On 09/26/2014 03:05 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote: > Stephen Allen wrote: >> On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 11:27:54AM -0400, Miles Fidelman wrote: >> As has been stated many times here - A GR was tried but not enough >> seconds to carry on. > > Actually, no - I've been following this, and related threads, from the > beginning - I have not seen anybody actually mention that a GR was > tried. Do you have a reference? >
Not in this particular thread, but it was brought up frequently awhile back when things first started "blowing up" over the systemd decision. Part of the difficultly of "discussing" systemd issues is that there are enough bad actors glossing over or ignoring things that people get tired of pointing it out. It gets really difficult to tell the reasonable people apart, and can be draining for those who get involved. In regards to the decision to make systemd the default: The technical committee was asked to make a decision, and they did. It was not a person or small group of people who just up and decided to change things and force it on others. There are ways to override that decision, you just need enough dd's to vote that way. However, no one can get enough dd's to vote on even *having* a vote on the issue. (Memory might be off, but I think you only need 5 people for that?) Clearly a full vote would be a huge waste of time. Despite that, there are still several people screaming that the decision was a takeover, that some dd's are corporate shills, that choice is being completely taken away, and/or using fancy words like oligarchy. (Presumably because it's less inflammatory than tyranny?) My own personal/technical thoughts have gone back and forth on systemd. However even when I firmly believed that is was the wrong way to go and would cause major issues down the line, it was still clear to me that many people were seriously going overboard. Can we all just calm down a bit? Writing this already takes a lot for me, so I'm not going to dredge up the various links myself (they can be found elsewhere in the list or via search engines). Debian has a long and very clear document on the site explaining why the decision went the way it did. Others have posted links to the serious issues the current init system has, and how they're getting worse. Systemd is much more than just an init system, so there's a bunch of other good technical benefits to using it. (Including security and stability benefits.) Yes, there were problems with switching in Debian, but people forget 2 things: 1: Debian testing is just that, testing. There have been innumerable times in the past where having to transition systems has resulted in temporary breakage. (Like moving to new major versions of KDE/Gnome/glibc/etc.) Just because you personally haven't experienced issues running testing doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Granted most of the time they didn't result in a non-bootable system, but then most of the time they don't involve stuff crucial to booting. 2: Jessie is nearing it's initial freeze, so there was more of a rush to get things switched over so proper troubleshooting could happen. The end result is there was a short time (a week?) where those who didn't want systemd had to avoid updates until the shim was fixed. (And that issue wasn't even caused by systemd change, but a kernel change.) Other issues have popped up, but that's a normal part of the process. That said, I understand and agree that there are technical downsides as well. For example, there is a little too much integration within systemd itself, however that's mostly a result of the maintainer's attitudes/viewpoints. And yes, it does worry that the creators/maintainers seem to be somewhat hostile/clueless. Normally that's an excellent reason to avoid something. In this case though, there are numerous benefits that override that concern. The major reason why I'm not too worried about that last point is that I have faith in the opensource ecosystem. (Not great phrasing, but best I could come up with.) Now that Debian is using it to a good extent, along with most other distributions, systemd has become an important (maybe even critical?) part of our infrastructure. We've seen what happens when developers grow uninvolved in the users and distros needs. Things get forked. Xfree86 and OpenOffice are just a couple of examples of this. OO in particular showed how distros used a common set of patches to fix things the developers didn't care about. The moment an alternative showed up that was willing to just take the patches, the distros switched over. Systemd is a decent base with problems, but it *is* fixable provided there's a steward to allow them. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if within a year or two it was forked and all the distros jumped on board practically overnight. Just my thoughts, I'm probably going to seriously regret getting involved.... - PaulNM -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/5425c762.2020...@paulscrap.com
