●Stories
●Firehose
●All
●Popular
●Polls
●Software
●Thought Leadership
Submit
●
Login
●or
●
Sign up
●Topics:
●Devices
●Build
●Entertainment
●Technology
●Open Source
●Science
●YRO
●Follow us:
●RSS
●Facebook
●LinkedIn
●Twitter
●
Youtube
●
Mastodon
●Bluesky
Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter
Forgot your password?
Close
Post
Load All Comments
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
/Sea
Score:
5
4
3
2
1
0
-1
More
| Reply
Login
Forgot your password?
Close
Close
Log In/Create an Account
●
All
●
Insightful
●
Informative
●
Interesting
●
Funny
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
bydrinkypoo ( 153816 ) writes:
Poettering will also continue to remain deeply involved in the systemd ecosystem.
I therefore trust that it will continue to be shit.
bytwinirondrives ( 10502753 ) writes:
for people hacking together their own systems I'd admit that systemd does nothing for that. But organizational level mass deployed systems are pretty much barred from linux without something filling that role. then I think systemd was an idea put forward around the same time io_uring was which maybe possibly was the beginning of a compliant solution filling the systemd role. my opinion is io_uring actually increased the attack surface of linux systems. would that have been different if systemd never existe
byShaitan ( 22585 ) writes:
Overrated. Prior to systemd Linux administrators famously admin'd thousands of systems vs tens in the windows world. That text/file/directory-based system combined with all the text-mangling power tools in linux, the shell, and perl... nothing compares.
It actually becomes much easier to work with configuration management tools when they are managing the state of text files as the Linux gods intended.
bydskoll ( 99328 ) writes:
Systemd units are plain text files, you know.
I honestly don't understand the visceral hate for systemd. I've been using UNIX since 1989 and Linux since 1994, so I have plenty of experience with old ways of doing things.
Systemd, at least in my experience, just works and writing systemd unit files is easier than writing sysvinit scripts. So when Debian switched to it, it was fine. I adapted.
bydrinkypoo ( 153816 ) writes:
I honestly don't understand the visceral hate for systemd.
It is the antithesis of the Unix way. This has been argued back and forth all along, and if you don't agree I won't try to convince you here.
Systemd, at least in my experience, just works and writing systemd unit files is easier than writing sysvinit scripts. So when Debian switched to it, it was fine. I adapted.
The problem with systemd and unit scripts is that they cannot do all the things that a script can do, so you often wind up using a script anyway. In that case you have really not made things any simpler than the usual case. Meanwhile you've added a whole lot of complexity which is largely unnecessary, some of which is utterly dependent on other parts so it is difficult
bydskoll ( 99328 ) writes:
Appealing to "the UNIX way" is just silly. UNIX has been around for over 50 years, and it evolves as people figure out better ways to do things.
The problem with systemd and unit scripts is that they cannot do all the things that a script can do, so you often wind up using a script anyway.
I would say: very rarely, not often. Looking at the units on my machine, none of them uses an auxiliary script to start or stop a service.
byArchieBunker ( 132337 ) writes:
What was the point of the journal log system? We had stable tools for decades for manipulating and managing text logs. So systemd made the logs binary and then re-invented all the same tools but slightly different. Same as with ifconfig. Worked great for decades and now it’s replaced with “ip” and a different syntax. What was gained?
bydskoll ( 99328 ) writes:
I agree with you about the binary logging. Not everything about systemd is better than what came before, but also, not everything is worse.
You can still have plain-text logging and AFAIK Debian still generates the normal plain-text log files by default.
I also get annoyed with ifconfig and ip, and iwconfig vs iw, etc. but AFAIK those are not Poettering's doing and are not related to systemd.
BTW, I think the reason for ip instead of ifconfig and route was to add support for different routing tables, wh
bytender-matser ( 938909 ) writes:
There are many things that aren't supported by ifconfig/iwconfig besides different routing tables (first which comes to mind is adding multiple addresses to the same interface).
It all comes down to how they communicate with the kernel -- ifconfig is using ioctls on a socket file descriptor, while ip & co are using netlink sockets. The ioctl interface is quite limited, and was not extended as new features were added to the kernel.
They could've adapted the old net-tools to use netlink behind the scenes while keeping the same command line tools with the same syntax (and I remember a guy who did just that [jdebp.info] -- but they have instead chosen to push that loose, verbose, ambiguous and non unix-like command line interface, supposedly made to resemble that from cisco or other "professional" equipment.
That propensity of imitating inferior, proprietary user interfaces has always been the bane of free software development: iirc, systemd itself appeared for no other reason than the urge to slavishly imitate launchd or whatever crap apple was pushing forth.
Reply to This Parent
twitter
facebook
Flag as Inappropriate
bydrinkypoo ( 153816 ) writes:
first which comes to mind is adding multiple addresses to the same interface
At the time that was done with interface aliases. ifconfig eth0:1 blah blah blah
There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.
Slashdot
●
●
Submit Story
It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.
●FAQ
●Story Archive
●Hall of Fame
●Advertising
●Terms
●Privacy Statement
●About
●Feedback
●Mobile View
●Blog
Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
Copyright © 2026 Slashdot Media. All Rights Reserved.
×
Close
Working...
Working...