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Comment by legulere | Hacker News Reader

Systemd is winning because it makes a Linux system to a modern one.

The time where you compiled your own Linux kernel with the drivers you needed and got a static system are gone. The Linux kernel now works in a plug and play way. Block devices for instance can always pop up, not only after you wait and arbitrary amount of time at boot for all devices.

The idea that the traditional unix process separation is enough is from the same time as the gets function. The Linux kernel here offers cgroups for better seperation.

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fallacy #23: argumentum ad novitatem

I'm not claiming that hot-plug is better, but that hot-plug is the status quo of the kernel. Modern here means that it integrates well with a modern linux kernel.

Also grouping processes together and isolating them is not really new but a proven technology (FreeBSD jails, virtualization). It's also pretty hard to argue against that the knowledge about security of unix systems didn't increase.

The irony about the fallacies is that just throwing them around even without writing a sentence goes against the very nature they were conceived in. The corresponding counter-question would be: "Why is modernity here something good?", but that question is already answered in the post to begin with.

You are right.

I am actually in a phase of archeology where I read a lot of rob pikes, ken thompson, ted nelson, linus torvalds, esr ... (http://harmful.cat-v.org/) and I begin to question myself a lot of things. Even the statu quo.

At work I deal with a lot of dependency hell (system and distributed software requirements, confinments (VM and chroot or jails)) and I begin to doubt some of "the wisdom and progress" I have been adopting.

I search for answers now because I think some old "conceptual bugs" are bitting us very hard (like the way http url are built, threading, shared libraries, the abuse of concurrency) and I don't know anymore what progess is.

I just kind of feel status quo is a very old hard rock band that should be forgotten :)

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