Nice to see you back

I would say that if you have not encountered any adverse drama with systemd then you are most likely:

1) not using it
2) using it in the exact, precise, walled garden that it encourages

The moment you step out of that wall, open the throttle on the car, you will notice that it shakes, shudders and the duck tape and glue starts to come loose. Will it fall apart, that depends on how much you push it. The Yugo (remember those), had a top speed of 85 MPH, however, right around 60 the damn thing would shake like it was having a seizure, and if it wasn't calm winds and sunny, you better just leave it home.

For many people using (or developing on) Linux, the idea of a program (or suite) dictating the usage of the entire system is ludicrous.

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The DAF YA 66 (military version of the civilian DAF 66 car) had a topspeed of about 90 (kmh, not miles) and if you wanted to get home you'd better not exceed that 'cause of the terrain gear the variomatic (rubber) belts might break when burdoned too heavy.
A DAF YA 328 (terrain truck) managed almost 110 (which was overspeeding it too), but it, of course, had a traditional gear-box, not a variomatic. Like the above mentioned Yugo it then was shaking a lot too.
We had both of these in the company I served my army conscription in, long ago.

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Found these for memories:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVsGpZywobA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeDoHUemZDw

Very nice, brings back memories indeed.
Thanks!

Here's my latest book about Linux server administration, published last month. Chapter 10 explains systemd in detail. The software may have all the stigmata of an overengineered project, but it works fine. My daily job consists in managing all kinds of servers (web, mail, messaging, proxy, storage, etc.) for various companies here in South France, so let me just state the fact that I'm reasonably familiar with these basic tools.

Cheers.

Ahh, I recall you writing a definitive book on Slackware as well. Oh well, let's check back in a few years and see what you are using and writing books about then. I also noted that in your prior post you mentioned its advanced abilities yet in this post you mention being familiar with its basic tools. une contradiction, non ?

The same is true for pretty much any bit of software ever written.... given the right set of requirements and start conditions.

I never had any trouble with systemd when I used Debian. I don't care for it on principle but I can't say it ever caused me any problems.

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I did, it would occasionally fail to load the ATI drivers on boot and the only way out was a hard reset. It was one of the reasons I left Debian. Now, after more than 18 months of using Slackware, I haven't had a failed boot. Not once.

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I did!

It was the beginning of the end for me to use Debian as my main distro and coming back to Slackware. Across a couple of netbooks and laptops i saw slow boot times , failure to reboot or shut down, problems connecting to networks, some PAM issues all of those went away when switched back to sysV init.

Even after a clean install of Debian I had those issues with systemd. The maddening thing was almost anything desktop related always dragged systemd in as a dependency and I was sick of having to juggle APT pinning to to have a sane system without systemd engulfing my systems.

I tried testing OpenSuse and a couple of Arch Linux forks but systemd was still a mess of insanity on those distros as well just not as bad as my time with systemd-ize Debian.

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for me it looks like the registry of windows. It was [well] designed, but now we have too many users, too many use cases and too many different approaches (expectations, companies, ...). But - as it happened with the registry too - most of the developers did not learn it very well, so we have a lot of misuses, conflicting concepts and implementations.
I can only hope linux (as a general operating system, including several distros) evolves in the future and will not diverge and fall into war against itself...

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I like systemd for one thing: fast bootup/shutdown times. I dislike it for just about everything else. I wouldn't dream of using it if the system offered Sysvinit.

For me it went the way of SeLinux.. got too big, too complicated, too overarching. You have to learn as much about systemd or selinux as a newbie had to learn about linux as an OS to be any use at it. The use of C, or C++ imposed the restraint that it was slow to write. Perl or python isn't like that: But has systemd got a BDFL like Linux or Pat who will set firm limits and be listened to? It has strayed from doing one thing and doing it well. A pity. Shrinking a perl or python project is a most difficult thing.

theoretically, the simple laws of mathematics and physics were stated a few thousand years before. Nowadays to prove a statement is really hard.
theoretically, the simple programs are already written (and they are also mostly reusable). We now use our hardware to make more complex things in a more complex way.

Someone who doesn't want (or can't use) systemd and has programming skills, could help implementing a compatibility launcher for dbus-broker with features similar to those of dbus-broker-launch, but not relying on systemd, cf. for instance this thread. This at least would help.

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On a side note, I wrote a SELinux for dummies (in French) earlier this year. Once you begin to grasp it, it's a powerful additional layer of security.

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