• Shayeta@feddit.org
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    17 days ago

    I’ve seen a lot posts against systemd, most of them citing the unix principle as the main argument. But as a user on a desktop computer I don’t understand why would it be bad. Could someone explain it to me?

    • Kajika@lemmy.mlOP
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      17 days ago

      As a user you probably don’t know, and maybe don’t care.

      This is more for developers, technology is not magic, vendor/technology-locking can be problematic. It’s not like systemd was made by bad people with bad intention. You may have heard of X11 too. The list could go on, there is a bag amount of legacy in our technology, some would just keep it that way. But some argue for changes thus discussing (and criticizing) those legacy, why it fails on some points and what to do/build from that.

      So right now if you’re a desktop user, I don’t see why you would bother indeed. This discussion are still interesting to some devs, for instance here I learned about dinit, and it’s code is damn small and clean, hence it was informative and I will definitely try it.

      • nous@programming.dev
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        17 days ago

        Application developers are not being forced to integrating with systemd at all. They are choosing to do that because it helps them. The only developers negatively affected by this are the ones developing other init systems that don’t want to provide the same features the application developers want to use.

        • Kajika@lemmy.mlOP
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          17 days ago

          Yes and no, I said “devs” and you come saying “actually […]” but really people “integrating” software “usually” are developpers. If you want to start a web server you will have to deal with systemd. If you want to check logs, you will also. If you need to debug an application that crashed (in C at least) in a production/test environment (not in “my machine”) you might want to get into core dumps.

          They are choosing to do that because it helps them

          Really? In what universe are you living? Any piece of software I built, professionally or not, had to run on debian-based or arch-based linux hence systemd. Did I choose or any fellow developers of my time? No, maybe people 20 years ago, maybe… That really reminds me of conservative views on “social contract” like we all chose the society we are living in.

    • Guiorgy@lemmy.ml
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      16 days ago

      The crux of the issue, at least as I understand it, is that traditionally you’d build the system components in a way that they were interchangeable by defining some standard-ish API. While you can interchange some Systemd components, since “ststemd-xyz” is just the umbrella name of the project as a whole, so some components are completely independent, the core ones can’t really easily be swapped, and it’s only getting worse, especially as systemd is starting to become a hard requirement, a lot of people are rightfully feeling peeved. There’s a great talk made by a BSD developer that admits the virtues of Systemd while bringing the downsides, so no blind hate, you can google for the video “The tragedy of systemd”.

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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      17 days ago

      most of them citing the unix principle as the main argument.

      It’s like building codes. You don’t always know you need a smoke detector, but we have 6 in this apartment.

      People suggesting the Unix philosophy needs to prove itself have issues incorporating anyone else’s experience into their own. It’s okay, but watch for that oppositional disorder.