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Comment by _ofdw | Hacker News Reader

Me too. Ironically, systemd is why I bought a Mac.

It's so hard to find a linux distro that actually works on a laptop but doesn't use systemd, so I eventually just gave up on Linux entirely.

That left me with BSD, Windows, and macOS.

I tried FreeBSD and OpenBSD but performance was atrocious and noticeably worse in almost every way than Debian and win7 on the same hardware. I'm sure BSD makes a good server OS but it's just not mature enough for serious work unless I was willing to keep my laptop plugged 99% of the time. But what's the point of a laptop if the OS performs so poorly it won't even last a 4-hour flight?

I similarly seem to be the last guy on earth who still remembers the bad old days of Microsoft's dominance so I won't pay for windows.

The winner by default is therefore apple.

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Interesting choice you have there. Systemd is heavily influenced by launchd, the service manager that makes MacOS tick. They're very similar in design. IPC based, socket-activated, property-based, dependencies, parallel startup, unifying init and service management...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launchd

Windows GUI is heavily influenced by Mac, so it also must be as good as the Mac version, right?

As in. Launchd is directly mentioned in the design documents of systemd as the main source of inspiration

http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html

Yes, that doesn't contradict my point.

Systemd is a much worse implementation of a Launchd concept, just as Windows is a worse implementation of a Mac like GUI concept...

Launchd is not a syslog audio daemon dhcp client. It just launches things.

Neither is systemd.

Were you thinking of journald,... etc. instead?

http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html

> ...you can turn off and replace pretty much any part of systemd, with very few exceptions. And those exceptions (such as journald)...

I’m not sure what your link is supposed to prove.

systemd is not a syslog daemon either. systemd-journald is.

It's funny that two entirely unrelated pieces of software written by separate projects have such similar names.

One of them should really change to avoid this unfortunate confusion.

Sorry you had such a bad time with OpenBSD. It isn't top of the heap when it comes to performance but there are benefits that balance it out.

On the Linux front, I've been using Void and it has been pretty fantastic. Runit is the default init. It is a more hands-on distro (think Arch 10 years ago), but it's fast, slim, and doesn't have systemd.

> It's so hard to find a linux distro that actually works on a laptop but doesn't use systemd

Don't you think that there's a reason for that? That systemd solves the problems that make it possible to react to events and makes laptop-usable distros possible?

Meanwhile, enjoy launchd. Maybe you will find out, that they are conceptually similar.

Launchd appears to actually work. And it isn't Poetteringware.

launchd has a clearly defined scope, and it restricts itself to doing only those tasks which fall under its remit.

If systemd had followed a similar philosophy, it would have been accepted without anything like the same amount of criticism. As it is, its scope creep is frankly absurd and dangerous.

Most of the additional functionality is optional, and in separate binaries. Apple also has similar functionality (seat management, resolver management, etc), and nobody is bothered by that.

One gets the impression that optionality is only theoretical. Same for separate binaries. The degree of coupling in the systemd architecture is enormous. So then, what purpose do separate binaries serve other than being able to (conveniently) be used for deflection or provide a certain facade?

The philosophy of systemd exemplified through PRAXIS is one of subsumption and uniformity (== taking away choice) under a singular vision defined by the systemd implementors. In practice, this means that you are penalized in various ways if you don't "buy in all the way". You can take a look at all the distributions that ship systemd by default and see how many have bought in all the way vs not using the "additional functionality".

> That systemd solves the problems that make it possible to react to events and makes laptop-usable distros possible?

It is one such solution. But there are others, which from an end-user perspective are much easier to deal with (e.g. runit, shepherd etc.).

So, for instance, my Void-powered laptop shuts down quickly and cleanly when I ask it to, and I don't have to wait 1:30 minutes (or more) on shutdown.

You bought a Mac because of systemd? Isn't that some sort of overreaction?

I don't particularly think so. The amount of my time that systemd has wasted is insane. Buying a mac would have saved me all that time... if only I liked their hardware more.

systemd has wasted a ton of time for me as well.

Then again I just bought a new MacBook air and they keyboard gave out after two weeks and it gave me a rash.

Can't win at all.

Don't tell him about launchd

Did apple reinvent every Unix daemon under the sun as part of launchd? And did they also reinvent all the security problems while they were doing it?

The problem with systemd isn't necessarily how it handles system startup and daemon supervision (although I don't care for that), it's that it subsumes so many other things, and with no technical excellence.

I prefer to use my computer to do productive things, instead of fighting against the OS. MacOS is a certified Unix underneath. Works great.

I moved away from Linux as soon as systemd was everywhere. I first migrated to Slackware, and then to FreeBSD. I wouldn't call this kind of move overreaction.

Some people just want to know exactly what is running on their system, and how it works. That's one of the reasons I don't use Windows.

(I do confess that I never took the time to learn systemd properly, but I highly appreciate it for introducing me to the BSD world).

I don't think so. If the distribution you're using insists on integrating software that you don't want, it's reasonable to leave.

He tried other open source operating systems and didn't find them acceptable. Sure, there are Linux distributions that have formed to avoid systemd, but it's not clear how long any of them will last.

Mac os isn't exactly unicorns and rainbows either, but there are some benefits of being part of a larger user base, too.

Devuan works fine on my laptop and doesn't use systemd. It's nearly exactly as Debian otherwise.

When you tested OpenBSD, did you enable apmd for power management? This significantly improves my battery life (by about 3 hours).

Of course. But it resulted in multi-second pauses while doing such demanding tasks as closing browser tabs.

So when did you leave Mac due to it using launchd?

Launchd is nowhere near as bad as systemd and doesn't suffer from the latter feature creep.

It's only a matter of degree, not philosophy, though. Launchd still accumulated the job of multiple services (initd, inetd, cron, incron, etc).

The aggregation of these services are all understandable, because every one of them is about running a service. They might be triggered by different events (timer, network connection, at boot, manually), but other than that they are all doing pretty much the same thing: setting up and running a service.

It isn't building in an NTP client, or a hostname resolver, or configuring your network, or taking over the system logging, or generating QR codes. It has a singular focus and design which makes conceptual sense. It's not a dumping ground for a disparate collection of poor quality alternatives to existing tools.

Slackware64 14.2 runs fine on my 10yo mediocre (for the time) laptop. Don't know about battery though, mine it's too old to be useful.

There are a number of desktop/laptop distros which don't use systemd. Void Linux is one such (it uses runit), and it's very easy to use.

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