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Comment by zxzax | Hacker News Reader

You can just disable the fd passing for services that don't need it. I'm not sure what your actual issue is. I haven't had to reboot any more with systemd than I did with sysvinit or openrc, or the slackware rc init, or anything else really. If you have an actual crash that is causing you problems, you should consider reporting it or submitting a patch to fix it, just like you would with any other open source that you depend on.

>systemd is on the level of a re-think by a pretty bright high school student.

That seems like an odd statement, I believe systemd was inspired by other established unix service managers like macOS launchd and solaris SMF. The design is definitely not perfect but I wouldn't say the history was ignored when making it.

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> You can just disable the fd passing for services that don't need it. I'm not sure what your actual issue is.

First of all this just sounds like "I don't know what your problem with systemd is, you can just choose to not use it". Second, my point is that it's an absolutely terrible idea, and should never have been done.

> I believe systemd was inspired by other established unix service managers like macOS launchd and solaris SMF. The design is definitely not perfect but I wouldn't say the history was ignored when making it.

A high school student can read up on things and then make something they, without real world experience, thinks seems like it's a good idea. And with no experience about what it takes to make software reliable.

If you think the socket activation takes too long you can just turn it off and start that service unconditionally. What's the problem? Other service managers support this too, it's not a systemd only thing. Maybe it's a bad idea for some services but others would seemingly disagree that it's always a terrible idea, and not just those who are systemd developers. You may just be using it for the wrong services -- it's most useful with services where the startup time is less important than reducing the overall memory usage on the system.

If you have experience making software reliable, please consider submitting bug reports and patches to help the project, like you would do with any other open source that you depend on. I'm sure contributions to improve the testing and CI would be appreciated. A high school student can also trash talk loudly about things they didn't take the time to fully understand (and I admit I did a lot of that when I was a teenager in high school), but it takes real expertise to illustrate what the actual problem is and to contribute a fix for it in a positive way.

> it's most useful with services where the startup time is less important than

So now it's not about startup time at all?

> please consider submitting bug reports and patches to help the project,

Who says I don't?

But systemd needs a few full time adults, not just a patch here and there to fix the launch-while-brainstorming culture that gave us the current situation.

It can also be about initial startup time of the system, not startup time of any individual service. Please follow the site guidelines, c.f. the part about "don't cross-examine" -- this is just a technical tool, I'm sure we both can come up with some ways that it could be useful, even if we wouldn't use them ourselves.

>But systemd needs a few full time adults, not just a patch here and there to fix the launch-while-brainstorming culture that gave us the current situation.

Then start working it on it full time, and get some of your friends hired too? Surely you can find someone to pay for that, if it's useful? What else is it that would satisfy you here? I'd be happy if another group was committing full time to systemd (or another similar open source project) just to fix bugs. I fully support you if you decide to do that.

> Then start working it on it full time

I have told you multiple times why not.

Sorry I think I missed that. In that case you will have to find someone else who can do it and figure out how to get them paid. If you want help doing that, don't hesitate to ask.

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