Re: OT: Open letter to the Linux World

[Robert Hancock <hancockrwd@gmail.com>]

On 12/08/14 01:38 PM, Christopher Barry wrote:
>
>
> What is intelligence? Not exactly the spook kind, but rather what is
> the definition of intelligence in humans? This is pretty good:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence#Definitions
>
> By most accounts, the self-appointed and arguably too influential
> creators and thinkers of the day around the 'One Linux' idea fit the
> definition of intelligent people - at least in the technical realm.
>
> And their messages are pretty compelling:
> * Simplify cross-distro development.
> * Enable faster boot times.
> * Enable an on-demand, event driven architecture, similar to 'Modern'
>    Operating Systems.
> * Bring order and control to subsystems that have had as many different
>    tools as there were distros.
>
> All seemingly noble goals. All apparently come from a deep desire to
> contribute and make things better.
>
> Almost anyone could argue that these intelligent people thought hard
> about these issues, and put an enormous amount of effort into a
> solution to these problems. Unfortunately, the solution they came up
> with, as you may have guessed by now, is 'systemd'.
>
> While not new, it's grotesque impact has finally reached me and I must
> speak to it publicly.
>
> So, what is systemd? Well, meet your new God. You may have been praying
> at the alter of simplicity, but your religion is being deprecated. It
> likely already happened without your knowledge during an upgrade of
> your Linux box. systemd is the all knowing, all controlling meta-deity
> that sees all and supervises all. It's the new One Master Process that
> aspires to control everything it can - and it's already doing a lot.
> It's what init would look like if it were a transformer on steroids.
> It's complicated, multi-faceted, opaque, and supremely powerful.
>
> I had heard about systemd a few years back, when upstart and some other
> init replacements I can't remember were showing up on the scene. And
> while it seemed mildly interesting, I was not in favor of using it, nor
> any of them for that matter. init was working just fine for me. init
> was simple and robust. While configuration had it's distro-specific
> differences, it was often these differences that made one pick the
> distro to use in the first place, and to stay with that distro. The
> tools essentially *were* the distro. I just dist-upgraded to Jessie,
> and voila - PID 1 was suddenly systemd. What a clusterfuck.

You might want to send this to a mailing list that's remotely relevant, 
like perhaps a Debian one. Though I wouldn't expect a very productive 
response there either, since you neglected to include any reasons behind 
your rant other than "they changed it, now it sucks".