
The Tragedy of Systemd - jcamou
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AeWu1fZ7bY
======
PhantomGremlin
This is a click-bait title.

This 32 minute talk is about:

    
    
       what came before systemd (e.g. init)?
    
       what is systemd trying to solve?
    
       Lennart Poettering is misunderstood and shouldn't
       be getting death threats
    
       what can systemd teach FreeBSD people?
    
       how can systemd inspire improvements to FreeBSD?

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chmaynard
A really excellent, thought-provoking talk. When the speaker declared UNIX to
be essentially dead, it would have made sense to stop and take questions.
That's the conclusion! Linux won the Unix wars. Debating the merits of systemd
and whether to adopt it in BSD is irrelevant. BSD is in decline and will
slowly fade away.

~~~
newnewpdro
Linux (the kernel) is arguably in decline as well, especially now that it's
clear Android and ChromeOS will both pivot to Fuschia/Zircon.

~~~
voidr
Linux has almost 3 decades of development and experience behind it, will take
a lot of time and money for Google to catch up with that.

Linux has multiple communities and companies behind it, it won't disappear
overnight if one of them go bust.

Linux can run on anything, Fuschia will most likely only run on things that
Google cares about.

Most server software today runs on either Linux or Windows Server.

What makes you think the Linux kernel is in decline?

~~~
newnewpdro
OSX has decimated the Linux on consumer baremetal use case. It's increasingly
rare to meet anyone, even those who interact with Linux systems daily via the
cloud, who has actually installed and run it on their own hardware let alone
use it daily that way for significant amount of time.

I can't predict how long it will take Google to get Fuschia in good enough
shape for Android/ChromeOS production use, but the intent is clear and
confirmed.

The cloud is the only place where the kernel still sees a lot of usage, but
containers and platforms like Kubernetes serve in part to weaken Linux's
position in that space. WSL for example will very likely be utilized for
running Linux userspace containers natively in Azure, and knowing Microsoft
that will immediately be followed by Azure-specific features being made
available through proprietary extensions making the next versions of those
containers some combination of a Linux-compatible userspace mixed with WSL-
specific extensions for the Azure-specific magic.

I've been heavily involved in Linux since 90s, and it pretty clearly looks to
be in decline from my perspective. Hopefully puri.sm can get their mobile
device off the ground successfully and get to a point where it's a sustainable
business. It would be pretty sad if in another decade the only time we
encounter Linux running on baremetal is on gadgets for tinkering like the
raspberry pi.

~~~
voidr
> OSX has decimated the Linux on consumer baremetal use case.

By consumer baremetal you probably mean laptops and desktop PCs, because if I
would include routers, NASes and phones, your argument would be dead on
arrival. Even if we limit ourselves to laptop/desktops, OSX did not decimate
Linux, because the Linux desktop never actually had a high market share to
begin with. All the charts I have seen show that the Linux Desktop market
share was consistently low, the existence of the Mac didn't affect it much.

The 3 main reasons the Linux desktop isn't reaching bigger audiences are:

\- driver issues, which is partially because of the way kernel development
works \- no one good consistent UI \- too many distros and versions and
configurations to support

If you would erase the Mac from history, these wouldn't be affected.

The consistently low market share has little to do with the kernel.

> but the intent is clear and confirmed.

The interest was there with Google Wave, Google Reader, Dart, Google Plus,
Picasa and Google Desktop Search as well among other things, companies can
change their mind.

> but containers and platforms like Kubernetes serve in part to weaken Linux's
> position in that space.

Containers were made possible by Linux kernel features, the container images
are all Linux, I don't see how that weakens it, at the end of the day, your
application still runs on Linux.

> followed by Azure-specific features being made available through proprietary
> extensions making the next versions of those containers some combination of
> a Linux-compatible userspace mixed with WSL-specific extensions for the
> Azure-specific magic.

I'm failing to see what does this speculation has to do with the original
argument.

> It would be pretty sad if in another decade the only time we encounter Linux
> running on baremetal is on gadgets for tinkering like the raspberry pi.

There are plenty of laptops and desktops that work well with Linux if that's
what you need, there are vendors like System76 that are dedicated to giving
you just that.

------
Thev00d00
A really great talk on the subject.

