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

[Michael Corral]

Le 2024-05-24, Monsieur Ron / BCLUG a écrit:
>> I?m curious, how does systemd threaten that OS model?
>
> It doesn't.
>
> I've shared this excellent presentation from linux.conf.au called "The 
> Tragedy of systemd", by Benno Rice - a FreeBSD developer, in which he 
> debunks a lot of claims against it and even suggests BSD ought to have 
> something similar (services management system):
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_AIw9bGogo

That is such a great presentation, and anyone who wants an objective view 
of systemd---and not a hyperbolic biased conspiracy theory type of 
view---would benefit from watching it. One thing Rice said that struck me 
was that the old idea that UNIX should concern itself with making sure 
everything works across all UNIX OSes is dead, because UNIX itself is 
dead, in the sense that today "UNIX is Linux, and then some rounding 
errors," in Rose's words. And he's right. Solaris? Dead. AIX? Dead.
HP-UX? Dead. IRIX and Digital/Tru64 UNIX? Deader than dead. FreeBSD is one 
of those "rounding errors," which I think accounts for why they haven't
adopted systemd *yet*, as hardly anyone uses FreeBSD as a desktop OS. But 
even Rose, as a long-time FreeBSD developer, wants to bring some version 
of systemd to FreeBSD.

To me systemd is one of the great Linux success stories. For years one 
criticism of Linux is that it never really innovated anything. There were 
already UNIX clones for "Intel-based" PCs before Linux. Being open-source 
in itself isn't a *technical* innovation. I think systemd is truly 
innovative and addresses a lot of the shortcomings of the old init system, 
which Rose talks about in his presentation. It started out on Fedora and 
has now been adopted by all the major distros, including Debian (which 
forced Ubuntu to use it, since they just piggyback off Debian. That's why 
I always refer to Ubuntu as "Debian - Freeloader Edition" :) ).

I view Linux as an OS, not a religion. If that OS can be improved, even if 
it means turning away from some "traditional" aspect, then I'm all for it. 
The notion that systemd will somehow prevent users from doing "UNIX
things" is almost as absurd as the notion that it's making Linux more like 
Windows. As a Fedora user since the Fedora Core 1 days, I'm still doing 
"UNIX things" every day---that nefarious systemd hasn't stopped me in any 
way. In fact, I'd say systemd's better handling of services has provided a 
tangible benefit to me.

The dogmatists with their wild conspiracy theories sound like the people 
who were sending death threats(!) to Lennart Poettering over systemd. In 
general, those people can be safely ignored. No innovation ever comes from 
dogmatists.

Michael