# Lennart Poettering goes to Microsoft



## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 7, 2022)

Lennart Poettering, the mastermind and founder of Avahi, Pulseaudio and most notable Systemd, quietly left Redhat (so IBM) a short while ago. It's now officially confirmed that his new employer is going to be Microsoft, Inc. He will continue working on Systemd there.

People are now hoping that systemd-registry and systemd-activedirectory will become standard parts of the default distribution pretty soon! Or maybe Microsoft finally wants to migrate Windows to the Linux kernel?

Many people though do agree that Poettering's design philosophy matches pretty well with Microsoft, which can be summarised as "Internet Explorer is now an eternal, integral part of Windows."






						Systemd Creator Lands At Microsoft - Phoronix
					






					www.phoronix.com


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## Crivens (Jul 7, 2022)

*checks calendar* Nope, not start of Q2.


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## sko (Jul 7, 2022)

*grabs popcorn*  watching the threads on reddit and memes about this headline will be as entertaining as throwing spray cans in a dumpster fire


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 7, 2022)

And the IQ of both will drop dramatically.

The attitudes of both fit together well.


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## Crivens (Jul 7, 2022)

Don't be so harsh. Maybe he will feel at home there. Let's see what happens, it might  be for the best.


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## mer (Jul 7, 2022)

Crivens said:


> it might be for the best.


For whom?  RedHat, Linux?   
Yes, I am kidding.    Anyone doing this business knows there is often a large gap between requirements, design and implementation.  I can see an argument around systemd that implementation didn't follow the design correctly, while at the same time an argument about the design didn't follow the requirements.
That said, my personal opinion is that systemd overly complicates things and is not really an advancement.  But that's my opinion and I'm fine if others think systemd is "better than sliced bread".



hardworkingnewbie said:


> "Internet Explorer is now an eternal, integral part of Windows."


And now it's not   I agree with your point.


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## Crivens (Jul 7, 2022)

If he fled IBM because of bureaucracy, he is in for a surprise.
Search for "windows shut down button crapfest" where someone tells the tale of how the shutdown button in vista came to be what it is now.
Edit: this one http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html?m=1


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## scottro (Jul 7, 2022)

I did say for years that I thought he was a sleeper agent for MS.


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## sko (Jul 7, 2022)

Crivens said:


> it might be for the best



you mean windows will get an actual init-system and a sane way to handle services? 


No matter what comes out of this - they deserve each other...


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## msplsh (Jul 7, 2022)

Well now that they're not employing the person responsible for trying to absorb everything into systemd, perhaps the benefits of doing more of it will be properly inspected.  However if there's pushback, backing out of a systemd investment is going to be... difficult.


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## Phishfry (Jul 7, 2022)

Returning to human readable logs would be a start.
Somehow we manage.... I really like our auto archiving logging. That is binary logging at its best.


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## gpw928 (Jul 8, 2022)

I can's ascribe this quote, but it's got them (Microsoft and their new employee) covered nicely:
"The Microsoft tax isn't the money you pay them.  It's the time you spend coping with their wretched software."


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 8, 2022)

msplsh said:


> backing out of a systemd investment is going to be... difficult.


That's a good point! What will happen with his involvement with that? Will it now fall apart at the hands of others?


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## Crivens (Jul 8, 2022)

drhowarddrfine said:


> That's a good point! What will happen with his involvement with that? Will it now fall apart at the hands of others?


That is a good point. It would be highly ironic if linux implodes over different forks of systemd.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 8, 2022)

Did the Linux community really not see this coming?

Systemd, the new svchost.exe. Redhat became a distant cousin of Bellevue.


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## Crivens (Jul 8, 2022)

Beastie7 said:


> Did the Linux community really not see this coming?
> .


You underestimate the NIH momentum there. Even if they saw the svchost analogy, "This is OUR svchost!!1!". Or even better "WE can make this work! Like last time." Anyone remember hald?


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## tux2bsd (Jul 8, 2022)

It's possible he keeps working on systemd from Microsoft.  Embrace, extend, extinguish.

My long term prediction is Microsoft will adopt the Linux kernel and some other aspects e.g. systemd as it is a glue layer.

systemd is cancer.


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## Crivens (Jul 8, 2022)

When that happens, there will be an insane amount of forks, then they diverge, then they collapse.


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## kpedersen (Jul 8, 2022)

I always found the naming of:

GNU/Linux
systemd/Linux
to be quite useful to discern the difference between an ad-hoc scripts approach and the monolithic systemd approach. However these days I suppose it would be dangerously close to:

Microsoft/Linux
Microsoft truly are going to enjoy stating that they are the lead developers of the underlying Linux user-land. Its going to be glorious


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## tux2bsd (Jul 8, 2022)

Crivens said:


> When that happens, there will be an insane amount of forks, then they diverge, then they collapse.


No real reason why that would be true, it's already all over the show.  

Linux (proper, the kernel) & systemd are independent of the rest of the system.  Whatever Microsoft hypothetically plonk on top can be totally closed source.


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## Crivens (Jul 9, 2022)

That would not be Microsofts doing. There are enough rabid anti-MS zealots there to do it. They will introduce incompatibilities with the intend to distance the thing from evil MS. Then add a bit "holier than you" attitude, one or two new features that some apps want but others break and there you are.
All MS needs to do then is stand at the side, slow clap, and of course offer their own distro with support contracts for azure.


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## mer (Jul 9, 2022)

Crivens said:


> They will introduce incompatibilities with the intend to distance the thing from evil MS.


Similar to changes in the kernel to "break" ZFS


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## tux2bsd (Jul 9, 2022)

Crivens said:


> That would not be Microsofts doing.


You must be young.


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## Crivens (Jul 9, 2022)

tux2bsd said:


> You must be young.


Sadly, no. MS has read SunTzu and Maciavelli. And some things from the lead safe boxes in places no one knows of.

They will initiate it, with plausible deniability. They will simply create the right circumstances, maybe egg some people on a bit, and then watch the crowd b*chslap each other. They will be in the clear. Best way to fight a war. And then maybe they will "help" the last one standing back up by spending some money on them, with expectations of course. Let's see who is that. In Demolition Man, some fast food joint (Taco Bell?) had won the franchise wars and had all the restaurants. Maybe, in 5 years, MS will buy Suse? Or more exactly, the smoldering remains.


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## Crivens (Jul 9, 2022)

mer said:


> Similar to changes in the kernel to "break" ZFS


I must have missed that. Any pointers?


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## Jose (Jul 9, 2022)

The plot has definitely thickened.


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## mer (Jul 9, 2022)

Crivens said:


> I must have missed that. Any pointers?


I'd have to go back and search but kernel mailing lists or maybe OpenZFS when it was "ZFS on Linux".  Something about a kernel function the ZFS  module was using, but it was decided the license for OpenZFS was incompatible with GPL and the Linux kernel moved scope of the function so it was no longer available to OpenZFS module.    Bunch of back and forth on the mailing lists one of the Linux guys (maybe a Greg last name started with a K I think?) effectively said "screw the ZFS team ZFS will never be a native Linux filesystem".  OpenZFS found a way to work around it by using different available functions.
A lot of the attitude struck me as NIH.

Here's a quick link to an interview with Torvalds about it.  Should give a starting point to looking at LKML, it got rather heated.





						It's a no to ZFS in the Linux kernel from me, says Torvalds, points finger of blame at Oracle licensing
					

What's that coming over the hill? Is it a lawyer? It's Larry's lawyers




					www.theregister.com


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## rootbert (Jul 9, 2022)

Crivens said:


> I must have missed that. Any pointers?


https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...atements-arent-right-heres-the-straight-dope/  ... especially the "The original January 2019 controversy, explained" explains the weirdness


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## Crivens (Jul 9, 2022)

Yeah, that one - right. Another case of "Better be silent and thought stupid then speak up and remove any doubt".


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## scottro (Jul 9, 2022)

I remember, in the 90's, I think, a joke about Microsoft Linux. At the time it was a joke, with things like MS having a daemon krapd, and the like. Then MS started becoming more Linux involved and one does wonder if this is more of embrace, extend, extinguish. (To me, that's what Slack is doing. For the first year or two, it was easy to use it with irssi, now, I don't know if it's possible. I gave up and switched to weechat which works with a python plugin. https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack, if anyone's interested, though even that's become harder to use.)
Another rather mean-spirited term I've been hearing around is calling Linux  Poettering-ix, though I can certainly understand the logic. Systemd is quite insidious. I've been at a BSD shop for years now, so was less affected, but we did have some CentOS servers for things that wouldn't run on FreeBSD, but for our limited usage, it didn't greatly affect us.


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## Minbari (Jul 9, 2022)

Lentard Poettering goes to Microsoft... No one really cares.


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## eternal_noob (Jul 9, 2022)

The damage is done already.


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## Jose (Jul 9, 2022)

Crivens said:


> Yeah, that one - right. Another case of "Better be silent and thought stupid then speak up and remove any doubt".


I think Linus being stupid is the most charitable take on what he did. I believe the knew exactly what ZFS was and is, and was trying to use his considerable fame and popularity to quash interest in it. This is Linus' political side, which is not often called out for what it is.


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## Menelkir (Jul 9, 2022)

mer said:


> but it was decided the license for OpenZFS was incompatible with GPL


Well CDDL isn't compatible with GPL in the same way FreeBSD can't have GPL code in their base, they're incompatible licenses.


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## Truupe (Jul 10, 2022)

Menelkir said:


> Well CDDL isn't compatible with GPL in the same way FreeBSD can't have GPL code in their base, they're incompatible licenses.


And I'm ok with this.  I'm wary of linux programming philosophies polluting ZFS anyways.


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## Crivens (Jul 10, 2022)

Truupe said:


> And I'm ok with this.  I'm wary of linux programming philosophies polluting ZFS anyways.


And this gets us on topic, as we started with lennard.


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## ap3man (Jul 11, 2022)

Crivens said:


> When that happens, there will be an insane amount of forks, then they diverge, then they collapse.


It does seem like a veritable crapshoot for the evolution of systemd (borrowing just a little from Einteinian parlance).


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 11, 2022)

Actually nowadays Microsoft is one of the biggest contributors to the Linux kernel, it's in the TOP 5.

Microsoft also ported own software to Linux because probably they got fed up with Windows, e.g. HyperV has been ported totally over to Linux. And Microsoft Teams is available natively for Linux, as well as Microsoft Edge.

Reg. ZFS: the CDDL license is incompatible to GPLv2 on purpose.

Also there are two pillars the development is being based on, namely:

1. it's got a stable application binary interface. You can still run binaries compiled mid of the 90s on modern Linux kernels.
2. it has no binary kernel interface, nor a stable kernel interface.

Linux wants all drivers at least being under GPL, and prefers them to be part of the kernel. Period. This is probably one of the most important decisions why it never took off on the desktop, that lack of interface.

When running a Linux module, then exported interfaces are separated between vanilla interfaces (EXPORT_SYMBOL) or GPL tagged interfaces (EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL). When trying to load a BSD licensed module for example, which registers as BSD module, EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL will be not available for that module during runtime.

In 2019 there was a commit which tagged previously only EXPORT_SYMBOL interface API calls as EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL - and that broke ZFS. It was _kernel_fpu_ which was GPL tagged. Having no access to it prevented ZFS from it only prevents them from using the kernel's own state-management facilities to preserve and restore state. It affected back then only a few ZFS users, and the solution was to re-implement that stuff in the ZFS module.

The stance of the Linux developers is: if you want to run in kernel space you need to keep up with kernel development. Or at least commit the code into the main kernel with GPLv2, and we'll maintain it then, keeping it running.

IMHO they just retagged this symbol, because they were on a tagging spree. That it affected ZFS made that tagging then quite well known and controversial.

Going back to Lennart Poettering: Poettering is a BTRFS lover. I mean he wants to do stuff like this: http://0pointer.net/blog/revisiting-how-we-put-together-linux-systems.html, using systemd and Btrfs. What could possibly go wrong... it's safe to say that he's a full blown Btrfs lovah boy.

Which is funny, becuse nobody nowadays really still believes that aside RAID0/1 Btrfs ever will become something usable after the CoreOS desaster. As a matter of fact there's a COW file system written from scratch for Linux in development called Bcachefs exactly because of its developer Kent Overstreet has given up hope on that.


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## cynwulf (Jul 13, 2022)

This kind of news is no longer surprising.  Linux fans may have a problem, in that a Microsoft employee now develops and maintains an integral part of the handful of main Linux distributions.  But they already had a problem, with "big tech" (Microsoft included), funding and steering Linux development anyway.

In my view that horse already bolted.


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## kpedersen (Jul 13, 2022)

cynwulf said:


> In my view that horse already bolted.


I feel it is important to analyse what allowed this (in terms of mindset of the Linux community) and ensure it can't happen to FreeBSD.

There are too many people that revere large commercial companies. Perhaps they incorrectly feel that "little guys" can't possibly achieve great things together.


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## mer (Jul 13, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> There are too many people that revere large commercial companies. Perhaps they incorrectly feel that "little guys" can't possibly achieve great things together.


The old "buy IBM Buy DEC" you'll never go wrong syndrome.  Funny thing is a lot of the large companies (IBM, DEC, HP) started out small, almost "someone's garage".

Absolutely agree with the "analyze" aspect.


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## Crivens (Jul 13, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> .There are too many people that revere large commercial companies. Perhaps they incorrectly feel that "little guys" can't possibly achieve great things together.


Mat Dillon wants to have a chat with you.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 14, 2022)

cynwulf said:


> This kind of news is no longer surprising.  Linux fans may have a problem, in that a Microsoft employee now develops and maintains an integral part of the handful of main Linux distributions.  But they already had a problem, with "big tech" (Microsoft included), funding and steering Linux development anyway.
> 
> In my view that horse already bolted.


The thing is: nobody forced Debian and many other Linux distributions to move over to systemd; they actively decided to do so. Only a few, like Slackware or Gentoo refused to do so. Devuan came into existance as Debian fork due to Debian embracing systemd.


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## rootbert (Jul 14, 2022)

to be honest, I do not like systemd, I do not like Lennart but then I do not care about him. I also do not like Linus Torvalds and Theo de Raadt, I think those geniuses lack some "social intelligence", however, I like their work.

That said, I really like systemds best idea: the declarative init system with unit files, I would love to have such a thing for *BSD. That is also my main reason why I prefer pf over ipfw - I can lint it, and it is digestest in an atomic way (more or less). The bad thing is: the implementation of systemd is especially bad, does not work as expected, is overengineered and lets not forget all the services around it that are installed no matter if you want/need them. In my 20 years of infrastructure administration I think systemd is the worst piece of crap we have got ... I think it is especially hard for me because I really like the unix philosophy of one great tool for one task. Whenever I had to deal with Windows, Lotus Domino, Blackberry Enterprise Server, SAP and all those "business software" I knew before I would not like it, however, I liked Linux/GNU until systemd came along and completely broke with that philosophy.


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## Menelkir (Jul 14, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> The thing is: nobody forced Debian and many other Linux distributions to move over to systemd; they actively decided to do so. Only a few, like Slackware or Gentoo refused to do so. Devuan came into existance as Debian fork due to Debian embracing systemd.


Artix also have an actual great work maintaining a bunch of different inits. That said, it is (somehow) easily doable to just no using it, at this point is quite hard because some distributions (and some software maintainers as well) decided that was easy to just do what the "Mr. Everyone" was doing, embracing systemd.


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## scottro (Jul 14, 2022)

RH is sort of the Windows of the Linux world. They decided on systemd, and others fell in line, as it was apparently easier to do so. I've heard it said (by BSD folks), that Poettering is good at C but knows nothing about system administration and comments of his that losing logs wasn't a big deal sort of enforce that. RH's latest is that their RHEL9 won't run on older x86_64 machines, only on x86_64-v2 machines. As I've kept an older (~2007) machine to keep my hand in at RH and clones, this is a nuisance for me, though not necessarily a terrible thing.  
TLDR, RH is the Windows of Linux and their decision to back Poettering's ideas meant that many other distributions did the same.  I don't like a lot of it, but whether I'm right or just an old guy yelling at clouds, is something I'd rather not confirm.


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## Jose (Jul 14, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> The thing is: nobody forced Debian...


That's not the way I remember it. Some Debian folks fought back hard and lost 'cause Poettering was the better politician.





						Announcement of the Debian Fork | Devuan GNU+Linux Free Operating System
					

Free GNU+Linux base OS. Devuan is a fork of Debian without systemd. Devuan Bewoulf provides a safe upgrade path from Debian, to ensure the right to Init Freedom and avoid entanglement.




					www.devuan.org


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 14, 2022)

For me the main problem with systemd is not the program itself, but that certain other basic and important building blocks for a Linux system have been usurped by that project.

So stuff like udev, elogind and such which in the past were maintained separately, are now part of systemd.


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## kpedersen (Jul 14, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> So stuff like udev, elogind


and hald. Things like these three shouldn't even exist in the first place. Or at least shouldn't be underpinnings. If a company needs some of their more niche features, they should maintain them / integrate them themselves. If that is too difficult, they should take that as a hint and avoid them like the rest of us.

and PAM to be honest. These big abstraction things are messy. It is easier to write auth for one or two systems (which is all you will need anyway), than to use an abstraction that can pull into 12 (mostly obsolete) systems that you will never want in practice.


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## mer (Jul 14, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> For me the main problem with systemd is not the program itself, but that certain other basic and important building blocks for a Linux system have been usurped by that project.
> 
> So stuff like udev, elogind and such which in the past were maintained separately, are now part of systemd.





rootbert said:


> That said, I really like systemds best idea: the declarative init system with unit files,



For me these two quotes are the crux of my problem with systemd.  It's not just an init system.  The biggest problem with an init system is the dependencies.  What needs to wait on what, who needs to start first, who can start at any time.  Provides and Depends.  Determine that correctly and it just works.  Muck that up and the system boots inconsistently.
From an init point of view, I don't think systemd unit files are any better or any worse than rc run scripts.
Thing I hate the most about systemd is binary logging.  If you have a failure to boot you get some obscure message on the console then you need to know some magic decoder ring to figure out "Oh it's trying to mount a flash drive during boot that is not connected".


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## kpedersen (Jul 14, 2022)

mer said:


> Thing I hate the most about systemd is binary logging.


The fact that a binary logging system became the norm so easily after *nix prides itself on simple human readable text files as a tried and tested success for decades demonstrates that Linux is *not* governed by its users (or developers).


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## Jose (Jul 14, 2022)

mer said:


> For me these two quotes are the crux of my problem with systemd.  It's not just an init system.  The biggest problem with an init system is the dependencies.  What needs to wait on what, who needs to start first, who can start at any time.  Provides and Depends.  Determine that correctly and it just works.  Muck that up and the system boots inconsistently.


Yeah, their dependency semantics are a mess, and they're spread over several large man pages to make things extra special nice when you're trying to troubleshoot something or write a new unit file.



mer said:


> From an init point of view, I don't think systemd unit files are any better or any worse than rc run scripts


I disagree. They managed to make something worse than shell syntax. Golf claps.


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## cy@ (Jul 14, 2022)

The important thing to note here is, M$ is focused on the cloud. The cloud is built on docker and podman containers (mostly). (Sure there are Linux and FreeBSD VMs but they're nothing compared to the vast majority of the workload out there.)

Docker and podman containers are generally built using a Linux ABI. The big players, AWS, Google, and M$ are competing for cloud dollars. M$ is investing heavily in Azure. Pottering leaving says a lot less about him and a lot more about M$ and the big fight over cloud coming over the horizon. I'm in a comfortable position to simply grab popcorn and watch. I think others who are just beginning their careers or somewhere in the middle need to seriously consider their options to maintain long term employment. (Of course there are other economic, geopolitical, and global considerations but this certainly should weigh heavily on anyone in this business.)


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## Jose (Jul 14, 2022)

Yeah, I've got sucked in to the cloud vortex. I hate it, and it's only going to get worse with the Kubernettes  crapware bearing down on us. I still enjoy most of my job, but the systems stuff I have to do now is the reason why I hang out here.


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## Menelkir (Jul 14, 2022)

mer said:


> Thing I hate the most about systemd is binary logging. If you have a failure to boot you get some obscure message on the console then you need to know some magic decoder ring to figure out "Oh it's trying to mount a flash drive during boot that is not connected".


If you're unfortunate to have a unproper shutdown and the journal gets corrupted, the entire log is lost, you have to delete the journal and start over. Being there, done that.


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## cy@ (Jul 14, 2022)

Discussing this with people at $JOB on Teams, at this point in my career I can simply grab popcorn and  watch but if I was any younger I'd be working on a long term employment strategy. ($EMPLOYER is offering employees AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure courses. The AWS and Google Cloud courses are not free but the Azure courses are free of charge because M$ pays for them.)


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## mer (Jul 14, 2022)

Jose said:


> I disagree. They managed to make something worse than shell syntax. Golf claps.


I'll admit to being diplomatic in my wording


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## cy@ (Jul 14, 2022)

Jose said:


> Yeah, I've got sucked in to the cloud vortex. I hate it, and it's only going to get worse with the Kubernettes  crapware bearing down on us. I still enjoy most of my job, but the systems stuff I have to do now is the reason why I hang out here.



I understand. I started out doing kernel programming on MVS (IBM mainframe operating system), professionally. I had to move to UNIX, landing here at FreeBSD, while doing other UNIX/Linux work for a living. I hated it at first because it was not the same. The things I could do in S/370 assembler are not possible in C or C++ (like branch tables of instructions -- without if-then-else or case constructs -- or manipulating registers in a creative way). I still have dreams of IBM S/370 machine instructions. But rolling with the punches is the best strategy for maintaining employment in IT. Of my 45 year career I have only been unemployed for 30 days because I choose to take a month off between jobs. A strategy of flexibility works.


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## Jose (Jul 14, 2022)

cy@ said:


> Discussing this with people at $JOB on Teams, at this point in my career I can simply grab popcorn and  watch but if I was any younger I'd be working on a long term employment strategy. ($EMPLOYER is offering employees AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure courses. The AWS and Google Cloud courses are not free but the Azure courses are free of charge because M$ pays for them.)


I got paid by the hour to go to an Azure course. I was contracting, and there was some concern at the client's org that not enough people had signed up for it so I got paid to surf the Web at some M$ learning center. The center was super posh. M$ is pulling out all the stops to win this cloud thing.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 14, 2022)

A lot of people, including me, forget that the internet is now run by and controlled by the big companies. Many of the things brought up are there because the big companies need them. This fools the individual into thinking, therefore, that they must learn and use those things for their tiny company of three and their personal web site.


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## cynwulf (Jul 14, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> The thing is: nobody forced Debian and many other Linux distributions to move over to systemd; they actively decided to do so. Only a few, like Slackware or Gentoo refused to do so. Devuan came into existance as Debian fork due to Debian embracing systemd.


To understand how/why Debian moved to systemd, you only need to look into the corporate affiliatons / day jobs of those who voted to switch to systemd and where the project funding comes from, as well as the project's close ties to Canonical and the many developers/maintainers being Ubuntu/Debian co developers/maintainers.

As with the Linux kernel itself Debian relies heavily on corporate sponsors.


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## kpedersen (Jul 14, 2022)

cynwulf said:


> As with the Linux kernel itself Debian relies heavily on corporate sponsors.


Very true. And they are very good at bending an open-source project to their will. There is nothing really there to say that "is bad" which means it can't really be defended against. I guess the biggest influencers of FreeBSD are iXsystems and Klara. I get the feeling Netflix is a little bit smaller in terms of sway. If anything I am hoping these companies are able to block or prevent extortion from much larger vendors (unless they sell up to Microsoft like everyone seems quite happy to do recently).

Slightly related; I am a little cautious of the difference in budget of these two sites.

https://freebsdfoundation.org/
https://openbsdfoundation.org/

I just hope that the clear difference in funding that the FreeBSD foundation is receiving is responsibly distributed to things that matter to the widest spread of users rather than solely appeasing companies or being wasted on unreasonable outreach strategies to increase popularity (ultimately for monetisation).


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## mer (Jul 14, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> And they are very good at bending an open-source project to their will.


Is this where we ask I thought the GPL was supposed to prevent this?


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## msplsh (Jul 14, 2022)

No


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## ct85711 (Jul 14, 2022)

The other part that contributed in pushing Ubuntu/Debian to switching to systemd, is that Gnome made systemd a hard requirement.  In the end on Linux, KDE and Gnome are the big players that overwhelming is the main DE that most people use.  In the end, Debian and other distros had little choice between switching to systemd(the least trouble), alienating half the users, or carrying patches that upstream won't accept and constantly break.  Even Gentoo was constantly having trouble with this, and has eventually gave up.


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## msplsh (Jul 14, 2022)

That's the primary reason: systemd made itself unignorable.


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## Menelkir (Jul 14, 2022)

ct85711 said:


> The other part that contributed in pushing Ubuntu/Debian to switching to systemd, is that Gnome made systemd a hard requirement.  In the end on Linux, KDE and Gnome are the big players that overwhelming is the main DE that most people use.  In the end, Debian and other distros had little choice between switching to systemd(the least trouble), alienating half the users, or carrying patches that upstream won't accept and constantly break.  Even Gentoo was constantly having trouble with this, and has eventually gave up.


Strange, Artix have the solution by 5 years already and they manage to support different inits in a rolling-release distribution. Not to mention you can rollback to arch if you want. And btw, the artix team is far smaller than debian team.


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## kpedersen (Jul 14, 2022)

ct85711 said:


> The other part that contributed in pushing Ubuntu/Debian to switching to systemd, is that Gnome made systemd a hard requirement.  In the end on Linux, KDE and Gnome are the big players that overwhelming is the main DE that most people use.


Indeed. I think that is why it is so important that FreeBSD defaults to no-graphical desktop in the default install. That way we will never standardize on a single desktop and be tied to its tyranny.


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## Brian546 (Jul 14, 2022)

Bad choice on Debian's part. The GUI should be the absolute lowest of low priorities in a server operating system. I will never understand the obsession with making these open source systems so that any Joe off the street can use them. That is what Windows and MacOS are for.


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## msplsh (Jul 14, 2022)

So that Joe off the Street can become part of the userbase for software developers to target, thereby increasing the size of the OSS software ecosystem?


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## kpedersen (Jul 14, 2022)

msplsh said:


> So that Joe off the Street can become part of the userbase for software developers to target, thereby increasing the size of the OSS software ecosystem?


Linux has proven that even with all of these compromises to the OS, it can still only manage <1% market share.

Money and marketing are the only things that can build consumer userbases; not technical merit.


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## scottro (Jul 15, 2022)

There are probably books to be written supporting both viewpoints. I guess I'm a bit  of a hypocrite, I like the fact that these days,  X is usually automatically configured. (Linux and *BSD).  I hate html mail, and miss the days when people would answer mail inline, instead of top posting to the point where, if you answer mail to a non-technical person properly, they'll write back, "You didn't answer me," because they don't look down. I guess I think it's better--to a point--that things are more accessible, but wish that I could stand over it all, saying, This accommodation is OK, but this one will turn everything into Windows and Mac. As kpedersen says, it's not based on merit.   RH, not necessarily because it was the best, has, in the US at least, become the de facto standard. They decided to enable Poettering and so his way of doing things became the main way.  RH becomes more and more Windows like with each iteration ,and it's not all Poettering's doing. I wonder what he'll be doing at MS, as they do spend a lot of effort on LInux, or shall we call it Poetteringux? (That was beneath me, but I'm not editing it out. I'm really immature for such an old man).


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## gpw928 (Jul 15, 2022)

scottro said:


> I hate html mail, and miss the days when people would answer mail inline, instead of top posting to the point where, if you answer mail to a non-technical person properly, they'll write back, "You didn't answer me," because they don't look down...


A: Yes.
> Q: Are you sure?
>>A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation.
>>>Q: Why is top posting frowned upon?


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## mefizto (Jul 15, 2022)

Greetings all,

since the thread has already deviated from the original topic and touched _inter alia_ on systemd, could someone please explain in simple terms the problem with systemd?

As I understand it, and I may be wrong, it is an attempt to provide a management framework for managing daemons,  processes, and scripts during both a startup and subsequent execution of Linux.  The reason I do not understand is that other *NIX systems do have a similar facility, _e.g._, Solaris has Service Management Facility (SMF), Apple has launchd.  If these OSs, especially Solaris, which was innovative, invested time and effort, surely they did not do so without reason(s) and; therefore, such a framework has utility.

Please don to turn the response into "systemd sucks" and "Poettering is na a$$".  I have read those, but still to not understand what is the problem. Is it poor architecture, bad implementation?

Kindest regards,

M


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## Jose (Jul 15, 2022)

mefizto said:


> since the thread has already deviated from the original topic and touched _inter alia_ on systemd, could someone please explain in simple terms the problem with systemd?


Two of my faves:





						EWONTFIX - Broken by design: systemd
					






					ewontfix.com
				





			Re: I need your advice on this web page from Laurent Bercot on 2015-01-16 (supervision)


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## ct85711 (Jul 15, 2022)

mefizto said:


> since the thread has already deviated from the original topic and touched _inter alia_ on systemd, could someone please explain in simple terms the problem with systemd?


The biggest reason that everyone has a problem with systemd it massively bloated monolithic project.  As it has been mentioned several times, is the principal of do one thing and do it well.  Systemd was originally said to be a init system; now it can't be grouped in any category.  To be specific, when I am meaning monolithic; I am meaning it is all parts of it is hard coded to use each other.  Anymore, the list of all the subsystems that systemd provides is an ever growing list to include anything and including the kitchen sink.

Some parts of systemd I admit that I do like and/or don't mind using; others I do not like.  The biggest issue for me, is that I HAVE TO use the entire blob; you are given no choice.

As far as Poettering, I'd would bet he is working initially on the WSL2 subsystem.  The reasoning is more of fixing/advancing the systemd support/integration.  I know it has been desired to run more linux GUI apps, but it's been missing the systemd support that everything is dependent on and progress the wayland side to more efficiently display the GUI's.


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## mefizto (Jul 15, 2022)

Hi Jose,

thank you for the articles.  If I may restate them as I understand them, there were some poor high level design decisions, _cf._, the first document, the discussion re the PID and the need to run some other processes at elevated privileges.

In all honesty, i do not quite understand the technical aspects of the second one, but, it seems that some features were implemented that had been billed as improvement, which either were not, _cf. _the discussion of "socket activation", or they were paid for by high complexity and maintenance requirements, _cf._ A3 and the specific heading.  Furthermore, it seems that for some reason that is not quite understood from the article, it "swallowed" so to speak additional processes that might remain independent, _cf_.  the cgroup discussion.

Hi ct85711,



ct85711 said:


> To be specific, when I am meaning monolithic; I am meaning it is all parts of it is hard coded to use each other. Anymore, the list of all the subsystems that systemd provides is an ever growing list to include anything and including the kitchen sink.


I am not knowledgeable to dispute your definition of "monolithic", although I was going to use the term in regards to the "swallowing" and the discussion about setting a policy how to do things, and not providing tools to do things.

Thank you both.

Kindest regards,

M


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## Profighost (Jul 15, 2022)

mefizto said:


> since the thread has already deviated from the original topic and touched _inter alia_ on systemd, could someone please explain in simple terms the problem with systemd?


It's a crucial test for the Linux community, because it's the opposite of what Linux originally standed for:
systemd violates Unix Philosophy because it's large and monolithic.
And it's a scribbled piece of software full of bugs.

But as from FreeBSD point of view I would not so much be concerned about what's going on in the Linux world, especially not since Github already belongs to MS.
(Ever asked yourself what's worth paying 7.8 Bio US$ for? 
To scan for useful code and talented programmers? 
Anybody can do that for free. No need to buy Github for that.)

For feeling part of the FreeBSD community for me such things are incentives to more clearly seperate from Linux, 
underline the definition of being something own, 
and keep an eye on ensuring freedom and independency.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 15, 2022)

mefizto said:


> since the thread has already deviated from the original topic and touched _inter alia_ on systemd, could someone please explain in simple terms the problem with systemd?



systemd is really just a poor implementation of launchd. instead of just coherently merging service related daemons; it went way overboard with its feature creep and swallowed most of what runs beside the GNU userland. Binary logs emulating plists, dbus integration emulating Mach IPC, etc. Linux NIH syndrome at its best. I think the most idiotic thing done was making systemd a dependency for gnome-session. That's really how it became a de facto standard.


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## Crivens (Jul 15, 2022)

We had discussions about that-what-shall-stay-outside at other threads here in great depth. Please, not again. It seems this train is approaching the closing station and will be there in a day or two, if not derailed on its way.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 15, 2022)

agreed.. but it's such an easy target.


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## Jose (Jul 15, 2022)

mefizto said:


> If I may restate them as I understand them, there were some poor high level design decisions, _cf._, the first document, the discussion re the PID and the need to run some other processes at elevated privileges.


But that was only the beginning. There were plenty of implementation bugs features like the hilarious one where invalid usernames were assumed to be root. This turns out to be user error, of course. Just listen to Mr. Poettering:








						systemd can't handle the process previlege that belongs to user name startswith number, such as 0day · Issue #6237 · systemd/systemd
					

Submission type Bug report systemd version the issue has been seen with systemd 232 Used distribution Linux ubuntu 4.10.0-19-generic #21-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 6 17:04:57 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 ...




					github.com
				



Giving root to an invalid username is a feature. You're just not smart enough to understand why it has to be so.

This was only the beginning of Mr. Poettering's crusade to explain security to us.

__ https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1149666841494638593_View: https://twitter.com/pid_eins/status/1149666841494638593_






						Systemd wins top gong for 'lamest vendor' in Pwnie security awards
					

Epic fails and l33t pops celebrated by hackers




					www.theregister.com
				




Poettering is a talented hacker, but he's a far more talented politician. It's frankly disgusting how his sycophantic followers crawl out of the woodwork to justify the great man's latest ridiculousness:








						Giving perspective on systemd’s “usernames that start with digit get root privileges”-bug
					

Fire in the hole! There’s a new systemd bug that gets the haters aroused!



					ma.ttias.be
				




Listen, if you're going to do something about invalid input, assuming root privileges should be pretty far down the list. Even crashing is more reasonable.



mefizto said:


> In all honesty, i do not quite understand the technical aspects of the second one...


Well, you did ask "Is it poor architecture, bad implementation?" It's hard to answer such without technical detail.



mefizto said:


> Furthermore, it seems that for some reason that is not quite understood from the article, it "swallowed" so to speak additional processes that might remain independent, _cf_.  the cgroup discussion.


Oh no reason has been given other than it's "better" to have the functionality in systemd. Or at least I'm not aware of one. There's always some mumbling about systemd being "modern" and not "outdated" or some such, but precious few specifics.


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## smithi (Jul 15, 2022)

Beastie7 said:


> I think the most idiotic thing done was making systemd a dependency for gnome-session. That's really how it became a de facto standard.


So what does this mean for gnome on FreeBSD?  Clearly systemd isn't about to be any 'standard' on FreeBSD, so how will gnome fare here?

I've long used KDE on the {desk,lap}top so it doesn't affect me, but I wonder if some reverse pressure from *BSD gnome users might help liberate gnome from this kind of lock-in?  Or are there too few to be of influence?


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## Crivens (Jul 15, 2022)

Beastie7 said:


> agreed.. but it's such an easy target.


My inner klingon objects. There is no honor in hitting the defenseless. But yes, they are an easy target.



Jose said:


> Oh no reason has been given other than it's "better" to have the functionality in systemd. Or at least I'm not aware of one. There's always some mumbling about systemd being "modern" and not "outdated" or some such, but precious few specifics.


There are two types of idiots. One type says "this is old and therefore bad", the other type says "this is new and therefore better". Beware of individuals who fall under both types.


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## Menelkir (Jul 15, 2022)

smithi said:


> So what does this mean for gnome on FreeBSD? Clearly systemd isn't about to be any 'standard' on FreeBSD, so how will gnome fare here?


In the same way gnome can works on systems that doesn't rely on systemd (funtoo for example). Some people are willing to work on it and patch to make it happens.


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## cynwulf (Jul 15, 2022)

ct85711 said:


> The other part that contributed in pushing Ubuntu/Debian to switching to systemd, is that Gnome made systemd a hard requirement.  In the end on Linux, KDE and Gnome are the big players that overwhelming is the main DE that most people use.  In the end, Debian and other distros had little choice between switching to systemd(the least trouble), alienating half the users, or carrying patches that upstream won't accept and constantly break.  Even Gentoo was constantly having trouble with this, and has eventually gave up.


Glad you brought this up - and it's part of the same strategy.  gnome is heavily funded by Red Hat (IBM), canonical, SUSE, etc - and is a project that is overseen and developed from a proprietary perspective, by developers who work hard to restrict what the end user can do, who actively block customisations and only care about "brand presence".  gnome developers are not interested in fixing bugs from systems where systemd isn't installed.

gnome project even developed their own "registry" (dconf).  The two founders of gnome and developers of mono (.NET / C#) both work/worked for MS.  All old news.

For me at least, Poettering trading IBM for MS is not such a big deal.  Any "stink" over this coming from certain quarters is going to be because of the infamy of systemd and its lead developer - whereas Linux fans don't bat an eyelid at the many lines of code in the Linux kernel written by Intel, google, Huawei, Samsung, ARM, MS, Meta, AMD, Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM, Oracle, etc developers.

Remember: Microsoft <3 Linux ...


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## wolffnx (Jul 15, 2022)

what say about systemd that have not say yet? and not be off-topic...well,this notice is not surprise for no one
systemd->closed->all power to one->$
microsoft-> all above 
lucky for all...there is FreeBSD!!


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 15, 2022)

ct85711 said:


> The other part that contributed in pushing Ubuntu/Debian to switching to systemd, is that Gnome made systemd a hard requirement.  In the end on Linux, KDE and Gnome are the big players that overwhelming is the main DE that most people use.  In the end, Debian and other distros had little choice between switching to systemd(the least trouble), alienating half the users, or carrying patches that upstream won't accept and constantly break.  Even Gentoo was constantly having trouble with this, and has eventually gave up.


Yeah, they did with GNOME3. Then again I am still on the search for that person who really wants to use that pile of trash...


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## Beastie7 (Jul 15, 2022)

I actually enjoy the UI simplicity in GNOME3; just lose the JavaScript in it, please.


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 15, 2022)

For me GNOME3 was always nice...  for a tablet. Too bad it was a desktop environment to be used on a PC. So wrong target audience.


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## ct85711 (Jul 15, 2022)

I tried to give Gnome3 a honest attempt on using it, but I just could not accept their philosophy of needing a plugin for everything.  To me, it felt like it is too dependent on plugins to have the same feel and/or functionality.


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## ralphbsz (Jul 15, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> Linux has proven that even with all of these compromises to the OS, it can still only manage <1% market share.


Well, that's an interesting question. On the desktop, Linus' market share is actually a little bigger than that, about 2-3%. Meaning it's irrelevantly small. So your argument is kind of correct: Linux' design choices have not made it conquer the desktop market.

On the other hand, among servers Linux' market share is way above 90%, probably around 99%, in certain markets (like supercomputers) it is 100%. And most of those today run on a systemd installation. Microsoft alone probably has more Linux servers in it's data centers (perhaps a factor of 10 more) than there are total Linux DE machines on the planet. Add to that the other FAANG+friends, and you see why Lennart matters.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 15, 2022)

yeah but they could've just used OpenRC and kept the same conformity benefits.


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## mibh (Jul 15, 2022)

mer said:


> From an init point of view, I don't think systemd unit files are any better or any worse than rc run scripts.


+1.


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## mibh (Jul 15, 2022)

ct85711 said:


> The biggest reason that everyone has a problem with systemd it massively bloated monolithic project.


systemd reminds me uncomfortably of vax/vms, another massively bloated monolithic project. fortunately for the future of humanity, monoliths have bell shaped adoption curves, and are hard to displace until they're easy to displace.


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## shkhln (Jul 15, 2022)

cynwulf said:


> gnome project even developed their own "registry" (dconf).


I don't think that one is a particularly damning accusation. (They probably could have used sqlite instead, but that's about it.)


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## hardworkingnewbie (Jul 15, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> Linux has proven that even with all of these compromises to the OS, it can still only manage <1% market share.
> 
> Money and marketing are the only things that can build consumer userbases; not technical merit.


Well, one problem is the fragmentation throughout distributions. Then the missing binary driver interface in the kernel is another major obstacle. The other is that Microsoft Office does not run natively on it, and probably never will. 

Let's not forget when Steve Jobs returned in 1998 to Apple, who were at that time short before bankruptcy, he managed to gain a very unexpected deal back then by that time: Microsoft bought a lot of Apple shares with no voting power. And Microsoft agreed to migrate Office to Mac, probably because they were back then in the antitrust lawsuit and therefore wanted to show otherwise. 

Jobs on the other hand was smart enough to realise that Apple will only gain a foothold in offices if it has Microsoft Office.


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## Menelkir (Jul 15, 2022)

hardworkingnewbie said:


> For me GNOME3 was always nice...  for a tablet. Too bad it was a desktop environment to be used on a PC. So wrong target audience.


It's a dilemma: Gnome3 works fine for a tablet as long you have a tablet with a beefy processor and a good amount of ram.


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## kpedersen (Jul 17, 2022)

ralphbsz said:


> On the other hand, among servers Linux' market share is way above 90%, probably around 99%, in certain markets (like supercomputers) it is 100%.


It kind of gained this market share well before systemd and other compromises were made though. It gained it by being a "cheap and cheerful POSIX(ish) *nix(ish) clone".

The question is, does it still achieve this or is it just sheer inertia (and lack of competition) that is keeping it at the top. I would suggest Docker might be a slight hint of a symptom that people are not really liking the management of Linux.


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## Jose (Jul 17, 2022)

kpedersen said:


> It kind of gained this market share well before systemd and other compromises were made though. It gained it by being a "cheap and cheerful POSIX(ish) *nix(ish) clone".
> 
> The question is, does it still achieve this or is it just sheer momentum (and lack of competition) that is keeping it at the top. I would suggest Docker might be a slight hint of a symptom that people are not really liking the management of Linux.


The most popular Linux used for Docker is Alpine, which uses Openrc.


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## kpedersen (Jul 17, 2022)

Jose said:


> The most popular Linux used for Docker is Alpine, which uses Openrc.


Very ironic indeed!


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## Beastie7 (Jul 17, 2022)

It seems like there's always some entity trying to take a jab at controlling an evolving mess that is Linux. They've got Docker, Kubernetes, Snaps, AppImage.. etc. The platform is inherently broken. Maybe someday Stallman and Linus will decide to join forces.. but then pigs will fly also.


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## msplsh (Jul 17, 2022)

Containerization is a solution to a problem that is not uniquely Linux's, let's not throw stones.


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## Beastie7 (Jul 17, 2022)

It's an unsolvable problem in Linux. It's not an insult. The solution is FreeBSD (_jails_).


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## kpedersen (Jul 17, 2022)

msplsh said:


> Containerization is a solution to a problem that is not uniquely Linux's, let's not throw stones.


Linux is unique in that it hasn't uniquely solved the problem of containers unlike almost any other capable and mature operating system.


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## Crivens (Jul 18, 2022)

Maybe that is what he is about to do there, create a standard for that. Plus a reference implementation.


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