back to article Relax, it's just Ubuntu 15.04. AARGH! IT'S FULL OF SYSTEMD!!!

Systemd is here. It’s arrived in Vivid Vervet, the latest, just-released distro of Ubuntu – 15.04. Most users will notice very little overall difference in this latest Ubuntu release, but it’s this change that packs the biggest punch. There are a couple of new things that make 15.04 worth the upgrade from previous versions, …

  1. jake Silver badge

    systemd? Do not want.

    I'm sticking with BSD and Slackware ...

    1. DrXym

      Re: systemd? Do not want.

      Luxury and extravagance. I'm sticking with a VT220 terminal attached to a PDP-11 running V7 Unix.

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: systemd? Do not want.

        One of my greenhouses runs on CP/M. Has for three decades or so. It works, so why change it?

        The messaging system at the barn has been running on a Heath H11A since 1979.

        Inventing stuff purely to invent stuff is good. Foisting it off on clearly deluded, technology impaired consumers as "this is the newest, bestest, holy cow you have to have it NOW!" is exploitation.

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: systemd? Do not want.

          "One of my greenhouses runs on CP/M. Has for three decades or so"

          mmm. 30-year old electronics. 1980s vintage electrolytics. Fun.

          Still at least they're unlikely to get purple plague (I've only seen that in early-mid 70s manufactured ICs)

          1. Linker3000

            Re: systemd? Do not want.

            'sabout now the EPROMs (if any) start dropping the odd bit.

          2. jake Silver badge

            Re: systemd? Do not want.

            "30-year old electronics."

            No. These days, it's run by an aging[1] headless Slackware laptop running a CP/M emulator. The original control code has mutated slightly, as I've had to replace hardware in the trenches over the years. I have the original hardware, it might still boot, but I'm planning to bring it up gradually in a restoration.

            [1] HP hardware, circa 2003. Pre bad-capacitor HP.

        2. Jim 59

          Re: systemd? Do not want.

          The messaging system at the barn has been running on a Heath H11A since 1979.

          Pics or it didn't happen.

          1. jake Silver badge

            @ Jim 59 & Linker3000 (was: @ Re: systemd? Do not want.)

            "Pics or it didn't happen."

            The LSI-11 is running in emulation. Today, the Heath is sitting on a plinth in a place of honor in a corner of the office, and my one major dust-catcher. She's the first "modern" computer I built from the bare copper-covered fiberglass boards, complete with an actual GlassTTY. She still runs on power-up, which happens rarely. I've heard quieter dragsters ...

            "'sabout now the EPROMs (if any) start dropping the odd bit."

            I have an EPROM burner, and know how to use it.

      2. Neil 44

        Re: systemd? Do not want.

        I always thought it was Edition 7 not V7....

        1. jake Silver badge

          @Niel 44 (was:Re: systemd? Do not want.)

          Nope. It was Version 7.

        2. Arthur the cat Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: I always thought it was Edition 7 not V7....

          Seventh Edition if you're being formal, but V7 to its friends. And a bloody good vintage.

      3. 's water music

        Re: systemd? Do not want.

        I have been unhappy with the direction taken by info tech since Linear B. TBH I would have stuck at Linear A but I lost the source media.

        1. jake Silver badge

          @ 's water music (was: Re: systemd? Do not want.)

          You are obviously not a Cretan, and can't read hieroglyphics.

          1. Dan Paul

            Re: @ 's water music (was: systemd? Do not want.)

            You must have meant "Thetan" Jake. It's synonymous with "cretin"

            1. jake Silver badge

              @Dan Paul (was:Re: @ 's water music (was: systemd? Do not want.))

              No, I meant "Cretan". Really.

              But I don't disagree with your comment in any other way, other than the fact that I am "jake", not "Jake". "Jake" is an entirely different commentard.

      4. Ilsa Loving

        Re: systemd? Do not want.

        Bah. Bloated pile of crap. Now these two rocks I have here....

    2. Neil Barnes Silver badge

      Re: systemd? Do not want.

      Systemd doesn't bother me too much, though I dislike the concept. It's Unity itself which gets up my nose; it's no doubt all very wonderful but it's not a patch on, for example, Cinnamon - or even Mate, though I note that's now an option.

      The Amazon connection doesn't strike me as The Way Things Should Be[tm] and seeing adverts for paid software in the software centre was something of a surprise, too...

      That said, if the guys from Crouton could see their way to getting an installation for Ubuntu Mate onto a chromebook, I'd give that a go. (Trying to get Mate onto a 12.04 Crouton installation is tricky; I can't see how to start the damn thing!)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: systemd? Do not want.

        Mate + Compiz = best DE ever! Blazing fast & beautiful

        1. asdf

          Re: systemd? Do not want.

          >Mate + Compiz = best DE ever

          Lumina + Compton is assured to be systemd free for years to come (still a bit rough to use but getting better all the time) so that's what I use but Mate being based on gtk2 only should be able to be ported to other better *nix for quite some time to come as well.

        2. qtcoder

          Re: systemd? Do not want.

          MATE? Fast, yes. Beautiful, no.

      2. handle

        @Neil Barnes: adverts

        "The Amazon connection doesn't strike me as The Way Things Should Be[tm] and seeing adverts for paid software in the software centre was something of a surprise, too..."

        While I don't like the intrusive Amazon search, I have no problems with the Software Centre listing or advertising paid-for software (and other things such as magazines). It's both heartening to see how many vendors consider it's worth porting/building for the platform, and if it earns Canonical commission then why not? Someone has to pay for the software development and I'm sure Mark Shuttleworth's is not infinitely wealthy. I see it as a welcome step towards the mainstream.

        1. Sandtitz Silver badge
          Joke

          Re: @Neil Barnes: adverts

          "I have no problems with the Software Centre listing or advertising paid-for software"

          Soon you'll see ads for Windows 10, blue pills, and dating services elsewhere on the OS.

          Is there a way to turn it off, or can I install an "Adblocker+ for Software Centre" (from the same SW Centre of course)?

    3. Tomato42
      Stop

      Re: systemd? Do not want.

      do you want a Pentium Pro with them, or those MMX extensions are too newfangled too?

      1. joeldillon

        Re: systemd? Do not want.

        The Pentium Pro didn't have MMX, that came with the Pentium II.

        1. psyq

          Re: systemd? Do not want.

          Actually, no, MMX came with Pentium refresh (P55C revision, to be precise).

          http://www.cpu-museum.de/?m=Intel&f=Pentium-MMX+%28P55C%29

          First Pentium II did not bring anything new on that level, it was Pentium III which brought the first version of the SSE instruction set.

    4. Fungus Bob
      Mushroom

      Re: systemd? Do not want.

      BSD and Slackware are for children, I'm sticking with Novell DOS 7. Personal Netware is not for wimps!

    5. qtcoder

      Re: systemd? Do not want.

      So how is Steam working on your BSD? And how is your Slackware phone doing?

      1. jake Silver badge

        @qtcoder (was:Re: systemd? Do not want.)

        "So how is Steam working on your BSD?"

        Evaporated before birth. I use computers as tools, not time-wasting toys.

        "And how is your Slackware phone doing?"

        For mobile use, I use a 15 year old Nokia 5185. Likewise, the telephone at my elbow as I type is a 1950s Western Electric model 500. All I want a telephone to be is a telephone.

        (The Nokia is about to permanently lose service, alas. Not sure where I'll go after that. The WE will last until $TELCO decides to kill pulse dialing ...)

        1. BitDr

          Re: @qtcoder (was:systemd? Do not want.)

          Do they (the telecom) still charge you extra for touch tone? They do around here, if they kill pulse then they would have to give up the extra fee.

        2. tlhonmey

          Re: @qtcoder (was:systemd? Do not want.)

          Check out the "Open Phoenux". Doesn't really meet your "just a telephone" requirements, but you get to run a real OS on it instead of that Android crap. Not sure if it'll run BSD, but it does run Debian or Gentoo.

      2. digihans

        Re: systemd? Do not want.

        Steam? Nothing beats a pack of cards.

        Slackware phone? You never have to re-charge your rotary-dialer...

        Change does not imply improvement

      3. asdf

        Re: systemd? Do not want.

        Steam is a hot mess on Linux anyway. Half the games aren't available and the performance still doesn't come close to matching Windows for the vast majority of them. You would probably be able to get nearly as many to run using the windows client under wine on BSD probably with better performance than the linux native. If you plan on doing any serious steam gaming you are still going to have a windows boot partition sadly.

    6. BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

      Re: systemd? Do not want.

      Salix is much better than Slackware - all the BSDs have integrated package management, and its omission in Slackware by default is just too painful. The use of lilo instead of grub is unusual these days, as is the fact it boots without an initrd, but the use of mbootpack enables even complex Xen configurations to boot.

      I did have to terminate Networkmanager with extreme prejudice - I'm sure it must be possible to get a bridge working reliably on startup using it, but life is too short. It's also on a system which just runs a lot of VMs and will never run X, or add/remove physical network adapters (virtual is a different matter).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: systemd? Do not want.

        Hmm - last I checked if you boot slackware with the generic kernel instead of the huge kernel, an initrf is required or it won't boot.

    7. Chris Fox

      Re: systemd? Do not want. Try Voidlinux

      I tried a number of systemd-free distributions on virtual machines and servers (including Gentoo, Funtoo, Slackware, Devuan alpha, Manjaro-openrc, Voidlinux). The smoothest so far has been Voidlinux, a rolling-release binary distribution, with XFCE 4.12 as the default desktop, which also works on a Pi2. Previously this distribution was an early adopter of SystemD, when it was just an init system. But it has switched to runit, which makes SystemD unit files look like a complicated tangled mess. Some things need a little bit of work, e.g. occasionally there may be bugs in some less commonly used packages, and you have to write your own init file if you use Openvpn, but with runit, that is just one line long...

      If it really is about "fixing" init, then there are numerous excellent alternatives that aren't invading body-snatchers with half a millions of lines of undocumented and uncommented code, and no specification, maintained by a closed community for whom bug-fixing is seen as a pointless distraction that has to be sacrificed on the alter to the one true goal of never-ending function creep.

      [Some Debian SystemD apologists keep saying SystemD is only a default in Debian Jessie, and other init systems can be used, but the debootstrap program has a trivial bug that means it fails to read the non-systemd options. The maintainer refuses to fix this obvious bug because "SystemD is the default". And then there are random programs and packages that are configured to pull in SystemD and related crap rather than treat them as optional dependencies (CUPS and XFCE spring to mind). Hopefully Devuan will fix this, at least for server-based installations, and Voidlinux makes a fine replacement for Wheezy on the desktop.]

    8. Colin Tree

      Re: systemd? Do not want.

      Nearly two decades of Debian for me, but now Slackware for the next two ?

  2. Duncan Macdonald

    No thanks

    Having seen some of the garbage from the systemd developers - I will choose a distro without systemd (and if possible without pulseaudio as well).

    Systemd seems to have been designed by people trained in the Microsoft tradition of "Embrace, Extend Extinguish".

    The one of the biggest problems with systemd is its reliance on binary databases that are far more difficult to analyse and repair than plain text files. Init files can be manipulated by any text editor and can easily be corrected by booting from an alternative device (eg a USB stick) if damaged so badly that even a single user boot fails. If a systemd database is corrupted then to repair it requires either a recent backup or the rescue system needs a compatible version of systemd to allow the damaged database(s) to be recreated.

    I wonder if any group will produce a distro based on the most widely used linux system - the linux in Android.

    1. rtfazeberdee

      Re: No thanks

      You obviously have no idea what systemd does or doesn't do. you've read too many negative posts and taken their word for it without checking to see if they are true.

      What binary database does systemd rely on? the only binary bit is storage of journal records. all the config files are text in the "ini" file format.

      I guess you believe that any corrupted file is magically recreated. if any file is corrupt, its back to backups (if possible)

      I suggest you read up about systemd and its capabilities before you spout of complete crap otherwise it makes you look stupid or like a troll.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: No thanks

        "What binary database does systemd rely on? the only binary bit is storage of journal records. "

        Which, when shit hits fan, you WANT in human-readable format.

        systemd attempts to make bootups much faster by parallelising the startup but on my systems it tripped over its own shoelaces quite a bit before I got it to behave and had I had to resort to a live CD, may not have been diagnosable.

        1. rtfazeberdee

          Re: No thanks

          when the shit hits the fan i.e. the hard disk writes zeroes over all your logs, you cannot read it anyway, no matter what format its in.

          if systemd was tripping up, then its down to configuration by you or your distro.

          1. Alan Brown Silver badge

            Re: No thanks

            "if systemd was tripping up, then its down to configuration by you or your distro."

            As I hadn't done anything to it other than install, it might have been distro (ubuntu) but for whatever reason it had several dependencies mixed up and was starting processes in the wrong order, which resulted in "no networking" and failure to initialise ZFS amongst other issues.

            If something is touted as a drop in replacement for SysV/BSDinit/upstart and gets installed as part of an upgrade procedure then it should WORK as a drop-in replacement, not require a bunch of tweaking.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: No thanks

            That's your best argument; it's you or your distro's fault, not systemd.

            Kettle, pot, etc.

      2. hplasm
        Gimp

        Re: No thanks

        "I suggest you read up about systemd and its capabilities before you spout of complete crap otherwise it makes you look stupid or like a troll."

        read it.

        Sytemd is still shit.

        1. rtfazeberdee

          Re: No thanks

          thats your best argument. "Sytemd is still shit." - speaks volumes about your knowledge of it

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: No thanks

            Systemd is the svchost.exe of Linux.

          2. hplasm
            Gimp

            Re: No thanks

            "thats your best argument."

            Well, the fact that you need a 'ini-style' set of startup files shows that your linux knowledge is wriiten in large type on the back of your MCSE...

            1. snorage

              Re: No thanks

              *grabs some popcorn*

      3. Jim 59

        Re: No thanks

        I don't like systemd because of its Windows-esque design ethos. There are some good things about Windows, but the core design definitely isn't one of them. Meanwhile, Unix/Linux has been so successful because it prizes elegance and simplicity over all other design concerns, enabling it to slice through the complexity which is the enemy of all computer systems.

        How's systemd managing the dreaded complexity ? Well, it is now over half a million lines...

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: No thanks

        I have direct emperical contact with systemd. It is a disaster not just waiting to happen but already happening.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: No thanks

      I don't object to the existence of systemd for those who want it. I do object to its crew deliberately soliciting hard dependencies, and in one case I read about even submitting a patch to another package author to *remove* functionality from that package that would no longer work under systemd.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

    And that's the real problem.

    Never mind that systemd is shite. Never mind that upstart wasn't any good. Never mind all the bollocks. The matter is simple: systemd has infiltrated just enough of the system to make choosing an alternative very nearly impossible. You can talk about shims until you're blue in the face - the fact that a shim is necessary at all speaks volumes about the intentions of systemd.

    From the people that brought you pulseaudio, another clusterfuck that will hold us back for years.

    1. theOtherJT Silver badge

      Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

      From the people that brought you pulseaudio, another clusterfuck that will hold us back for years.

      I only just had my first run in with pulseaudio, and if that's any way indicative of the experience I'm about to have with systemd I'm quite worried.

      In this case it was stupidly aggressive restarting. Pulse creates some files in /var/run/user/$UID/pulse. Fine, perfectly sensible place for them. But should that directory have messed up permissions, or not exist for some reason it doesn't throw an error and give up, it just keeps respawning forever whilst spamming syslog with dozens of "permission denied" errors per second.

      Yes, I know you can turn autospawn off in the config file, but this is not a sensible default behavior.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

        Never try setting it up to multicast audio, which is one of the promised features initially held up as the reason to switch to pulseaudio. I was rather looking forward to it.

        There's a bug in the implementation that means it'll just sit spamming garbage packets across your network until the entire thing collapses under the strain. Wired can just about take it, but wireless collapses pretty much the moment you turn it on. There have been bug reports filed for this since mid 2009.

        They all get ignored or marked WONTFIX. A key feature is broken and they have refused to fix it for six years.

        These are the people we're trusting to implement the One True Init? No thanks.

      2. qtcoder

        Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

        So did you file a bug against PulseAudio?

        For me it has worked great. Before PulseAudio nothing worked.

        1. Tom 38

          Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

          Before PulseAudio nothing worked.

          PulseAudio works as well as every other userspace sound daemon ever, and has just as many pitfalls. Look up ESD, or artsd, same shit, different name. The trick with PA is that it got included in to GNOME as a default requirement (if you pay attention, you might spot Leonard's MO), and we all got to find and fix its shortcomings.

          Part of the problem is that Linux developers love to reinvent things rather than improve them. On all UNIX, we had OSS, the Open Sound System, worked on Linux, BSD, many UNIX, but it didn't have channel mixing. Linux went through OSS, the aforementioned sound daemons, ALSA (including dmix) and finally PA. On BSD we just added virtual channels and mixing to OSS.

          PS: I presume the "nothing worked" refers to mixing multiple

        2. theOtherJT Silver badge

          Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

          So did you file a bug against PulseAudio?

          Hard to argue it's a bug. I would say it's "working as designed". My problem is that the design is... short sighted, at best.

    2. DrXym

      Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

      Your argument falls on its face with the fact that systemd isn't "shite".

      1. theOtherJT Silver badge

        Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

        Your argument falls on its face with the fact that systemd isn't "shite".

        I think you've rather missed the point. The argument is that it doesn't matter if it's "shite" or not - I wouldn't know, I've been avoiding it so far because it means massive sweeping changes to large parts of my systems - even if it were genuinely gods gift to init the fact is that it has its claws in so many other things that it's really hard to remove if you have reason to.

        Simple example: pam_systemd

        Without pam_systemd /var/run/user/$UID isn't created at login. Without /var/run/user/$UID pulseaudio doesn't start.

        I recently had reason to write a custom pam, and whilst looking through the list of things that I needed to call to get a GUI, pam_systemd stood out like a sore thumb, because I'm not using systemd, I'm still on upstart. So I removed it. At which point pulseaudio packed up.

        That's not a good way for supposedly independent systems to behave.

        1. DrXym

          Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

          "That's not a good way for supposedly independent systems to behave."

          It isn't an independent system. systemd is the thing that starts everything else in userland. And if you start trashing your distribution (or if it has broken deps) then it is hardly surprising if it starts failing in weird ways.

          Really, most criticisms of system are ad hominems, outright wrong or such weird edge cases that they don't apply to most people. If it were so awful, "so shite", it wouldn't be used by dists. But it is because they recognise it is a massive improvement over SysV.

          1. theOtherJT Silver badge

            Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

            It isn't an independent system. systemd is the thing that starts everything else in userland.

            But it should be an independent system. Why is the PAM doing the creation of a directory that downstream services have an implicit dependency on? pam_systemd is an authentication module. That's all it should be doing. Authenticating. For my audio system to start I should not have to rely on a specific form of auth to have happened. Those are not related systems!

            And anyway, systemd isn't the thing that's starting everything in userland. I'm using 14.04 and still using upstart, so for pulseaudio to have a dependency on pam_systemd really isn't on.

            1. DrXym

              Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

              "But it should be an independent system. "

              No, no it shouldn't. It's about the most fundamental thing in the dist aside from the kernel. Why do you expect it to be independent? Everything else needs to start somehow and this is the thing that does it.

              Many things will depend on systemd especially if the packages for the dist are done correctly. But packaging is the dist's problem. If your dist breaks because of the packaging, it's not the fault of systemd any more than the kernel failing because some module it wants to load isn't there because of bad packaging.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

        Way to miss the point completely. Whether it's shite or not is irrelevant (though it is shite, just sayin'), the key problem with systemd is the fact that it is being essentially forced on the Linux ecosystem via integration with applications and tools that have absolutely no reason to be integrated with the init.

      3. hplasm
        Meh

        Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

        "Your argument falls on its face with the fact that systemd isn't "shite"."

        You say shite, I say shit.

        Let's call the whole Systemd thing off.

    3. asdf

      Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

      >The matter is simple: systemd has infiltrated

      The udev dependency is all it ever needed and Poettering made sure that happened early on. Next up in the Red Hat agenda to own GNU\Linux, kdbus.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

        ... I just read up on that. What the hell is he thinking? He could just help improve dbus and make it more efficient, but no, lets punch a blistering great hole through to to ring 0 and let any tom dick and harry send messages directly to the kernel!

        This is what made Windows such a security nightmare. Jesus, the man is a lunatic. It's not even necessary either, that's the thing. Remember in-kernel http servers?

        1. asdf

          Re: "now that it's well into Debian, Ubuntu really has no choice"

          >... I just read up on that. What the hell is he thinking?

          He is thinking in order for his employer Red Hat to be able to make even more money on the backs of other people's hard work they need to be able to get around the GPL by using an IPC mechanism that is nearly as efficient (or efficient enough) as using GPL kernel code but without the requirement of having to GPL their own code. The rest of the valid concerns you raise they couldn't give a crap about.

  4. SecretSonOfHG

    Good to see Unity slowly progressing to be usable

    At this point, in a couple of more releases, they will reach the point where it will be a close clone of the OSX desktop, with all the "revolutionary" changes introduced by early releases undone. I see the same evolution in Gnome, additional add-ons/plugins/whatever appearing that make the desktop look and feel more like Gnome 2/Mate.

    Glad that I stay with KDE all this time.

    1. elDog

      Re: Good to see Unity slowly progressing to be usable

      This almost justifies the use of the <smilie> or <sarcasm> tag.

      Good points about KDE and Gnome2.

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. qtcoder

      Re: Good to see Unity slowly progressing to be usable

      That's sad because Gnome 2 was one of ugliest things ever made.

  5. I Am Spartacus
    Thumb Up

    I moved my box this weekend

    To all you nay sayers, I have upgraded my system to LUbuntu 15.04 this weekend. I can't stand the Unity interface, but Ubuntu + XFCE is nice and clean.

    No problems during the upgrade at all. It boots of SSD much faster than it did before. No major shakes. No wobbles.

    Lets see:

    Dual screen - working

    LVM - working

    Boot from SSD - working

    UEFI boot - working

    USB Speakers - working

    Firefox - working very fast

    Chrome - working

    NASA SPICE - working

    JDK - working

    inet.d RPC - working

    The ONLY issue I have is that my second screen, on VGA, does not go to sleep nicely. And I can live with that (because, be definition, I am not in the room to see it flicker).

    As for SYSTMD, well, it is coming. I think it is better to get experience at the start rather the moan that its not like SysV.

    YMMV.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: I moved my box this weekend

      And to the yay-sayers, let me cite my own anecdotal evidence attempting to upgrade Wheezy to Jessie...

      One machine upgraded OK, but printing is now tempermental. A second machine has yet to actually upgrade. Each time I try, the upgrade completes and the machine boots to a blank screen. I think it is the greeter screen without a greeter, but I don't actually care one way or the other. Any "upgrade" that fails to that extent just isn't safe.

      The third machine, which is rather more important, is therefore sticking with Wheezy until both of the other machines are working properly or Wheezy goes out of support, whichever comes first.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I moved my box this weekend

      "Dual screen, LVM, Boot from SSD, UEFI boot, USB Speakers, Firefox, Chrome, NASA SPICE, JDK, inet.d RPC - working"

      Any of those are the norm these days. Did you upgrade from some K2.2 distro since you are glossing over some basic functionalities? Dual Screens and LVM are old tech and how does booting from SSD differ from HDD booting?

  6. 45RPM Silver badge

    Works more slowly, in my experience, than 1410 in VMWare - although I'm heartened to see that performance on real hardware is comparable. I'll give it a bash on my PC - just as soon as I find a spare moment.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That bored, huh? I've got better things to do. Mint MATE is working, not great, but better than my old pre-systemd Debian desktop. I can't imagine any improvement from systemd (which I've experienced in Fedora 17-18) or the Ubuntu stuff that Mint excludes for a reason.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ubuntu Containers?

    "Ubuntu also has its own Docker-like take on containerisation"

    What's it called?

  8. Alan Brown Silver badge

    The issue with Systemd

    Is not the concept, it's the execution and the history of the author, particularly when it comes to bugs which affect other projects and force them to create workarounds.

    It's rather telling that Linus tore strips off him recently and explicitly stated that kernel modifications that are wanted for systemd won't happen until these issues are addressed properly.

    Whilst some may say "Linus will never work at redhat", the point is that he only does it when it's actually necessary to do so. When you have someone who has a history of producing bloated buggy code making demands on everyone else in a project it often takes a slap upside the head to make him realise the world doesn't revolve around his point of view.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Systemd is metastising

    There we are, a piece of garbage kitchen black box kitchen sink "init" system, taking control and ownership away from the user, distro maker, and system administrator, and putting it all in the hands of the pulseaudio guy and red hat.

    Seriously, how much money is Microsoft paying Poettering? Because this systemd cancer abomination is straight out of their playbook.

    It's not coming anywhere near my server farms I assure you.

    1. elDog

      Re: Systemd is metastising

      Hmmm. An interesting conspiracy theory. And not beyond the realms of reality.

  10. Greg J Preece

    New Kubuntu release is great

    For all the shouting about SystemD, Kubuntu just got a hell of a nice upgrade. Plasma 5 is lovely, and the OpenGL hardware rendering in the back makes it pretty slick too. My Macbook Pro touchpad drivers are fixed, my AMD drivers are improved and game performance is up, Breeze Dark is both lovely and universally supported. Really happy with it, and with how stable it is for a KDE rework.

    Desktop still won't boot without going through recovery mode => resume, though. No idea why on earth it does that. Started when 14.10.1 dropped and even with the move to SystemD it'll still hang right before showing the login screen. Go to recovery mode and just hit "resume", and it boots just fine. Annoying, but manageable for now.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SystemD - A Necessary Evil

    SystemD is bringing some very much needed structure to the Linux ecosystem. It simply isn't possible for an independent developer to write quality software for Linux as a whole, and a big part of that is the complete mish-mash of locations and multiple ways of doing things which have accreted over decades.

    The biggest problem is the use of scripts - this is the whole reason ShellShock was possible - we have ad-hoc languages performing crucial system-administration and configuration tasks - a shell script is a completely unverifiable, obscure, and inefficient way to bind services and components.

    For software developers targeting linux who are trying to write stable and secure software, the OS is a non-deterministic mess. We absolutely require the ability to mechanically generate scripts based on a given configuration and know that the system will take that form always, not 'sometimes'. The way forward for large system configuration is to use small domain-specific languages to configure and assemble systems. Shell scripts will never get us there, so there will be a transition that will annoy people that have a lot of time invested in learning shell scripting.

    SystemD code is clean, very readable, and, yes, opinionated - but its opinions make sense - many of us don't want to be sys-admins, we want to get work done and the OS is just a component of our system. Documentation is an area that needs to be improved, right now to learn SystemD you have to go through a mess of blog posts on Poettering's site, and he for some reason has a robots.txt so the docs can't even be indexed. Other than that, the adoption rate speaks for itself, SystemD is addressing a need that nobody else has been able to fix.

    1. elDog

      Re: SystemD - A Necessary Evil

      If you are so well-versed and opinionated, why be an anonymous coward?

      I do agree that there should be a consolidation of scripty bits but this should happen through natural growth/transformation processes, rather than shoved down the throat.

      Perhaps Perl and various shells have succeeded past their primes. However they have powered much (%90++) of what is running in the world today. Having made a few forays into alternative shell worlds such as PowerShell, I'm not sure that anyone has come up with a better do-all.

      Oncet the chips are embedded in our lobes to try to utilize our feeble pattern-recognition technologies, I bet that THEY will use scripting patterns very similar to what we do now.

      1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

        Re: SystemD - A Necessary Evil

        We absolutely require the ability to mechanically generate scripts based on a given configuration and know that the system will take that form always, not 'sometimes'.

        See FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD.

        The way forward for large system configuration is to use small domain-specific languages to configure and assemble systems.

        No it isn't.

        Shell scripts will never get us there

        They already have.

        Seriously, you are talking as if Unix is some new toy not ready for primetime without systemd!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: SystemD - A Necessary Evil

      It simply isn't possible for an independent developer to write quality software for Linux as a whole, and a big part of that is the complete mish-mash of locations and multiple ways of doing things which have accreted over decades.

      I'm an "indie dev", it's very possible.

      Single source base, single build system, multiple os/distro targets, including proper apple clicky .APP and the appropriate desktop short cut on gnome and kde, (I use KDE on freebsd / gnome on linux)

      1) defer making a decision about paths by supporting staged installs of software.

      2) allow for out of tree builds so you can build more than one *staging* area

      3) use a build system designed for the task, e.g. the autotools or what every fits for your language.

      4) write a noddy shell script to chose which set of parameters to provide

      Here's an extract from my current noddy one

      SCRIPT=$(abspath ${0})

      SCRIPTPATH=`dirname ${SCRIPT}`

      ROOTPATH=`dirname ${SCRIPTPATH}`

      export PROJECT_ROOT=${ROOTPATH}

      if [ "${1}" = "bsd" ];

      then

      ${PROJECT_ROOT}/configure \

      --prefix="/home/user/software" \

      --enable-maintainer-mode \

      --with-ccache=yes \

      --enable-silent-rules ;

      fi

      if [ "${1}" = "osx" ];

      then

      CTAGS=/usr/local/bin/ctags \

      CTAGSFLAGS="-R --tag-relative=yes --exclude=.git --exclude=build" \

      ASTYLE_TOOL=/usr/local/Cellar/astyle/2.04/bin/astyle \

      ${PROJECT_ROOT}/configure \

      --enable-maintainer-mode \

      --prefix="/Applications" \

      --with-ccache=yes \

      --enable-silent-rules ;

      fi

      This makes it easy to package for red hat/debian/gentoo/freebsd/osx - These are the only platforms I actually deploy to, so I can't speak to others but I expect its the same.

    3. asdf

      Re: SystemD - A Necessary Evil

      > Other than that, the adoption rate speaks for itself,

      You mean the adoption rate of people moving to PC-BSD? The adoption rate in Linux is simply because once systemd became a dependency for udev distros had little choice but to include it.

  12. Ceiling Cat

    What I really want to know . . .

    Is whether or not Fancontrol/sensord finally support my motherboard? The temp sensors and fan control on my board is provided by a IT8772F chip, which is honestly a bit of a POS, but it's what I've got. If it's still not supported correctly, I can only run in a VM if I want my fans controlled properly, missing out on such goodies as proper GFX card drivers.

  13. crayon

    "Glad that I stay with KDE all this time."

    My upgrade from Kubuntu 14.10 to 15.04 whilst not a complete disaster is certainly a slight disappointment:

    - A lot of settings didn't get carried forward.

    - Session support is partially broken (some stuff like konsole and kate does not get restored with a session, plus they do not restart with the previously opened tabs/documents), all programs are restored into the first virtual desktop (the old behaviour was that programs were restored, seemingly at random, to the various virtual desktops)

    - ibus is partially broken

    One good thing is that finally kmail seems to have better network failure recovery. Previously, flaky networks would leave kmail with multiple hanging connections which meant mail checking would be blocked until kmail and its connections were restarted (had to use akonadictl to kill those hanging connections).

  14. James 132

    Shellshock was possible because of the black box. It wasn't shell scripts that were the problem, but a parsing error. Systemd is one giant black box and a great deal of C code; there's bound to be some interesting CVE's lurking in there.

    I've been using systemd on Arch Linux since their adoption of it in late 2012, and it's not bad, but I'm reluctant to run servers with it - I have already encountered an odd case of NFS mounts in etc/fstab not behaving as they should, and the Bugzilla is still open.

    Most of all, I'm not convinced of the 'problem' - shell scripts have worked effectively for years, and they are as transparent as they are complex. Their implementation was deliberate. Systemd swaps complexity you can at least see for low level code you've much less chance of understanding. Yes, application packagers have to work out how to get the services to work if they're using Sys V (or similar), but honestly, how hard is this? You can boilerplate a lot of it.

    As regards adoption rates, they're also high for Internet Explorer; it doesn't really mean much.

    I don't particularly dislike systemd, but I definitely wonder if this is the direction Linux should be going in.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You can guarantee that bugzilla will still be open years from now.

  15. ckdizz

    I've been using systemd on Arch since they adopted it, as well as running Fedora on my servers at home. Systemd is, from thus user experience, a Good Thing. I have had no issues with boot order, or failing services, at least no issues that weren't down to something I did or failed to do.

    It's a more complete option than init scripts, it's very manageable and if you know how to use it, it's much easier to diagnose problems. Let's face it, Arch devs wouldn't have adopted it unless it was an improvement. Whatever reasons you may have for objecting to it, that's the way things are going. You can either whine about it and not put the time in to learn it out resolve your issues, or you can jump in with both feet.

  16. Six_Degrees

    "The main complaint is it tries to do too much. It isn't just an init system – it also wants to manage user logins, handle logging and half a dozen other tasks."

    Ugh. Another X system.

    Brought to you by the same hack who crapped out PulseAudio, no less.

  17. John Sanders
    Linux

    Systemd

    I run really complicated set-ups, and all the "scripts work", "systemd is going to eat your babies use bsd" rhetoric is just that, rants coming from people who has never had to write any of those scripts, and whom have barely touched systemd if at all.

    My experience so far with systemd is 99.9% possitive, I have managed to turn 100+ lines scripts into 20 lines ini files that do not require 15 Year+ of shell and bash scripting experience to understand.

    Systemd is a positive step in the right direction, and yes, if you install Debian 8 all your logs are still available as text files in /var/log.

    The sad truth is that albeit systemd is not perfect, both upstart and sysv are bad jokes, but the truth that some aspects of "*nix" is less than perfect is hard to swallow for some.

    To the trolls out there, claiming that systemd is like svchost.exe is a bad taste out of place joke. Systemd is GPLv2, go fork it and create a better init system. (I understand that most of you are misinformed and confused)

    To the regular folks who have been scared of systemd as if it was the 7 plagues of Egypt, do not be scared, most of what people write about systemd so far is B******t. Notice that the people making a fuss about systemd do resort to arguments that are difficult to measure.

    systemd reads your /etc/fstab file, it will use your /etc/init.d/ scripts, and on top of that will do lots of more useful things like tell you straight away what happened during boot, what services are available, which ones are disabled, which ones failed, how long did take each component to boot, what are the dependencies of a given service, has proper child process management, etc.

    systemd only does away with things like text logs if you choose to, 99% of the time you do not notice is even there.

    It took me minutes to adapt some of my old scripts and for the first time in years I'm truly confident that daemons will be restarted properly if they die unexpectedly.

    X.org is the last pile of old cruft to be replaced now, expect the same people complaining about "systemd is going to eat your babies" to complain that wayland kills X net transparency without even noticing that it has its own X server and by definition it still does 100% what X.org does.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Systemd

      If only systemd stuck to simply concerning itself with startup scripts.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      Re: Systemd

      "people making a fuss about systemd do resort to arguments that are difficult to measure."

      Yes, difficult to measure-- like adherence to the UNIX philosophy, or that bad aftertaste left by pulseaudio. Not quantitative. Speaking of quantitative, there were 10 plagues.

  18. qtcoder

    I'm still enjoying Ubuntu 14.04 LTS - the best LTS release ever. I must admit I'm a bit tempted to upgrade, though.

    1. Adrian 4

      I wish I could say I was enjoying it. Umpteen critical bugs in the NetworkMangler still unfixed, a system that freezes or fails to boot randomly, yet 14.10 and 15 are out. Not trying those until LTS works properly, thanks.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    *facepalm*

    Why does everyone lose their mind when something new happens in Linux.

    Gnome3, Unity and now Systemd.

    Im 31 years old Ive been using Linux forever well over a decade. I earn a living from supporting and implementing it.

    Ive come to accept that change is inevitable and I accept that I will have to stay on my toes and learn new things on a regular basis.

    I cant help but feel the people that hate all the change might be aging a bit and are starting to struggle, am I right?

    The only gripe I have is people giving terrible advice in an effort to steer people away from their own personal pet hates.

    Anyone recommending XFCE needs their head examined. It looks janky and old and feels hacked together. It has its place but it is in no way superior to the likes of Gnome3 or Unity. Im not saying they're perfect...they aint...but they feel a hell of a lot more polished and they are a lot more consistent.

    Just the font rendering alone in XFCE sucks, the inconsistent theming sucks and the general feel is a bit crap. On the other hand though if you struggle to adjust to change its an excellent way to cling on to the past.

    I also find it slightly offensive to assume that familiarity is the only way to entice Windows users to Linux. Thats crap. If that was the case OSX would have no appeal and everyone would still be using phones that have a similar interface to the old nokia phones.

    Look and feel is key but familiarity is not.

    AC because im expecting flak.

    1. James 132

      Re: *facepalm*

      Some of these things are related, particularly Gnome 3.

      Leaving aside technical considerations, Gnome's development (under the umbrella of Freedesktop.org) adopted a distinctly authoritarian tone; you will have your desktop this way, it will use this init system etc. The deliberate coupling (logind for Gnome3, see also the above poster's example of pam_systemd for similar) was not accidental (Poettering has said as much) and the resulting controversy was therefore not surprising.

      I think - and I'm pretty sure it's been said elsewhere - that had systemd truly stayed within scope and looked after pid1 only, we would not be having this discussion. Instead it also became a userland hydra; that's the rub.

    2. DrXym

      Re: *facepalm*

      "Why does everyone lose their mind when something new happens in Linux."

      Because some people have this idealized view of Linux that it cannot possibly be improved upon and when someone does improve upon Linux (usually in obvious and necessary ways) it provokes an irrational response. Note how the majority of criticisms of systemd are ad hominem attacks - it's shite, they don't like the author, they don't like pulseaudio, they don't like change, it does too much etc. Look at all the negative voting in this thread for anyone who DARES suggest it might be okay, or an improvement.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Linux - what a fecking mess.

    A million different combinations, and none of them work properly. No standardization. No commonality. Back of a fag packet feature set.

    1. asdf

      hmm

      Trolling aside you do know systemd is Linux standardizing itself on one giant clusterfsck Windows like design right? This whole article is how one of the biggest distros Ubuntu has now joined the darkside. systemd will actually get rid of much of what you are criticizing (which many people find a strength actually). The way things are going pretty much the only difference soon between the distros will be the artwork and branding. Panic not you won't be forced to use the scary CLI anytime soon.

  21. Anonymous C0ward

    Maybe systemd isn't Windows by the back door.

    Maybe you don't lose your text-based log files. Maybe unless you're a real power user you won't need to do things differently at all.

    *That makes it worse.* It needs to offer a significant advantage to be worth bothering to change. It is not enough to not be evil.

  22. asdf

    FOSS to the rescue

    Sad to see Linux go the way it has but the BSD folks have been saying for a long time Linux only pretending to be Unix was going to be very problematic eventually. Luckily the choice of FOSS means I don't have to use systemd and Linux and was able to move to a more pure Unix, PC-BSD (FreeBSD flavor basically, and an OpenBSD mem stick for banking) fairly easily at least at home (long live the spirit of POSIX if not the implementations). Sadly work is moving more and from vendor Unix to Linux but at I will only have to be a user and only having to use the CLI I can type ksh and pretend I am on a real Unix box.

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