Re: No, they are a quick way to become tall and thin
"Spaghettification"
Maybe the Pastafarians are on to something.
408 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Oct 2015
"Benjamin Franklin once said (paraphrasing) 'any society that would give up a little security to gain a little freedom will deserve neither and lose both'."
Franklin actually said the opposite, ie. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." The inverted version is quite apt here though.
systemd
with faint praise
"uncaught changes to udev in the run-up to Stretch"
This is not looking good. I'm still on Debian 8 with sysvinit-core and haven't had too many problems (I don't use a heavyweight DE, and tend to use CLI programs for CD/DVD burning etc.). I've been putting off trying Debian 9 but depending on the outcome when I do get round to it, it could mean a parting of ways for Debian and me. A pity after 18 years.
What "market" is he talking about? Not everyone buys their software through commercial sales channels. The figure of 12% for non-MS servers looks bogus. Did they use OS-fingerprinting to arrive at that figure? If not I'd be interested to find out what methodology they actually used.
"someone thought aluminium, being metal, was also safe"
It probably would have been if it wasn't attached to polyethylene foam insulation. PE is chemically similar to paraffin wax, and even if mixed with flame retardent will still burn very efficiently given the right conditions. The building was effectively a giant candle.
"the real problem here is coding in a language that allows overruns to happen, isn't it?"
The real problem behind the popular opinion you have repeated here is young programmers who learned to program in languages that handle memory management for them, and consequently have not developed the mental discipline necessary to do it themselves.
"Agreed! The last thing Linux needs is to be easy to configure, then all sorts of plebs will start using it."
Sarcasm aside, you made a valid point here. I find the more "desktop user friendly" Linux gets, the harder it becomes to set up a server or workstation the way I want it. For many long-term users, Linux is a victim of its own success in this regard.
"Most bike locks are completely useless against someone equipped with a £20 set of bolt cutters, but they're still very good at preventing theft because most people aren't wandering around carrying bolt cutters"
Cracking people's bank accounts is probably more lucrative than stealing bikes. Defeating the "easy" methods will not solve the problem. No serious criminal would give up so easily.
systemd
-free Devuan hits stable 1.0.0 status
"I'm sick of the systemd crap people post online, out of 1000's of posts I have seen maybe 1 or 2 issues that were genuine issues with systemd"
Presumably those "1000's" of posts were somewhere else on the internet. Most of the posts about systemd problems on this forum have been from experienced people who certainly don't need to be given a "dummy's guide" to how to write a unit file. It's Friday. Calm down and have a beer.
"Come off it, everyone who has ever written software has done something like this"
Sure, but it's disappointing that their system for reviewing code before it makes it into firmware didn't catch such an obvious mistake. Human error happens, but the review process should be designed to cope with that.
systemd
-free Devuan Linux hits RC2
"... are because those sysadmin need to learn something new"
My complaint isn't about learning something new, it's about being expected to learn something I consider technically inferior. I don't hate or fear systemd. I have just chosen, after research and testing, not to use it. If it becomes unavoidable on Linux I'll switch to *BSD. I can't understand why that generates such disapproval. My systems are mine. Use what you like on yours.
"they didn't yet manage to demonstrate a single compelling technical reason to make anyone follow their luddism."
They have not yet managed to demonstrate a single technical reason comprehensible by certain participants in this thread. That's no loss IMO. Why do you assume that anyone would want others to "follow" them? That seems quite a strange perspective to me.
A reminder of history: the Luddites broke things to make their point. That is occurring now, but not by the people you think.
"Show me one of these "rational and legitimate reasons" that I've responded to that you consider my response was unfair please."
This and other threads have plenty of examples. You've ignored them. Not only that, you repeatedly dismiss the concerns of experienced people who have to run reliable systems to get their jobs done. What makes the opinion of a small group of developers following the corporate agenda of their employer more valid than those of numerous experienced sysadmins and independent developers?
This isn't the black-and-white issue you seem to think it is. If someone wants to use systemd good luck to them. Just don't try to force me to use it.
"A compiler translates one into the other and there's no reason at all why the compiler cannot compile a local variant of a programming language (eg АЛГОЛ 68) in exactly the same way that a local variant of a configuration file can be compiled into a culturally-independent one."
How would you apply this to a multi-national collaboration like the Linux kernel (or any other large FOSS project for that matter)? Sometimes a lingua franca is the only practical solution.
"So your argument against systemd boils down to slackware."
Classic straw man. If you bothered to read jake's posts you would see he has several valid arguments against systemd. Slackware is merely his chosen method of systemd avoidance (and a sensible one given long term experience with the distro).
Don't mind me though, your debating style is doing the anti-systemd crowd a lot of favours.
"No, it's a statement of someone who's bothered to read about systemd, use it, and has the ability to type"
DrXym, what makes you think that doesn't also apply to those here who don't want systemd on their systems? You keep ignoring rational and legitimate reasons for not using it, and banging on about how "ignorant" everyone who has reservations about systemd is. Is adult discussion really that difficult?
"If you want text files in addition to or instead of binary it is a simple matter of reading the man page to enable them if you so desire."
The problem if you don't want binary logging is that it can't be removed, only redirected. Corrections welcome if I'm wrong.
rpcbind
"If anyone releases products with a GPLv2 kernel they are *obliged* under the terms of the GPL to make source code available to those they sell the products to."
They are not obliged to provide you with new versions if you break the terms of the commercial agreement however. That agreement is orthogonal to the license.
systemd
-free Devuan Linux hits version 1.0.0
"some people came charging along to shout about the bug after it was fixed"
True. The bug itself illustrates the developers' disdain for (and ignorance of) POSIX standards, however. That's enough on its own to make me reluctant to use systemd, regardless of other problems.
"No, they're outnumbered by a lot of whining, a handful of anecdotes..."
One person's "anecdote" is another's practical experience.
"If you have a specific problem, go look up your problem on superuser.com or a similar site..."
Some on this forum might consider such advice patronising.
"It's funny how for all the people whining about systemd Red Hat and other major dists manage to use it without the world collapsing around them."
Not funny at all. Those people have made their own decisions about their own systems. I've made mine. I don't see why anyone would have a problem with that.
"You can turn off the storage in journald by adding Storage=none to the conf file and it logs nothing. Set a flag and it sends the text to someplace else if you like or the console. It isn't as though logging takes much resources in the first place though."
I've had a system hang due to journald generating absurd amounts of data. It was fixable, but that's not the point. I don't want that data generated in the first place.
"It's just an example of the knee jerk reactions that people hate on it without bothering to check if supports what they're trying to do."
I don't hate systemd; I'm happy it exists for those who want to use it. I've made what I consider to be a sensible engineering decision to remove it from my own systems. Don't take it personally.
"You can have ASCII logging. A simple Google would show you how to set it up, assuming your dist doesn't already."
Unfortunately it doesn't tell me how to turn off binary logging, only mask it or redirect it to /dev/null. I don't want the extra processing overhead of generating a redundant set of logging data only to dispose of it.
The problem here isn't that alternatives can't be used, but that a lot of the stuff built into systemd can't be _removed_ .
"Hardware support stinks, especially for end users."
Hardware support for desktop/laptop systems isn't as good as in Linux, but I don't see it being a problem for most servers.
Judging by the number of commenters here who have problems with systemd (who I suspect represent the tip of quite a large iceberg) I expect *BSD use to increase substantially if it becomes impractical to avoid systemd on Linux. That should provide some incentive for better hardware support.