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Anyway my point certainly isn't that LP is some sort of genius but rather that it should be obvious he's no dummy either. Now that I'm all but fully retired his goals are not at all consistent with mine. I'd prefer Linux remain more a hobby OpSys, loose and funky but extremely creative as it has been. I rather hate the idea of it even possibly becoming locked down in any way. It remains to be seen if systemd will actually increase that likelihood or not. |
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So I got curious and looked it up: While RedHat is not as profitable as they were during the tail end of the dot-bomb era (to be fair, neither is anyone else in the linux arena), since then their pre-tax profit margin has been fairly steady, hovering around a very respectable 15%, and they've been steadily reducing their long-term debt. (For those not aware, most larger businesses run on credit.)
For comparison, the profit margin of the average successful grocery store is about 1%, and IBM hovers around 11%. RedHat 2006-present: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/c...-profit-margin |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennar...ife_and_career 2010 - as a RH employee - here boy, a bone to play with, we need some sort of systemd (not RH branded) to gain popularity & competitive advantage (see my post #436) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemd#History Regarding RH, the "business". A business, as expressed in economic terms, is actually an endeavor/enterprise/undertaking/venture which is usually initiated based on a few pillars: vision, mission and values. Without diverting this thread too much & wasting space, here a short summary that I found pretty good: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm...on-and-values/ If you end up selling it, you actually failed in developing and sustaining (believing in) your pillars. It's that simple, no citations needed. |
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I consider it a valuable privilege to be a part of a rare, open, adult forum such as LinuxQuestions. Anyone who doesn't support such responsibility and prefers to act like a petulant child needs to leave it for those of us who revere such earned respect. |
In my testing of systemd distros on bare metal (Debian, Arch) I found that systemd had some benefits, that is, for the most part both distros shut down very quickly when the shutdown command was issued. Both distros were reasonably stable (Debian under KDE-plasma had some lock-ups with thunderbird). I found the use of systemd commands to be at first confusing and annoying, then acceptable. In my opinion the notion that systemd is a cluster#@*% init system is a bit overstated. I think systemd does what it is designed to do reasonably well. If upstream development forces our maintainer to consider systemd that won't be the end of the world, Slackware will run just fine with systemd. However, at this time systemd is not something that is necessary for Slackware(we don't need it). That init system isn't something that we'll need to fret about for several years. I'm still ambivalent about the notion of Slackware having systemd, that is, our maintainer will make the call. It's all good. Praise Bob.
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It is a good summary of what I hear when talking with (professional) sysadmins: - young admins with little previous experience find systemd rather easy (and find the maze of system V init scripts rather klunky and/or intimidating). The fact that whatever the question they have about the systemd way, they find online answers and tutorials everywhere, certainly helps. - older admins find it "at first confusing and annoying, then acceptable.", as you put it.They did not _choose_ systemd, but were forced into it, because RedHat/RHEL (which is synonym of Linux in their IT dept., most of the time). They may grumble at first (remember old means grumpy, if I follow some of the forum members), then they adapt and usually find it does the job. Actually they grumble mostly just because it is different, and they have years of "system V" muscle memory in their fingers. They actually don't grumble too hard because (1) like the younger admins, these days, they quickly find answers online when needed, and (2) because many of them already went through several init systems (eg. Solaris SMF) and various corporate tools to manage system V init scripts -- after years of proprietary UNIX, good sysadmins adapt quickly! I didn't hear much "constant struggle" stories as reported by Gerard Lally. Most of the time, issues looked like trying to do things the old way, or just lack of familiarity with the new tools. Some early bugs have certainly be disruptive but (1) RedHat does actually pay people to fix these bugs, and (2) any new subsystem does introduce new early bugs: Moving from linux 2.4 to 2.6, XFree86 to Xorg, kernel video modsetting, etc... All may have been disruptive for some, but we wouldn't go back today. I believe the biggest issue is not technical: It is that today, by large, young guys come to Linux and learn about the systemd way (or they won't ever care about their init system...). So when it comes to selecting a distro, what will they choose? |
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@philanc
Well, from my PoV, the biggest issues are technical. It's an invasive, inflexible, to some extent badly designed complex system that has no meaning other than to monopolize (RH & other "enterprise" distros) and ease the path for inexperienced - as Gerard Lally called (and I confirmed & elaborated) - bean counters. But you did mention these facts already. What strikes me is that you got yourself into the subjective critique, considering some members as grumpy. Remember, this is Slackware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackw...ign_philosophy Interesting is also your view on the "young admins" educational requirements, considering the ultra-simple, solid, flexible and transparent system V init scripts complicated. You inadvertently define these younglings incapable/cheap bean counters :) ... which is pretty much true, it's not fresh meat required anymore, but cheap meat. I'm saying this because when I started using Linux (FreeBSD too) I had to learn (on my own) not only the init system but also the tools a *NIX system provides, in order to be able to admin it competently. Later in my professional career I also got a formal Linux Admin training (didn't ask for, was just compulsory) and again I had to learn (refresh) all the *NIX tools, including bash scripting, in order to get the certification. Last point: Quote:
A rather sad development I might add. |
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I don't really agree with "badly designed". I think Lennart Poettering is a smart guy (whether we like him or not, his track record is impressive, and I think systemd's design is rather clean _for what it does_. Of course the minimalist in me cannot like it.) My point was that the overall systemd issue is not technical, ie. whether it is good or not. The issue is that it is here, and almost all over the place (redhat, suse, debian/ubuntu, arch, ...). So, like it or not, it is here to stay. Which means young people coming to linux will expect systemd exactly as we expect binutils, bash and gnu make today. Look for example at bash: Years ago it might have been a question. Between the Bourne shell and the C shell, people could have argued that technically, the best shell was csh. The technical merits didn't matter much. The Bourne shell then bash won, and no distro maintainer would attempt today to keep all their scripts written in csh. Most (if not all upstream have adopted the Bourne shell (bash, or the painful dash). And how many young linuxers are today fluent in csh? Maybe Slackware becoming The-distro-without-systemd could be a valid niche strategy? |
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