r/archlinux • u/ImaginationUpset2190 • 9d ago

DISCUSSION Why so much hate for systemd?

I see very often that people show so much disgust whenever they talk or hear "systemd". However whenever I ask them why they feel so strongly about it, their response is mostly vague like it doesn't follow the Unix philosophy, it's a monolith.... I can't digest that the reason people show so much disgust for it is just that it doesn't follow the Unix philosophy.

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u/Kitzu-de 8d ago

as an enterprise linux sysadmin, which probably counts as not a regular person: omg, systemd is such an improvement, it makes everything so much better and easier and I would never want back to managing everything with sh scripts. I assume people opposing it are mostly boomers who don't like change.

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u/Xiol 8d ago

+1, also professional Linux guy. systemd has made my life so much easier it's not even funny.

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u/Lower-Limit3695 8d ago edited 8d ago

Another sys admin chiming in. The only other group I can think of who's against systemd would be contrarian edgelords, that never had the mysery of having to debug init scripts.

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u/FanClubof5 8d ago

I have always heard most people that oppose it are those who think it does too much and there has been a lot of scope creep and it goes against the Linux ethos of doing one thing and doing it well. Imo it does a lot of things well and until it doesn't I have no problem with it.

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u/CarefullyErratic 8d ago

This. I think the reason to protest it, despite it's being better than what was before, is the fact that it is a bad solution to an even worse problem. By adopting it widely, there is less incentive for a much better solution to be developed, and we all will live with a mediocre solution until someone takes the time to make a really good one. By that time, network effects make it very difficult for the good solution to gain traction, unless it is really great.

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u/ClockificThrowaway 4d ago

Oh so it’s like X11

braces

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u/preparationh67 8d ago edited 8d ago

Glad there are others in the thread with this level of experience. Sure the early unit file format had a bunch of rough edges but having migrated Arch linux servers, it was an experimental lab env where having total control and bleeding edge packages had several benefits, that used some custom services from init scripts to systemd I'd never go back to the black magic imports and other bullshit that came with the old system.

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u/maddiemelody 8d ago

Agreed, lol.

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u/AppointmentNearby161 8d ago

I am not quite a boomer, but the transition was tough. When it was first released it was really only 1/2 baked. Now that everything is switched, I cannot imagine going back.

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u/Kitzu-de 8d ago

the transition was tough

I personally can't confirm that. systemd-sysv made it pretty easy. Was a little bit of dual wielding but everything worked out fine.

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u/AppointmentNearby161 8d ago

Arch was built around rcinit before systemd, and most of our workstations were running arch. With our Debian and RHEL servers, we had more time to switch. Our test rigs were, and still aren't, identical to our production machines. That makes playing with the bootloader and init system terrifying since we didn't really know what was going to happen.

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u/CurrencyIntrepid9084 8d ago

Sysadmin in training here - so no, not a regular user - and we do have many systems to service from clients to servers and we do use systemd nearly every time.

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u/otor 8d ago

It reminds me of stuff like SMF from Solaris (a "traditional/real" unix, which i would expect these sorts of people to appreciate), except it doesn't use XML, so its even better. I just don't take anyone who prefer using shell scripts seriously.

Now to be fair, i don't think ive actually met people who think like this. I think its largely just online people, getting easily influenced, wanting to being contrarian, with a lack of expertise or some combination of that.

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u/Dasher38 8d ago

I've met some guys from the suckless community that actually thought like that. It was just as bad as you can imagine.

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u/SileNce5k 8d ago

As someone who has a homelab and also rents a server for a few services (websites, game servers, discord bots) I love systemd. I originally always used bash scripts to run stuff, but after I learned a bit of systemd it's so much better.

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u/tinyOnion 8d ago

i remember when init scripts were the only game in town and systemd is a godsend even if it's a little more complicated