Lennart Poettering on Systemd's Tumultuous Ascendancy in the Linux Community

http://thenewstack.io/unix-greatest-inspiration-behind-systemd?hn

by benballjr • 9 years ago

4 11 9 years ago

thenewstack.io

zeveb2• 9 years ago

Upvoted because I think it's worth reading to get where his mind is at, not because I agree with him.

mindcrime• 9 years ago

Same here.

I'm actually OK with the possibility of getting away from "everything is a file". Although I still think that's a good starting point and should probably be the default case for most things.

Where I am not a fan of systemd is the extent to which it violates the single responsibility idea. That is, it does too many different things, and it's basically a monolith. Make it easy to substitute alternative implementations of logging and the like, and I wouldn't necessarily object to it.

zeveb2• 9 years ago

I'm actually OK with the possibility of getting away from "everything is a file".

I actually much prefer going all the way with everything-is-a-file; when Poettering tried to claim that his printer is not a file, I really wonder if a) he's even heard of Plan 9 b) he knows about PostScript.

Where I'm not a fan of systemd is that it's all written in C, instead of a higher-level, safer language, and that we're getting to a point where systemd-terminal, systemd-browser and systemd-nano aren't a joke but mandatory.

fbreduc• 9 years ago

i just want audio on linux not to suck llama

digi_owl4• 9 years ago

Ugh, of all the references they could find for Torvalds being "enthusiastic" about systemd.

Oh and Poettering should be reminded that printers can show up as files under /dev (never mind that a basic printer is pretty much a teletype, aka tty, without the keyboard).

Damn it, you could do sound by cat pcm to /dev/dsp even.

Every response he gives in this article solidifies him as a architecture astronaut.

benballjr• 9 years ago

I messaged the author about finding an example of the attributed enthusiasm or removing it entirely, since I'm not sure I believe it. Though others have pointed out that not aggressively attacking it is almost endorsement from Linus...

digi_owl4• 9 years ago

He, like many others, can't find anything technically wrong with systemd. But he has mentioned that he is less than happy about the people involved.

JdeBP2• 9 years ago

Duplicates https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13494355

Lennart Poettering on Systemd's Tumultuous Ascendancy in the Linux Community

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