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0 pointszb109482y ago0 comments

That's serveral conjectures on your part. Give me metrics about the minority and then back up the fact that most of those people never wrote a sysinit or rc script by hand.

Like it or not Systemd breaks the Unix way and for a certain amount of people (I am not pretending to have a measuring stick) the dogma and philosophy are much more important than perceived ease of use or features.

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sph2y ago

All the major distros, especially server distros, run systemd. That is proof enough that NOT running systemd is a niche and unsupported configuration in any half-serious setup.

A conjecture is not automatically wrong. The point of a conjecture is to challenge someone else to prove it wrong. You'd have a hard time showing proof that systemd is niche.

And honestly, it does not break UNIX, let's be serious now. A haphazard bunch of shell scripts is not much better than a monolithic binary, and UNIX does not give a damn either way.

I do not care about dogma and philosophy, I am an engineer with software to run and deadlines to meet.

Koshkin2y ago

> I am an engineer with software to run and deadlines to meet.

Sure, but UNIX, with its minimalist philosophy, was - luckily for us! - not created under that slogan. With respect to quality, this slogan has always been the one driving its decrease that we see all around us today.

sph2y ago

UNIX was created by engineers to run software, not as a philosophical device.

Sorry to say, yours is a terrible excuse. I respect that you might not like systemd, no software is perfect and systemd has many flaws, but the "think of the UNIX philosophy" is righteous nonsense that I cannot take seriously.

The real world is not black-and-white, with or against us. One of the most beloved UNIX tools, Emacs, is as far removed from the minimalist philosophy that some have decided to be UNIX's crowning achievement. It is not. Linux and UNIX have not won because we're all into minimalism, or dogmatic zealotry.

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e12e2y ago

> A haphazard bunch of shell scripts is not much better than a monolithic binary

If know shell scripts you can read and adapt the former. You can keep the state in vcs without needing a compile artifact or a compiler.

How much work is it to add a bespoke feature to systemd?

It's a tradeoff for sure, but let's not pretend simplicity has no benefits.

And knowledge of Cron transfers to the bsds.

op00to2y ago

Why would I care about "breaking the Unix way"?

PlutoIsAPlanet2y ago

Because people who probably have never used Unix said it's superior.

fsflover2y ago

It's outlined here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy

op00to2y ago

I don't care about a 50 year old technology philosophy. Times have changed.

Cloud computing and the prevalence of highly distributed systems have completely changed how software is deployed, scaled, and managed. These environments often rely on complex orchestration which can stretch the boundaries of the UNIX philosophy towards systems that are more about interactions between distributed components than about simple, single-purpose tools.

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Koshkin2y ago

Right. Why would one care about principles.

op00to2y ago

They’re not my principles, and I spent the first 15 years of my career administering real capital U UNIX systems.

mardifoufs2y ago

Do you care about my principles too? Mine don't involve a Unix philosophy.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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sph2y ago

All the major distros, especially server distros, run systemd. That is proof enough that NOT running systemd is a niche and unsupported configuration in any half-serious setup.

A conjecture is not automatically wrong. The point of a conjecture is to challenge someone else to prove it wrong. You'd have a hard time showing proof that systemd is niche.

And honestly, it does not break UNIX, let's be serious now. A haphazard bunch of shell scripts is not much better than a monolithic binary, and UNIX does not give a damn either way.

I do not care about dogma and philosophy, I am an engineer with software to run and deadlines to meet.

Koshkin2y ago

> I am an engineer with software to run and deadlines to meet.

sph2y ago

UNIX was created by engineers to run software, not as a philosophical device.

1 more reply

e12e2y ago

> A haphazard bunch of shell scripts is not much better than a monolithic binary

If know shell scripts you can read and adapt the former. You can keep the state in vcs without needing a compile artifact or a compiler.

How much work is it to add a bespoke feature to systemd?

It's a tradeoff for sure, but let's not pretend simplicity has no benefits.

And knowledge of Cron transfers to the bsds.