Congratulations TobiSGD for post #1000, now can all of you just STFU and do something constructive for a change?.

Eric

I hope Tobi's prize is not a bikini photo or nude shoot.:eek:

It's a thong! *reference from Shrek*

As a constructive project...

Everyone chip in $5 bucks so we can buy Eric a copy of Windows 10. :D

Why do you want Eric to hate you?

All in good humor ol' boy.

I did not think a smiley icon was necessary to convey the humour.
Now I must sit in a corner and cry. :(

Seems to be a few in this place with a god complex. Seems it's real easy; to _not_ be bothered by something one might read, don't go to that thread.

This thread is a black hole: once you're in, you can't get out.

It's got nothing to do with a god complex. Consider this. You are working on a Linux distribution, trying to keep it stable, independent and modern, and you have to read the endless crap in this thread, it REALLY is taking away the motivation to keep slogging on said distro.
I mean, half the people in this thread take it as set in stone that Slackware will implement systemd and that everybody will abandon Slackware if that happens. Why bother spending most of my free time on Slackware if all I see is people threatening to leave the distro to rot instead of trusting the Slackware team to do the right thing?

I am going to unsubscribe from this cesspit of a thread right after hitting ENTER.

Eric,

I've used Slackware for a little over 10 years. I will always have Slackware as my main operating system. I value and very-much appreciate the work that you, Pat, Robby, and the entire Slackware team does for us. I am committed to supporting and running Slackware.
To my fellow Slackers: Please consider buying a subscription to Slackware.

Slackware Subscription

Im very new to slackware I suppose. I have been on a massive learning curve since leaving the other distros that 'do everything' for you. I must say I think Slackware is refreshing, even if a little testing at times :-) and I have settled on it because of its heritage origins (one of the first etc) and that to me it all makes sense (as far as I understand it currently) and is seemingly 'simple' to use once you learn.

I cannot comment on systemd as I dont understand it enough, though I have 'used' it in other distros.

Any way my main point: I would trust the likes of the Slackware creators, maintainers and the main people that steer it along to 'do the right thing'. If systemd is scientifically and resourcefully the best option decided by proper evaluation, then that is the way to go. If it isn't then there is a large enough community of clever brains and experience to show (not by anecdote, but by proper analysis) why systemd should not progress as the choice and something else should (or perhaps to keep the status quo).

If choices are made by pressure of popular, vested interest, perhaps commercial moves, rather than what is by scientific and resourceful evaluation the best option..then that is the real mistake.

Just my two penneth. Dont drop Slackware.....I'm hooked.

This thread, the LQ Slackware forum and indeed LQ do not represent the vast proportion of Slackware users, so it really is a shame that you feel that way.

What we've see in this thread and the previous threads like it, are hysteria, FUD and a few people trolling their arses off to whip it up (clearly some of the other distros' sections don't get much traffic). The latter have succeeded as the page count will attest. I've seen a tiny minority of Slackware using systemd proponents, none were hardline and most constructed well reasoned posts as to why they preferred it. The main proponents of systemd in this thread have not been Slackware users. That makes sense, as in general if you like systemd, you probably don't want to use a distro like Slackware...

Absolutely agree with hitest in post #1010.

Its like they want to use Slackware, but only if it gets systemd. Thats what makes no fucking sense, pardon my language.

an other dubious statement, like the thread title
who wants to use systemd, who is 'they'? this sounds really unhealthy.
most people do not care, and systemd its much more less important and a requirement for several concrete scenarios like than say PAM, at least at the moment
but what is annoying, at least to me, is the FUD, like mass exodus, and several technical claims in the range of wild speculations to simply nonsense.
and if someone tries to clarify technical stuff he/she is put into a corner, like 'they' want.. what ever 'they'.. means.
so I think the idea to simply ignore nonsense and technical speculations without any background in this thread is not a bad one.

The "they" factor are people who are, in reference, people who don't use Slackware, or people who use Slackware expecting it to be like Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. doing everything for you hands-free.

Not that you can't add hands-free into Slackware, or set it up with existing tools included out-of-the-box, "they", as referenced, want more and more not included out-of-the-box, or think they have enough technical merit to say how an operating system should be put together in their opinion, but more or less, when compared against each other's statements, all seem to echo more of the same talks coming from upstream developers, and less of their own actual experience putting a system together. "They" see the current design as broken, again echoing the same rhetoric, but offer no proof of concept how it is broken by design nor can give examples of how the current design of the bazaar model is worse than the cathedral design "they" claim is better.

There is no talk about how the stability of one package plays an important role, and how even different packages can all coalesce together to form a stable environment. Do you grab monolith package A, lock into it, and patchwork it to death, or use bazaar packages A, B, G, X, and Z independent of each other to form a working stable model?

Yet, "they" feel "they" know what is good for everyone, or more bluntly they all seem to echo this... "If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."

Here's a good situation for you to consider. And this is an EXAMPLE only.

systemd-250 is used in a distribution. Following deployment, a critical bug is found in udev rendering udev inoperable. The distribution maintainer files a bug upstream, but after a few days is only told that the problem is being investigated, yet no solution, even temporary, is given. Distribution maintainer considers rolling back to version 249, but runs into a critical problem. Version 249 had a problem with stability issues with the init system crashing when the kernel loads, but still has no patches, only the version up. Version 248 is investigated, but then a bigger problem arrises, a new mission critical daemon he is using, an auto-healing anti-crash design added in with 249, is a key component of his distribution. No patches exist to add in said frameworks, and the stand-alone project was abandoned a few years prior. Now the distribution has a serious problem. The developer tries to look for a stand-alone udev, but quickly learns that back in the 22x series, stand-alone udev was ended. Weeks go by and no patch is made, but in that time, users have moved on and now a newer version 251 arrives, and while it fixes udev, now the auto-healing part is broken and a security flaw is found in the console daemon that could allow a hacker access to kernel level resources with a buffer overflow attack.

This is only hypothetical, but it's an example of how the monolithic design has critical flaws. Even with the best efforts, there are bugs in software, and while some bugs can be harmless, others can cripple a distribution, or even promote security issues.

This is why we keep saying that stability isn't just from one package, it's from every package working together smoothly, correctly, and even if not the most recent version, it works with superior stability.

Can someone make a Forum on LQ called "Blackhole" or "Bitching Matches" and move this thread to it! Enough with the pro/anti systemd stuff. Only PV will add it or not. If people "leave" slackware so be it. It's survived for 21 + years and I ams sure it'll survive for as long as PV wants it to. Can we move on to more interesting things now....

Why are you using Linux? Shouldn't you be using GNU/Hurd?

Anyone can invent a bunch of unlikely theoretical scenarios to prove any point they wish to make. This is called FUD. Stop that.

Just a thought: could these distinguished gentlemen who expertly discuss the quality of software design exhibit just a small computer program doing something useful they personally wrote, so we be sure they know what they speak about?

Then comes the other "they" factor. They are Slackware users who seem to think if Slackware is forced to adapt, it will no longer be Slackware. Reckon they came to Slackware only for the BSD-style init, as other distros like Ubuntu, Fedora etc. offer everything else Slackware does, served up in the same simple and stable ways. Surely they don't really care that PV can make the right decisions so much as claiming fealty to a BDFL and praising Bob doesn't get them as hot-and-bothered in forum threads as bashing Lennart Poettering and Redhat. Guess they can take their ball and go home (or to *BSD) while the rest of us will just keep plugging along and enjoying life with Slackware and everything else it brings.

At this point and after all the FUD, I'm even ready to say:

Thanks in advance, Pat!

Slackware is like Hotel California, you can never really leave

I looks like the project uselessd is still be actively developed as an init-only fork of systemd.

https://bitbucket.org/bcsd/uselessd/

Looks like they're up to version 8 https://bitbucket.org/bcsd/uselessd/...nux-devel/NEWS

Not to suggest it, but I wonder if this would probably fit better into Slackware rather than the parent systemd project with uselessd being shaped as init-only?

Systemd doesn't just touch on technical issues, it also touches philosophical ones and philosophy will always cause long debates/arguments/shoe throwing contests. After all we have, as a species, put people to death for their philosophy.
I get why some of the serious technical folks are in despair over the debate, but for some of us, the philosophy
is why we're here in the first place. So it really is fascinating to read the debate.

Likewise, another good debate would be, does one use systemd, or does one wait for forked projects or reworked projects based on ideas introduced by systemd and use them instead? In a way it ends up almost a chicken and egg debate. Do you kill the chicken before it lays eggs and eat it, or do you let it lay eggs, hatch them, and have more chickens to sustain yourself?

What is uselessd's stand on kdbus integration? A switch to uselessd in my eyes only makes sense if non-systemd inits that want to use udev don't come up with an alternative kdbus userspace.

I'm just amazed at how quickly SystemD was implemented into major distributions, especially since it comes from the same people who brought us "PulseAudio."

Blows my mind.

It should not blow your mind. The results that can be achieved by someone with lots of money in a predominantly volunteer environment are not amazing, but predictable.

It blows my mind that there are 69 pages about systemd.

Uselessd and kdbus are not even involved with each other. Uselessd is an init system only, and has nothing to do with kdbus.

Kdbus is aimed at udev. Totally separate entity. Totally separate topic.

I disagree, is not a totally different topic. At first, that udev is the first software to make use of kdbus does not make kdbus being aimed at udev, it still is a general purpose IPC mechanism. Anyways, as long as no upstream software wants to make use of it that is fine, but this may change, if only for performance reasons (well, it also may fail to be adopted, but I doubt that). Udev will only be the first one, it is very likely that other software will make use of kdbus, too, in the future.
Seeing that, IMHO there are only two reasons for Slackware to switch the init system:
1. Mr. Volkerding suddenly starts to like systemd and wants it in Slackware.
2. Upstream software that is used in Slackware and not easily replaced depends on functionality provided only by other init systems (it doesn't matter if this is kdbus, logind, hostnamed or whatever else).
I would guess that #1 is rather unlikely, so let's look at #2: To see if a different init system would be an appropriate replacement for Slackware's current init it has to be determined if that init system can provide the needed functionality. While things like systembsd and systemd-shim may work independent of the init system in use there is still no effort made to come up with an alternate kdbus userspace. So kdbus may in the end be the only factor to decide which init system to use and in that light a switch to an init system that doesn't provide kdbus support does not make much sense.

Yeah.
Let's see if we can get to 100 pages before New Year?

Hell Yeah!
This'll help:
"Skipping fsck during boot with systemd?"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8779274
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user...ads.html#00184

(tl;dr "ctrl/c is in the TODO" is not a good answer when it's been in the TODO for two years...)

With my setting here of 50 posts displayed per page you'll have to work hard at it :D

Feel free to implement it if it is important to you.

Easier to simply use XFS, and never fsck again (or fsck constantly, depending on your perspective) ;-)

Back to this old thread
 

I have said it before and I'll say it again because I don't want folks like Alien to get discouraged. This entire thread is BS as Alien says. I have been using Slackware for over 16 years now. Plenty of packages have come and gone. No matter what happened SL has always proven itself to be a great distro. Pragmatism has to trump purity here though ( if there is really even an issue of purity ). PV has run this project for a long time. He has made great calls along the way, you folks need to trust him. He was even right about PAM at the time, thought it may now be time to revisit that.

There is no point in shipping a distro that none of the recent software people want to use will work on, and the Slackware community does not have the resources required to patch everything to run without systemd, even if we did those resources would be better applied elsewhere. Should it prove to be the case the a significant portion of the common gnu/Linux software stack is nolonger available with support for non-systemd environments. There won't be much choice but for Slackware to integrate systemd, and there won't be any mass exodus either because there won't be anywhere to go. There is much more to Slackware that makes it a great distro than a handful of init scripts. Sure I'll miss them when and if they are gone but that isn't going to make me abandon everything else I like about this great disto.

So please every lets let this thread die. It hasn't accomplished anything and it won't.

+1

Amen!

Well said, mate! I've happily run Slackware since 2004; it is my main operating system and always will be. I greatly appreciate and value the work that Alien Bob has done for us. Without Alien Bob we would not have 64 bit Slackware. I think the negative commentary in this thread is not indicative of Slackers in general.
I hope that Mr. Volkerding and his team have a restful, peaceful holiday. Praise bob. :)

It's fear.

One thing, that may be a little bit new: Red Hat did not create most of Linux. This is very different than Microsoft. Microsoft either bought, or developed, it's technologies. Red Hat is taking the work of developers who thought they were contributing to the community, and Red Hat is using all that contributed labor to benefit Red Hat, and nobody else.

I used to work at Red Hat for about 5 years, and left in 2008 so have a pretty good idea of what goes on.

The part of this that is true is that Red Hat do indeed take open source community projects, package them up and sell them as part of their packages.
They also employ many developers who enjoy working being able to work in the open source ecosystem whilst being paid for it. Red Hat also contribute many fixes and new features back to the upstream projects.

Red Hat helped cement the adoption of Linux within the business arena, and Linux probably would not be where it is today without Red Hat.
Do Red Hat want to be able to control more of the ecosystem? Of course they do - it makes things easier for them. Anybody running a business would want to do that. Shuttleworth tried it with Canonical. That's just the nature of business.

I have seen this a lot. And while I agree with this, I am afraid that people who post this may be missing the point.

Systemd completely craps all over POSIX, and the UNIX philosophy. Systemd could mean the total elimination of the kind of freedom, and choice, and openness, that Linux users have come to enjoy. Systemd means everybody marches to Red Hat's drum beat.

Changing over to systemd means way *way* more than losing a handful of init scripts. Systemd is *much* more than an init replacement.

Has nobody noticed the scope creep of systemd? It seems to take over more, and more, every day. Where does it end? And what has happened so far, has happened without a complete takeover. What happens when the takeover is complete?

Once systemd has taken over, Red Hat will be in complete control. Red Hat will be the Microsoft of the Linux world. And your Linux system will, effectively, be just as closed as Windows - if you are running systemd, you are halfway there already.

That might work for Red Hat, but I am not sure it should work for Linux end users.

Red Hat is being sneaky, if not downright dishonest. Systemd is like a Trojan Horse, it seems like a gift, but it is hiding the killers inside.

If Red Hat came out and admitted what they were really doing, how do you think the community would take it?

What is dishonest? People know what systemd is and what effects it has. Not liking something doesn't mean it's dishonest nor sneaky.

It is deceptive if not also dishonest to pretend as systemd did at first that it would not become an octopus wrapping it's tentacles around so many parts and functions having nothing to do with basic init and then leverage that for ever more. Do you really trust someone that asks for an inch and takes a mile?

I absolutely agree that this is how corporations work and I'd go so far as to admit that I might even do the very same thing because then, under those circumstances it would likely be in my interests. However I am NOT on the board of directors nor do I own stock in RedHat. My interests are in smaller SOHO networks and Desktops so therefore I resist the destruction of flexibility and choices and don't mind what little extra work that might take. Furthermore I wish to OWN my systems, not be a lessor, dependent on the whims of some self-appointed landlord.

Of extreme importance to me is cost/benefit calculation and I'm going to have to see something a helluva lot more important than possible reduced boot times as a benefit to accept the costs of many difficulties that can occur with parallelization at PID 1 and binary logs and who knows what else next.

Steve Jobs already "borrowed" nearly $1 billion dollars worth of code and remade Apple with it. At least he didn't destroy BSD by doing so. It seems as if Lenny and the Boys, considering how much he has admitted admiring OSX, wants to one-up Steve, utilize some $2 Billion worth of code AND diminish the Linux community in the process. How is that acceptable to anyone who does not have a vested interest in RedHat?

@enorbet

Did RH did something illegal or breached a license or copyright in the process of developing or promoting systemd?

Did RH forbid anyone to use, develop or promote another software?

You are free to dislike and not use systemd, others are free to like and use it.

This has been enough discussed in this thread and other ones, me think.

Oh, and in case you didn't notice, FreeBSD (for instance) is an OS, but Linux is a kernel.

AFAIK RH didn't hurt the Linux kernel in any way, let alone destroy it. If you disagree with the evolution of the Linux kernel, you should address you complaints to its lead maintainer, not to RH.

@Didier Spader This thread and any other related one I know of here on LQ is not about the legality. It is about the desirability and perhaps about community loyalty and deference. I think you are vastly over-simplifying the possible results. I have no problem with freedom, whether to use it or not. I do however have a problem when somebody elses' power squeezes me and others like me out. I'm not at all content to not pass Go and go directly to Jail and I truly don't understand why anyone would be unless they have something major to gain as compensation. I have yet to see that gain other than possibly RedHat stock.

Again, desirability is matter of personal opinion.

About community loyalty and deference, I remind you that no software is developed by a "community", only by individuals, be they paid for that or not (but as drmozes already stated, people from RH already made many useful contributions that benefit to users, even those who never paid them anything).

About deference, in my opinion it's good enough that they have some for their customers and employees, and for upstream developers of components that they incorporate in their systems. I fail to see on what ground they would ought you and me any deference.