Systemd 261 released with systemd-sysinstall, IMDSD, and storagectl | Hacker News Reader

Systemd 261 released with systemd-sysinstall, IMDSD, and storagectl

phoronix.com

43 pointslogickkk123 comments

“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski's_Law

I thought this law was just a joke, but after Manny years of development, I'm finding out it's very real.

It's also increasingly painful to make happen in today's email ecosystem.

That explains why Google puts messaging in everything.

    Did you get the Google Doc's message I sent you?
    Oh yeah, I replied in Google Pay.

Really love the systemd-imdsd, this is such a useful cloud-thing to have a common way to look into! "Who am I" finally has a standard interface.

The restartable kernel stuff is really cool. Starting to have userland things that systems can persist across soft-boots (user fd stores) into new kernels is a sweet capability. Excellent to have common machinery to help with that.

As always some really sweet good new security / partitioning tools. Amazing superpowers that continue to build and grow.

Is `cloud-init query` not already a standard interface for "who am I" on cloud instances?

I misread IMDSD as IMDB and still thought yeah they might as well throw that in too at this point.

so - sometimes systemd's build is reliable, sometimes it causes problems. Are these good additions and do they solve real problems, or are they just for cohesion of systemd itself or introduce problems?

I think they should create a kernel for systemd and then perhaps also a filesystem... maybe a GUI too?

Systemd is never beating the allegations that they're taking over everything. Now they have an installer? Why in the world did they need that? I guess someone who does a lot of automated installations donated money?

I think it's clear at this point that the allegations don't worry them. They tried debunking them by pointing out that the overwhelming majority of these are separate daemons that are entirely optional, can be packaged separately, and don't affect anybody who doesn't want to use them. The people raging against systemd didn't feel obligated to take those facts into account.

So they're just doing their own thing, and the distro landscape seems a clear indication that their own thing looks pretty compelling to basically every distro with any meaningful market share.

People may as well make the pitch that Linux is "taking over everything".

Is it systemd/Linux yet? I’m still waiting for shellctl subsystem. /s

systemd is still GPL (LGPL to be exact) so if you truly want to get rid of the "GNU" in "GNU/Linux" you might want to take a look at the rust-coreutils for a starter

If you're really interested I have an expansion of rust-coreutils that includes Rust implementations of a drop-in bash clone, git, pico, and many others. You don't need GNU at all if you don't want anymore.

Yeah, I'm actually interested in that, and I think by now it should be very possible to build a Linux system without any GNU userland (by default).

Instead of building yet-another "no systemd here" distro, why does nobody build a "no GNU here" distro instead? :)

I did. jonerix on gh. "GNO" means "GNO is not GNU"

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, systemd/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, systemd plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning systemd system made useful by the systemd libudev, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the systemd system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of systemd which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the systemd system, developed by the FrteeDesktop.org Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the systemd operating system: the whole system is basically systemd with Linux added, or systemd/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of systemd/Linux!

when systemdOS with systemd-rpm-install and systemd-antivirus ?

systemd-antivirusd*

I mean. It doesn't use RPMs (directly), but systemd-sysupdate and systemd-sysext do cover that ground. Though the vision seems to be somewhat coarser than traditional packages.

The real question is, when will this joke finally get old? Like is it really still funny to make joke after literally every thread about SystemD has made this joke for 10+ years.

Btw, it already exists and its called ParticalOS:

https://github.com/systemd/particleos

Excellent super slept on distro using excellent super slept on distro assembly tools also homed in the systemd cinematic universe, mkosi, https://github.com/systemd/mkosi

> The real question is, when will this joke finally get old?

When it stops being applicable, which given the tendencies of the SystemD developers, does not appear to be any time soon.

You seem to mix up 'applicable' and 'funny'. Jokes are supposed to be funny. And given that there is already a OS part of the project, the joke doesn't even make fucking sense anymore.

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