[lug] Fedora vs Ubuntu vs Mint

[Jed S. Baer]

On Thu, 20 Jul 2017 10:33:17 -0600
Zan Lynx wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 20, 2017 at 09:38:56AM -0600, Jed S. Baer wrote:
> > On Thu, 20 Jul 2017 07:32:15 -0600
> > Zan Lynx wrote:
> > 
> > > The thing that you want, to control startup services, is systemctl.
> > 
> > jbaer at robinson:~$ systemctl
> > systemctl: command not found
> > jbaer at robinson:~$ locate systemctl (no results)
> > jbaer at robinson:~$ man systemctl
> > No manual entry for systemctl
> > 
> > Yeah, yeah, I know ... just install it. Uh ...
> > 
> > jbaer at robinson:~$ apt-cache search systemctl
> > (no results)
> 
> Well then, whatever you are running isn't using systemd.

$ locate systemd | grep -v chroot | wc -l
233

I have, e.g. /etc/systemd/ and /lib/systemd/. Seems a fair amount of
evidence that this box is using it.

Selected entries:
$ ps ax
  PID TTY      STAT   TIME COMMAND
    1 ?        Ss     0:02 /sbin/init
  549 ?        S      0:00 upstart-udev-bridge --daemon
  553 ?        Ss     0:00 /lib/systemd/systemd-udevd --daemon
  834 ?        S      0:00 upstart-socket-bridge --daemon

But, 'man upstart' is a successful command. Which kinda makes things
worse. My impression what that Ubuntu abandoned upstart in favor of
systemd, and of course Mint would follow that, being based on Ubuntu, and
any old init / upstart legacy or unconverted stuff still in use was
supported by systemd for compatibility / transition purposes. Never
occurred to me I was running upstart.

So, what do I have now? A bastardized upstart that will make use of
systemd stuff?

> > But, the point (for me) isn't in the minutiae of specific details;
> > systemd is just one example. I could give many, but that would quickly
> > become tedious. :) The larger point is that I spent a lot of time
> > learning how to make my system work the way I wanted it to, and a lot
> > of that time / effort has been rendered moot.
> 
> At last, someone who uses the correct work, "moot" when writing that
> phrase. :-)

I'm also a language nazi. :)

> Things change, and people come up with better ways to do things. If you
> didn't want to change, you don't actually have to. So at some level you
> must enjoy new stuff, or you'd still be using Debian skeevy, or whatever
> that was called.

I'm not opposed to change. What makes change be worth it is the benefit
that comes with it. If there's no benefit, then it becomes harder to
accept. When it's pointless, e.g. "hey it's a new release so let's make
the user interface look completely different", then it becomes a burden,
and that was part of the essay I referenced. Why does a new release need
a whole new icon set? It's purely cosmetic.

I "enjoy" getting the benefits of having security holes plugged by
updates to the kernel, ssh, etc., and other genuine better functionality.
Parallelized system startup does almost nothing for me, and my startup
time was shortened much more by using a SSD instead of a HD.