily, with no conspiring needed.
The ZorinGroup conforms in order to ensure that their own needs are met.

As you can see, a group may need to adopt something even if it is not the best, not something they are happy with and not what they would prefer to do; but because their options have been limited and their end needs are pressing.

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