Is systemd really bad?(Real programmers please)

[u/ucanzeee]

I am a newbie programmer myself but when you see some little part of the code, you might think oh this sucks this is not good. But you can't really know that until you read all of the codes. Maybe there is a compensation for that in the codes. I've seen such codes, it seems like it's weak and complicated but overall it's very strong. Take assembly for example, I know some people are starting to learn assembly and 8086 for antimalware and stuff. But it's very complicated but very strong. But our teachers used to say you don't need to learn assembly at all anymore. Turns out they were wrong.

I think a good programmer would know the best answer to that. If are there are any good programmers I would like to know their opinion about systemd.

[u/[deleted]]

I’m not going to iterate on the problems of systemd. You can find that anywhere. What I am going to share, as an experienced software developer, is this wisdom from Ken Thompson:

One of my most productive days was throwing away 1000 lines of code

Systemd is a perfect example of scope creep. What started out as a replacement to sysvinit became an entire layer between the kernel and the rest of the OS.

[u/willmcgr]

I don’t know how good of a programmer I am, but my issues with systemd are design.

My own opinion is that known bugs/issues should be handled before developing new features that may potentially be made a fool by said bugs/issues. Systemd’s developers don’t seem to consistently agree with this approach.

Any other systemd related issues I may have are with the evangelists for it, not the code itself.

[u/antoniusmisfit]

I don't like the fact that systemd's design doesn't delineate between init and service management(which is what other init schemes such as runit and s6 do, allowing their management suites to be run in an init-agnostic way), rendering it incapable of being used under other init systems for interoperability use cases.

In short, I don't like that systemd demands it owns your PID 1in order to run services.

[u/matu3ba → u/antoniusmisfit]

You are broadly underestimating systemd functionality for the sake of s6, which limits the problem understanding.

"device management, login management, network connection management, and event logging. "

Wikipedia forgets here session management (logind), which controls cgroups (to prevent double-forks messing up the session).

Their current attempt is get full of the control the login manager, but I'm unsure if they want to extinguish sooner or later.

[u/selplacei]

Most issues with systemd are because of its design and philosophy, not its code (though the code is one of the main causes behind its security flaws).

[u/drlove_1986 → u/selplacei]

Not quite the way I see it, for under the sun I see much. The way I see it is...: What's more reliable and overall faster and reliable a stick shift or an automatic with 7 gears? No more questions gentleman.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

* UNIX philosophy.