Interview: Lennart Poettering

[mean_dean]

http://www.linuxvoice.com/interview-lennart-poettering/

Few pieces of software in history have been so fiercely debated as Systemd. Initially a replacement for Sysvinit, the boot scripts that start up a Linux installation, Systemd has grown into a hugely powerful – and sometimes complex – replacement for the “bag of bits” that make up the Linux base system. It’s growing all the time and now handles logging, device hotplugging events, networking, scheduled actions (like Cron) and much more. Almost every major Linux distribution has adopted Systemd, but there are still some unhappy campers out there, so Mike and Graham ventured to Berlin to meet the software’s lead developer and get his view.

[mean_dean]

anyone else smell an arch fanboi

[nauved]

TL;DNR Same goes for most of the posts here though they at least seem to be more in line with reality than the Poettering drivel.

[mean_dean]

sadly his drivel seems saner than some I have seen


maybe if you did read a bit more, and look at things a bit deeper....um....aww nevermind...


I still feel they solved a problem that didn't exist or rather a problem they created themselves by insisting that certain software do more than it was originally created to do.

It would be like complaining ice cream isnt hot and it falls apart when you try to make it hot. My solutions is to have ice cream the way it was intended....cold....not insist that we need to make ice cream that can be hot.



I am having fun with this...

[cynwulf]

He doesn't say anything he hasn't said before. Some of the comments pretty much say it all, especially that he sets up straw man arguments and then proceeds to attempt to demolish them and belittle and ridicule his opposition - his interviewer willingly aids and abets this. The comparisons of systemd and UNIX are hopeless.

Worthless.

[Randicus Draco Albus]

anyone else smell an arch fanboi

I thought Poettering was a Windows fanboi. He praises how well-designed it is compared to how flawed Linux and BSD are. Hence, his crusade to make Linux more like Windows. Arch fanbois just like his work.

[mean_dean]

sadly I never paid much attention to any of it up until the time debian started debating the init system...

i knew systemd (and upstart) existed but beyond that I never bothered reading anything about it as I figured it didnt affect me

i did install and use it a time or two but just for a shits a giggles

[cynwulf]

sadly I never paid much attention to any of it up until the time debian started debating the init system...

i knew systemd (and upstart) existed but beyond that I never bothered reading anything about it as I figured it didnt affect me

Same here. I just thought "alternative init system, not my problem".

i did install and use it a time or two but just for a shits a giggles

The only time I used upstart was in butnut. Don't remember much about it. It first appeared in 6.10, the only release I liked was 6.06, which was quite stable (probably because it was just Debian with a brown theme and a bit of polish). From then on butnut turned to shit.

Only used systemd in fedora. It was an out-of-the box install with gnome-shell for my better half to use. Booted up one day and saw a slew of 'failed' messages, boot hung and had to reboot again which 'fixed' it. A few days later the same again and more failed this and failed that as time went on... Also it did not boot faster than either Debian or even Slackware (which is funny), so no idea where that myth came from. It pissed me off at the time because I was trying to get my better half off Windows XP and onto something supported and not a sitting duck for malware. That experience pretty much killed that and Windows XP is still installed...

[Randicus Draco Albus]

Perhaps a question Poettering should be asked in a future interview is why systemd was not developed from start to finish before being released, instead of being implemented on systems piecemeal while it is still being developed? I am opposed to very idea of systemd, but if the normal development plan had been followed; create, test, fix bugs, release, the result would have been "upgrading" to a new, and working, system. Introducing each new piece as it is created and hoping it will work is bound to cause problems. I know why it was done that way*, but Poettering's response would probably be entertaining .

* It was initially put forth as a new initialisation system and then added to, so most people would not realise what was happening. If they had waited until the project was complete before trying to implement it, there would have been a great deal of resistance.

[cynwulf]

I just don't buy the Red Hat 'take over' conspiracy...

I think Red Hat want it, Red Hat probably like to see other distros adopting it, but no one is really forcing any of those distros to do so. The idea that loads of software just won't run and that they're being railroaded into adoption is just FUD.

Poettering's notorious comments e.g. towards gentoo show arrogance, but don't amount to "adopt systemd, it's the only way". It's just Poettering being a plonker. The kid lacks maturity and is in fact a typical software developer. Linux Torvalds and others have said far worse, yet no complaints from the fans...

I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them. To me, security is important. But it's no less important than everything else that is also important!

Then there's

Of course, I'd also suggest that whoever was the genius who thought it was a good idea to read things ONE F*CKING BYTE AT A TIME with system calls for each byte should be retroactively aborted. Who the f*ck does idiotic things like that? How did they noty die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?

I may make jokes about Microsoft at times, but at the same time, I think the Microsoft hatred is a disease.

Clearly he's in cahoots with 'M$'...

Any desktop environment or piece of subsystem or whatever switching to hard dependencies on systemd or it's services will still run without it, or if there's no other option will run with some kind of user space implementation of those services - the last resort is a fork. Forks are what this is all about, forks are supposed to happen to keep everything healthy. Software like udev, systemd, gnome, kde, etc is what should be getting forked - not entire distributions...

So if systemd does 'take over', which is entirely possible, it's really because a) the majority wanted that and b) those who didn't, just sat back and did nothing.

It's not simply "impossible" to code around the systemd dependencies. It can be done if someone wants to sit down and write the code. This is nothing new, it happens all the time.

If this doesn't happen, it's because people are not interested in making it happen. If your Linux distribution of choice is no longer fit for your needs, then it's time for a change. If you have zealous leanings towards using or avoiding certain software or certain types of software, then a distribution with a structure like Debian's is probably not for you. Find a distribution with a smaller group of developers or a BDFL who's objectives and goals most closely match your own.

If someone can't change, can't/doesn't want to code their way out, doesn't want to learn something new and is shackled to their Linux distribution and simply wants to complain endlessly about this, then I have to wonder why they bothered with Linux in the first place.