The perceived BIG HAMMER approach being taken in replacing sysV in some of gnu/Linux is kinda concerning to me. Yes .. the firmer expansion beyond how the current init system works .. blahblah. Specifically said perceived there, cause it's not like this has happened overnight. It's been under discussion for quite some time obviously and the need for a new init system well known among people who know such things.
I'm not saying end-users among the nix crowd shouldn't be somewhat concerned. Pay attention & keep watching developments with systemd. Only that I encourage people to have a factual basis, an intelligent understanding about what's actually happening, what they're freaking out about, before actually freaking out, eh?
SysVinit for sure needs to be replaced. It's decades old and the features systemd offers that it can't are about much more than just parallelizing init( faster boot.) If anyone bothers to learn anything about it/those benefits or what an init system even is or does. The person in charge of developing it, is connected very closely apparently with Redhat. People should make no mistake, Redhat and the people chosen to be a part of it are some of the best of the best in terms of technology and software in the world ... PERIOD.
So I don't doubt for a new york sec, this person has forgotten more about Gnu/nix and all things tech, than I'll ever know. I don't fault the guy for not taking his time to stop and try to clarify or justify things being done to people who know nothing about it overall.
Then I see folks screaming, it's not documented, it's not well documented, where are the man-pages blahblah. Then you see things stating that systemd is comprised of like 225k lines of code and that like 120k+ of them are comments and whitespace. To me, not a gifted coder by any means and will never be anything like in these devs league. Stands to reason, if those code comments are in any way meaningful, then they are documenting it and EXTENSIVELY. Man pages and docs will come later. Though let's face it, man-pages may as well be written in Chinese for all they really tell someone often enough.
So if the guy doesn't want to waste 10mins trying to explain something I won't understand or really don't know anything about to me, I don't blame him. That's 10mins he could've spent actually getting something productive done instead. Now it'd be ok, if 2-3-5 clueless people wasted 10-15mins of the guys time a dy and he felt like doing it. However when there's 100's, do the math. Nothing would get done with the project he's working on. Same for contrib patches proposed or whatever.
That's why there's a development team and a head of the team. Because they and that head have the skills and knowledge to get whatever project done. Seems like an intelligent and reasonable approach to things to me.
This really isn't some big hammer, out of the blue thing. Many people buying into FUD and completely ignorant of what's and why's ... or who's, I think are really foolish. The people saying it ( have no clue what it even is) works, so why change it. The folks that have the knowledge, do the work and volunteer their skills know what it is and why it needs to be changed. You can hammer in a nail w a brick, it works ... why change it. It's not a hammer, it's dang sure a longggg way from a modern nail-gun, right ?
Or hey, why not cater to me, even though I'm clueless and really just using something you're generous enough to share with me. Hey, I want my freedom, it's my choice dang it ! Give me more choices-(Note: There are several.) But as to why it's not the best idea to give end-users endless choices of an init system ?
Well ... for one thing, giving 2,200 choices to people who have no idea what's going on. a) Doesn't resolve or effectively address the original issue that prompted the change in the 1st place and b) Makes it that much more complicated, adds to the work-load of the awesome folks actually doing the work. Though hey, as an end-USER, why should anyone care about that huh ?
These ingenius and unbelieveably generous people can just sit around in magic opensource fairyland, granting every end-users wish or whim ... right ? Without these people seemingly willing to do/learn anything for themselves of course. Here's my thought on it, DFTF=(don't feed the FUD.)
As for the systemd is taking over EVERYTHING, omg, omg. It's actually a reasonable extension, what does an init system do afterall ? Many of the processes started after pid=1 or daemons/services started during the process handle many things/functions necessary for the OS to operate. Whether it's started by an initscript at one of the run-levels and properly shut down later or started/stopped a diff way. They HAVE to be up and running for the OS to run and be stable.
In fact, if someone sets aside the ignorant FUD and does a bit of intelligent research, that's one of the benefits systemd is intending to address. It's "stateful", meaning it can tell what state a service is in. If a service that's supposed to be running isn't or crashes, part of the improvement is that systemd will detect this and try to resolve the issue and get the service back up and running. Obvious end result of this = a more stable operating system.
So if folks, who again have forgotten more about how things work feel this is a good/better approach. I'm forced to conclude that they likely know of which they speak and I do not. Also note that due to the nature of gnu/nix and opensource, there are other expert level people watching developments and if someone tried to slip a "this is going to ruin everything" change into Linux. The mountains would shake with the voices of outrage and dissent.
Those people would bring w them fact based, 1st hand experience and detailed technical data to support what they're saying. Not to be confused with all the systemd fudders or tinfoil hatters being heard in too many gnu/nix communities atm.
Didn't take much research at all to debunk much of this nonsense. Because of the panic undertones in this FUD thread, hey, I went off looking for FUD and yeah, found plenty. See even Linus Torvald said it's horrible!!! and they support that with a snippet taken out of context and don't even provide the full quote. Someone bothers to track it down and nope, that's not what he said at all.
Another prominent person assoc with major opensource projs. The fudders shout, look he agrees w us, he said xyz!!! Then I go to his google+ page and he has installed and is using systemd himself. Hmmmm curiouser and curiouser, hmmmm, rather than the FUD, let's look up what benefits systemd provides over the old sysv. Well now ... there's quite a few. Sighs, now that that's off my chest. More typing about systemd follows.
Some thoughts about systemd, I'm definitely going to try it ( have played with cmds/configs in the past) and it'd be ridiculous imo to abandon Debian or Gnu/Linux because of this development. As I've mentioned in another post, jmo, if Debian is allowing it to be adopted, they've got reasons and those reasons are certainly not to destroy opensource or gnu/nix. Nor taking over your computer and sucking your soul outta your eyeballs, *RELAX* people, take a deep breath sheesh.
( ... I sincerely hope more paranoid schizo(s) do not start popping up and trying to tell me Debian has been infiltrated and taken over by RH or space aliens. Opensource clearly doesn't work that way folks. There are many eyes upon the sourcecode, thus why it's called opensource. Keep such tinfoil hattage and FUD 2 yourselves please. Plus I believe these people really should be using aluminum foil. I've been told it's much more effective @ keeping out the govt mind-probes!)
After reading extensively and already knew a tad about sysvinit, systemd is a "drop-in" backwards compatible init system to replace systemV. It offers many features and has capabilities sysv can't match. Sysv depending upon which source you go by is 20-30yrs old. When considering technology, that makes it older than dinosaur turds. Though it has undergone upgrades, re-works and recieved patches or bandaides during that time.
Being a drop in replacement, as it was described so many times in materials made me think, if someone can drop it in so easily, can almost certainly drop it out easily too. Bit of googling, yep you can reinstall sysvinit and continue using it instead. Though Gnomexxx version software will not be poss to use without systemd. It'd be pulled into the gnu/nix OS as a depend. That's fine ... if someone wants to use any of the MANY alternatives to Gnome3xxx and their other assoc apps/utils.
Systemd is also backwards compatible and imo, will HAVE to stay that way for the foreseeable future, for a ton of reasons. So aside from newer packages designed explicitedly to depend on systemd in the repos ... Everything else will work just great per usual. Atm don't even know if ( or how many) of the packages in the Debian stable repos( or those soon to be stable) even give a whit about the existence of systemd. Probably not many.
Personally don't see much promise in things like the systemd-shim (edit: Well depending on which branches x-user is tracking). Systemd is undergoing HEAVY development obviously and the developers maintaining the shim would likely have to really stay on top of changes to keep it working. Though in a situation w Debian stable, the version of systemd and the systemd-shim could be static for MUCH longer than outside of Deb stable.
Thus could very well work fine for the lifespan of Jessie. Poss same for testing branch too. Unstable is well, named that for a reason. I like it and w some common sense blahblah. Whatever ... back to topic. This is complete speculation about the shim on my part, may try the shim jfthell-oi.
In considering Debian stable (or testing), that's one thing that does concern me about systemd. Packages in stable are older, if that means it's still got an older version of systemd in it. That may be problematic for the userbase.
Newer versions have come out, in which improvements made or bugs have been squashed. Don't consider it kosure that Debian stable users would get stuck with outdated or jmo, that something like a replacement to the init system should be considered something business as usual. Release cycle as usual kind of deal.
Though would never be such a tard or so azzhatish as to try to tell Debian HQ it's business. If they haven't already considered these things I'd be surprised and if it did turn out to be an issue would move to resolve the problem quickly.
Mentioned I'm going to try systemd, rather than whine and cry/piss n moan, threaten to take my toyz and go to freebsd, have a nervous breakdown about martians taking over my system etc etc etc. Would rather see what I think of it and find out about it 1st hand.
If you CHOOSE to apt-pin and run a mixed install, backport certain packages or refuse to give up using Gnome3's stuff, use older versions and don't bother putting them on hold in dpkg or or or. Then hey, that's x-users choice. Either know/learn what you're doing or deal with the consequences. Stop blaming Debian and gnu/nix for x-users bad judgement or ignorance-etc.
That's part of the FREEDOM so many tinfoil-hatters among gnu/nix communities keep screaming about. Though a TON of those folks clearly put the emphasis on FREEdom, as they've never donated one red cent to Debian or any other opensource project. Guess they consider it a contribution to Gnu/nix that they use it or summin. Just saying ...
* Just got this funny mental image of a mod over @ freebsd, hears a knock on the forum door. Opens .... and, there's 70,000 former gnu/nix users wearing tinfoil-hats standing on Freebsd's doorstep.
Poor bsd, enough nix mad hatters show up, the peeps using bsd will port systemd and start using it for init just to get rid of em.
There are alternative init options, very likely in one or more branches of the Debian repos already. SysV + Openrc caught my attention and plan to eventually get around to playing with just cause, looks like it could be a step up from just systemV by itself.
If something grossly superior to systemd gets developed, then imo, NO ... systemd isn't carved in stone, Gnome or no Gnome. Many distro's don't give a whit about Gnome and mentioned Debian users don't HAVE to use it either. Though obviously w the big names behind it and the quality of the contribs they produce, yeah systemd's got mucho traction behind it. Would be shocked to ever see it replaced outright. Though changed ... that's another story.
I still strongly support Debian PERIOD, though there are also many distro's, what I think of as Grandfather or GMother distro's (however x-person prefers) that are not just going along with the systemd prog. Namely Gentoo and Slackware.
Both of which I personally have nothing but admiration and respect for along w Debian. There are others as well, one of which I'd come across recent posting in their home forum discussing systemd and adopting Openrc instead. Mostly cause they just don't like the way Redhat and Gnome are acting, rather than judging systemd's technical merits.
Though rest assured too, development will continue on systemd and folks who actually know something about software will almost certainly advocate ( or release) changes to improve anything it lacks, bugs found etc so forth, including Debian, affiliates, +userbase. Making it more modular etc etc.
Plus work on alternatives will no doubt continue too. One I noticed is a stripped down version of systemd aka: uselessd. Whose stated goal is to take out a bunch of the things many people are uncomfortable with and make systemd more like the ole systemV instead. Don't know how that project will end up.
FACT: That the people behind uselessd can fork systemd, change it extensively if they desire ( are capable) and even rename the proj a derogatory slur on the people who worked to develop it, strongly suggests to me that it's freely licensed, opensource etc blahblah ?
However I have plenty of faith in Debian's devs and the brilliant folks in the opensource UUG=(upper-uber-geekdom) and throughout the nixverse. As mentioned plenty of other options avail to gnu/nixers anyway. This is not "the end of the world as we know it" and I feel fineeeeeeee. < reference 2 REM lyrics.
Wanted to say-type a bunch more stuff about this blahblah. Though will end with, am more disturbed by the epidemic tidalwave of mindless fear, FUD and paranoia sweeping this and other Gnu/linux communities ... than I could ever be about systemd.
For da luv of the tech gawds. If you're daring enough, drop an install with systemd in Virtualbox-etc and then watch how it acts. Of if you're one of the more adventurous among the gnu/nix crowd and like myself tend to keep several testing partitions. Slap that sucker on bare-metal and check it out.
If it sucks the soul outta your eyeballs please post about the experience for the benefit of your fellow gnu/Linux users everywhere ... BOO! ... boo! Alright I'll quit, ... BOO!
