On 1/24/21 10:59 AM, Mark Rousell wrote:
>
> This is undoubtedly the case but of course it doesn't necessarily 
> follow that SystemD is the correct solution. And that's where the 
> controversy arises.

What is 'correct?'  (THAT is where the controversy actually lies.) The 
old engineering mantra is that 'the better is the enemy of the good 
enough;' any piece of software can always be made 'better' for various 
definitions of 'better.'  There comes a time you have to accept the 
'good enough' and get on with life; the Linux kernel is not the 
be-all-end-all but at the moment it IS 'good enough' for what it does; 
it's not going away no matter how badly kernel purists wish it would.  
There are many init systems distributions can choose from; the Wikipedia 
article on init lists them and I won't repeat the list here.

The definition of 'correct' is fluid and dynamic, changing with the 
needs of the users of the system on which the init must run, and 
subsumes far more than technical items, as things like license 
compatibility must be considered, too.  For a long time root-executable 
shell scripts were 'good enough' for 'correct' behavior; that time has 
passed.  Sun scrapped the whole mess in Solaris 10 with SMF; Canonical 
wrote Upstart for Ubuntu because old-style SysV Init was no longer 
'correct' for their use cases; Red Hat paid for the development of 
systemd because nothing was 'correct' for their desired use cases, and, 
well, Red Hat wanted their own solution.  Other distributions followed 
suit because systemd is now 'good enough' for today's 'correct' and got 
to that place before its competitors.

>
>> Difficult? That is the understatement of the decade.  I prefer to 
>> honestly evaluate new technologies with a bit more pragmatism; do I 
>> like having to learn a different way of doing things?  Not really; 
>> but after Debian adopted systemd I took more notice.
>
> The thing is, one cannot wisely evaluate something on *purely* 
> technical grounds because its function in reality may not be entirely 
> or purely technical. Issues of politics and control of industry and/or 
> mindshare are relevant too.

I never evaluate something on purely technical grounds; Debian adopting 
systemd is not a technical but a political criterion.  I do weigh 
technical merit highly, but the political fact that systemd is the 
current init system for all of the top 5 server distributions has to be 
taken into consideration.

Are there technically better init systems?  Sure; daemontools is the 
first that comes to my mind (as Nico correctly pointed out), but there 
are others.  Had djb made his license more palatable then we might all 
be griping about daemontools instead of systemd.  But that ship has sailed.

What you say in your message, especially the parts I didn't quote, is 
quite true all around; but it's unfortunately irrelevant, since systemd 
achieved critical mass once Debian adopted it and Ubuntu followed suit.  
As much as I'm not really fond of it, systemd is the current winner of 
the init war, unless something far better, with a good license, and with 
a critical mass to support it, comes along OR systemd becomes so 
obnoxious that Debian drops it (again, I use Debian as a bellwether 
simply because it's a fully openly developed system with no single 
company behind it, so no 'corporate agenda' to interfere with open 
decision-making).

One thing can be said that I'm sure everyone will agree on: systemd is 
definitely the most polarizing component of the typical Linux distribution.