That systemd Thing: A Debate With No Ending

That systemd thing was the best title I could come up with, given this highly technical and fiery debate continues to rage in certain quarters of the Linuxverse. And it certainly seems like no resolution to the debate is in site.

I was in two minds whether or not to even do this video, as it seemed like a video that would be flamed from some quarters whatever I said. But hey, in for a penny as they say.

So with this in mind a take a relaxed and by no means overly-technical look at the main aspects of the debate whilst doing my fair share of fence sitting. This wasn't about adopting a neutral stance, more about getting to grips with the subject area.

Anyway, see what you think. I may be no clearer about which side of the debate, if any, I would side on, but I feel more knowledgeable.

I hope you enjoy the video :-)

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Ramble On!

[JoeZyzyx]

It's a wrapper program, a finger in every pie, and this compromises linux security, since if/when it's hacked by someone, it will give them complete access to a system. It has 351 individual manual pages. It's index alone contains 4556 entries in 21 sections. What fun THAT is to learn (/sarcasm). Breaks many sound systems. On my Mint 18.3 I have to log out then back in often to get sound back working again. Logging in binary is ridiculous. Version systemd-stable-245.6 is composed of almost 3, 700 files. Download is 20 MB and when extracted, installed is another 50 MB. Increases the linux learning curve required for newbies who want to switch from windows to linux. Download a program from any systemd infested repository onto a systemd free system, will have the entire systemd installed onto it. In that, it acts almost like a Trojan infection. Because of it's "aggressive parallelization capabilities" it provides the same access when/if a distro with systemd is hacked. I believe this weakens Linux security, providing similar weakness for exploit as exists in Windows. While it's integration features may offer some advantages, I feel those are far outweighed by the vulnerability in security is poses. I'm not even doing more than also mentioning the increased difficulty in dealing directly with it, especially in changing configurations which affect linux programs installed. I don't get involved in the personality clashes, care not if the developer is a saint or a devil, my objections are to what I consider it unnecessary to have a well functioning secure linux system.

[mz-pdhw]

I usually hear that "Unix principle" as an "old obsolete thing", is not about "The Unix Principle", is common good engineering practice, even outside the computing realm. To split a big problem in smaller ones and tackle them as modular as possible is just a good approach in general, that why neurologist don't deal with prostate problems.

In general decoupled and modular is better than highly dependent and entangled; you don't want to loose your breaks if your car radio fails.

I've hear that argument that "Unix principle" is wrong because is old and "modern systems" shouldn't follow old rules. That's nonsense and childish. We still use logic principles and those are very old too, and again is not about "Unix principles" is about general problem solving. You may argue that in the case of systemd is not highly dependent and is actually modular, that's might be debatable, but to talk about the "Unix principle" being obsolete or even its own thing, like Unix somehow invented the decoupling or modularity it is nonsense.

[abominabletruthman]

The sanest, most objective presentation I could find on this topic. Thanks.

[derekr]

That was a good video and I am more aware about the ins and outs of systemd now.I was always wondering exactly what the problem with it was and you have helped my understanding of it, so thanks a lot OTB.

[FeelingShred]

And what a coincidence that Red Hat and Canonical are the ones who push (and pretty much force you to use) systemd, the only two companies on the Linux world pretty much that are able to make money.
There are no profits in solutions, there are only money in cumbersome bloated self-perpetuating monolithic structures.
They say: "Hey, look, it's open source, you can go there and modify it if you want." Good luck barely understanding and navigating through 1.3 MILLION lines of code (this number is old by the way, must be more now)

[zuhepix]

This is the best video on the subject that I have watched so far. Very accessible to me, a non technical Linux user, yet deep enough to give me the leads to learn more by reading articles on the net.
Very nicely done, sir.

[gabrielwilliams]

One of the biggest problems with systemd is that it affects non-systemd users. That is, a lot of software implicitly, or somewhere down the chain of dependencies, uses a systemd-specific feature, so that non-systemd users are stuck with programs that have a soft, runtime systemd dependency, and just don't work properly.

Portability is one of the main driving forces behind C, which was then used to write Unix, so to forsake this all now for a system that has its tendrils so deeply and invasively ingrained into GNU+Linux-libre is so harmful and damaging not only to all other Unix-like systems, but to our community as a whole.

[enoughmuskspam]

Systemd is definitely the worst thing that happened to Linux in the last decade. What people defending systemd need to understand is that you can get all systemd advantages(and more) with runit without any of the disadvantages. The only argument I would accept to defend systemd is from people in IT as indeed the consistency made their job easier but that doesn't mean that we need a monster such as systemd we just need a standard.

[kdato]

There is a deeper issue here than mere technical points. At the fundamental level this is about freedom and being in control, vs the worry about having control taken away and unfreedom imposed. That's the real biggie in the debate. And for me this by far outweighs the technical advantages that systemd no doubt has.

[peasantrobot]

With few words: In my opinion, systemd transforms Linux in a Windows 10 and I don't mean the graphical interface.

I like very much the runit system implemented in Void Linux

[KarlMySuitcase]

I need a heated debate between two British lads who both are heavy users of the slang term "innit?".

[juzujuzu]

My Gentoo with Mate boots up faster than my Ubuntu with Mate. And I don't even use OpenRC Parallel mode. Sure computers boots faster because of constantly more powerful computers and especially SSDs and NVMe drives. Maybe compared to SysVinit there are some difference, but all the relevant alternatives are as fast as systemd.
"Glue between kernel and applications", the word glue should already point out why systemd is so bad. Glue is for Windows and proprietary garbage. Glue makes it impossible to swap things and more importantly it makes it impossible to create better alternatives.

[pefu]

IMHO: Both pulseaudio and systemd have done a lot of harm to the community. They made Linux distros much more complicated and a lot harder to diagnose problems and therefore insecure and less trustworthy. Or I'm just too old by now and too much a fan of the original ideas of Ken Thompson who invented most of the concepts of Unix in the first place.

[soulofhogwarts]

The main reason people and especially "youtubers" cant see why systemd is not good is because they all have high specs PCs. Therefore they get faster boot time with systemd. We should not forget linux is very much about able to power low specs and very old machine to perform smoothly and effeciently. If you ask me personally. I hated systemd because linux mint and ubuntu were had lower boot time in my 10 year old machine. Even with new motherboard and newer laptops it sucks. And dont ask about shuting down time it is worse in linux mint. It used to take litterally 5 min to shutdown. Whereas as I switched to runit OSes boot time and shutting down time are faster than blink of the eye.

If the mainline oses like arch, ubuntu and fedora were to going to support systemd stubbornly how can old machines were able to bare them without blowing up. Their hardware requirements in their website clearly went ahead of windows hardware requirement. Then how i called it linux they are not anymore suckless than windows.

And forget about running linux on every little devices with like smart watches, coffee machines and other IOT devices because of them we can proudly say linux is everywhere.

I think every distribution give freedom to choose init system of users choice instead of forcing users to use whatever they ship with.

[darrenaustin]

Very fair and concise look at systemd. Enjoyed the watch and the summary of the situation was spot on :)

[nashaut]

Thank you for your analysis of systemd. You have given very objective points. It is even so surprising that after all these years it is still so hot a topic. Therefore systemd core developers should take that into account, not only the technical aspects for it's not only on these grounds that it is questionable: it *is* a disruptive move on [too?] many aspects and you have very well summarized it.

[jeanwill]

Thanks OldTechBloke for this video on systemd. Topics very well explained for most of the people using Linux technologies. It is like an old debate between programming languages principles. Object oriented programming versus Functional programming approach. We can talk about that for the next 20 years.. Thanks Jean

[sensorcato]

I use Artix Linux btw (the best systemd-free Arch distro). MX Linux is also a great systemd-free distro, I recommend it.

[FeelingShred]

I didn't know or care about what systemd was until it got on my way and prevented me from using the Xfce desktop manager the way I used it in the past. Current version of Xfce 4.14.2-2 is currently broken in the sense user settings are not preserved across reboots, systemd is overriding the user's choices

[michaelheimbrand]

Microsoft has svchost and the registry. Apple has Launchd (Lennart´s inspiration AFAIK). And in the free world we had different alternatives which was possible to get your head around. Suddenly all Linux-based systems go full Windows on us. It made me move to OpenBSD. My best decision ever. And hopefully they never change. It´s the best ever. And it´s in 2020 a rock solid 4.4 Unix with old-school RC. And it´s by far the easiest to learn and manage. Regarding startup times, it´s a good irony that the oldest of them all usually is lightning fast too. Minimalism is the word and pid 1 has to be as simple as possible.