[lug] Thoughts on upgrading to CentOS 7

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2018 06:43:54 -0600
Alan Robertson <alanr at unix.sh> wrote:

> It's pretty clear that systemd is the most widely reviled feature of
> Linux for the last 10 years - maybe in its lifetime.
> 
> A complex solution to a simple problem that was already adequately
> solved.
> 
> But it's supporters were well-placed "politically" and their main
> arguments in favor of it were either easily solved in sysv (if anyone
> had cared), or were ad hominem arguments - variations on "You guys
> are all stupid" (replace stupid with luddite, etc).
> 
> But for most of the world it was clear that there was no point in
> opposing it - you won't win (because logic was irrelevant), and
> you'll be dragged through the mud. "Never argue with a pig - the pig
> loves it and you get all dirty".
> 
> And if you want to argue that here, there's even less of a point now
> - it's been a fact for a while, and isn't going away for most people.

Hi Alan,

Your last sentence is debateable. Systemd very well might be going
away, and we have a chance to determine whether it's replaced by a
clean init system, or an even bigger hack.

I don't know them personally, but my guess would be that the people and
groups who drove the change to systemd in 2011-2014 never would have
guessed that by 2018 there would still be multiple sans-systemd
distros. I doubt they'd have anticipated that in 2018 people like you
would exist, with no dog in the fight, yet disliking systemd and
presumably open to a better alternative.

There's no doubt that systemd is sewn into all the "corporationally
correct" distros such as Red Hat, CentOS, OpenSuSE and Debian, as well
as many major consumer distros such as Ubuntu, Mint, and Debian. This
doesn't make systemd a done deal: There are still alternatives (Devuan,
Void, Antix, PCLinuxOS, Funtoo, Reactos, and Slackware to name a few).
People can and do run businesses and personal computers on these
distros. I'm not saying these are the most mainstream distros, but
oppositely, it's premature to say that systemd won.

SteveT

Steve Litt 
April 2018 featured book: Troubleshooting Techniques
     of the Successful Technologist
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