[mdlug] Big brother gives M$ a 10 out of 10

[Jonathan Billings]

I apologize for the long, in-line reply, but seeing the misinformation in the anti-systemd screed kinda gets my goat.

> On May 26, 2024, at 00:51, LAP <mail1 at lapiet.info> wrote:
> 
> 
>> 
>> On May 23, 2024, at 12:25, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> I’m curious, how does systemd threaten that OS model?
>> 

I’m actually the person who asked that, but whatever…

> Let me first state that I am passionately against systemd
> and all of its allies (e.g. freedesktop.org), but I believe

systemd actually moved off hosting at freedesktop.org a while back.

At any rate, Freedesktop.org hosts many software projects:

https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/

Includes software like X.org, Mesa, Nouveau, NetworkManager and even simple tools like slirp. It’s just a place where software lives.

> that my antagonism is rooted in reality and not in irrational
> bias.  Keep this in mind when considering the following.  

… let’s see…

> Systemd is still very much a work in progress but the project

Which has been around for like 13+ years…

> definitely has a goal which is stated in a talk given by
> Poettering some 10 years ago.  Everyone should read his simple
> manifesto:
> 
> http://0pointer.de/public/gnomeasia2014.pdf
> 
> The goal of systemd is to become the one-and-only interface
> between user space and the kernel.  IOW, in the future, the
> only way for application software to interact with the system
> will be through systemd.  Nothing else will be available or
> permitted.

What a laugh! I don’t see any of that in the presentation. Sure, providing a unified interface is a goal, but “Nothing else will be available or permitted”?!?!? Who is going to enforce that?

> Poettering refers to the current state of Linux as being
> a "bag of bits."  This is definitely a serious condemnation but
> it is Poettering's basis for his desire to transform Linux into
> a "competitive" OS -- in purely his image, of course.
> 
> But being a "bag of bits" is actually the great strength of
> GNU/Linux because it really means that there are always many
> different ways of doing most anything.  Linux offers a plethora
> of virtual terminals, graphical toolkits, scripting shells,
> init systems, etc., etc.  This great bounty, however, is upsetting
> to the vision of unity that systemd aims to impose.

I’m not sure you understood the meaning of “Bag of bits” comment.  It’s just that Linux provides a lot of functionality, and systemd exists to provide an interface for user space. It’s not a denigration of the Kernel, if anything, systemd jumps on using new kernel features pretty fast, to the point that you can’t use the latest systemd without recent kernels.

> From the beginning I have rejected systemd.  It is present on none
> of my GNU/Linux machines.  But it is getting more and more difficult
> to avoid and the great threat is that it may impossible to avoid
> in the future.

okay.  You don’t like systemd, and you are welcome to use non-systemd Linux platforms. There’s no one forcing you to use it.

But due to its popularity among distro maintainers, system administrators and other Linux users, it’s hard to find a popular Linux distribution that doesn’t use systemd. It’s possible that systemd actually serves a role in making Linux better.

I get that something being incredibly popular makes it hard to find alternatives.  I don’t drink coffee. I don’t like coffee. But despite the fact that there’s a Starbucks around every corner and most people I encounter drink it, no one is forcing me to drink coffee.

> As an example, since I build my own machines from components, I know
> exactly what hardware is present in my system and consequently I can
> create a convenient set of static device nodes.  There is no need to
> probe hardware at each boot (indeed, it would be a stupid exercise).

That’s noble of you, but not particularly scalable or user friendly. Surely you understand that building a distro where you have to run mknod as root when you want to plug in a USB drive, you might find that some people might find that a bit onerous?

> However, freedesktop.org, which is actually a part of the systemd
> movement, introduced libinput as the one-and-only input driver for
> X Window.  Libinput does not recognize static device nodes.  Rather
> it uses udevd (from systemd)to probe hardware and then create device
> nodes "on the fly."

As I said earlier, freedesktop.org is just a place where people host software.  There is no cabal of nefarious developers who meet at freedesktop.org and choose to thwart the valiant knights of GNU. 

> introduced libinput as the one-and-only input driver for X Window

That’s demonstrator false, there are several other input drivers for Xorg:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver

Including Wacom, synaptic and even the low-level evdev driver. xf86-input-libinput is just an input driver that uses libinput. Xorg uses it because it’s easier than reinventing the wheel.

> The consequence of this summary imposition was that I had to reconfigure
> everything that I had done in the past, and which still worked very
> effictively, just to accommodate this progressive whim.
> 
> Furthermore, libinput has given me many headaches regarding my pointing
> devices, and such headaches never occured with the previous X Window
> input drivers.

I can’t say what problem you had, since I never experienced it, but I suspect you are misattributing this to libinput. But I could be wrong! Did you file bugs?

> Fortunately, I was able to still avoid systemd by utilizing eudev:
> 
> https://github.com/eudev-project/eudev
> 
> However, it is doubtful if this project can keep accommodating the
> changes that systemd udev will bring in the future.

The existence of such projects kinda proves the point that your imagined systemd overlords aren’t actually able to force people to use systemd. 

> Thus, if it is not plain already, the threat of systemd is that it will
> destroy Linux diversity and institute a completely monolithic set of
> utilities under the control of one organization.

Which organization is that?

> Others will certainly disagree,

I do.

> and there are obviously a lot of
> these others as most GNU/Linux distros have adopted systemd.

Pretty much all of the top distros use it in some manner.

> The crux of the matter is that systemd should be a fork and not
> an imposition.  There should be a divergence of methodologies
> and not a convergence.  In this way choice would be preserved
> and not eliminated.

You are welcome to create your own systemd-free distro, or continue using someone else’s.

> We need to have a "RedHat Associated Linux," using systemd, and a
> "Free Linux" which maintains the wonderful "bag of bits" status.

So it is Red Hat that is in control of systemd? You know Lennart Poettering works at Microsoft now? Are they the new evil overlords?

> If one reads the manifesto, Poettering mentions a "competitive"
> OS goal for Linux.

I like the idea that Linux can compete against other OSs in the market.

>  I would hope that everyone can see that what
> this really means is that Linux must become more like Microsoft
> Windows.  Indeed most of the goals of systemd are a direct copy
> or elaboration of Microsoft capabilities.

Because competing against someone means becoming them?

What features of Microsoft Windows is systemd copying?

> I do not use the common DEs such as GNOME or KDE, but from what
> I gather, these DEs are not much more than MS Windows GUI clones.

So systemd is forcing GNOME and KDE to look more like Windows? How?

> In conclusion, systemd is still a work in progress.

So, an open source project then, with constant development. What a shock! Or are you leveling the same criticism Microsoft used against Linux upon systemd?

>  Unfortunately,
> a lot of users falsely believe that systemd is merely an alternative
> init system, but this is way off the mark.  

Yea, it’s also a login manager, device manager, boot device manager, etc. which some distros use, others do not.

> Systemd is a movement
> to comprehensively restructure Linux and as a result destroy the Unix
> way of doing things.

So you say, but I have yet to see any evidence or facts. I don’t even know how “The UNIX Way” is even related.

> It could very well be that the future of GNU/Linux, as a free
> and open alternative OS, will be FreeBSD.

This did make me chuckle.

FreeBSD’s init system (rc) is in the same source tree as its kernel, shell, and other standard UNIX tools, and is managed by a select group of FreeBSD developers. That sounds suspiciously like a lot of your above complaints! Looks like the systemd developers already got to them! /s

 It in all seriousness, I encourage you to give FreeBSD a spin. It has a lot of neat features, and I used to do a lot of debugging on the sparc64 and powerpc ports, and I have fond memories of building the latest kernels and user space from source.

Oh, I should mention, I work at Red Hat, but I was a sysadmin at umich.edu for over a decade before that. My opinions are my own and do not represent my employer.

-- 
Jonathan Billings