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systemd has been a complete, utter, unmitigated success
(blog.tjll.net)
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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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I totally agree. I used to hate systemd for breaking the traditional Unix philosophy, but the reality is that a tight init and service-tracking integration tool really was required. I work with and appreciate systemd every day now. It certainly didn't make things simplier and easier to debug, but it goes a long way towards making a Linux system predictable and consistent.
Poettering can go fuck himself though - and for PulseAudio too. I suspect half of the hate systemd attracted over the years was really because of this idiot.
Is it really breaking it? As far as I'm aware, it's more like gnu. It has components and you can select what you use (here meaning distros and packagers).
People mistake this for a monolith because it's all named systemd-thing. Integration, like you said, was and is needed. But what if all those separate utilities and services are actually disconnected and speak some protocol different to pipe? Does it make it less unixy?
And poettering is an absolute good guy here. Pulseaudio wasn't perfect, but did it improve things compared to what was there before? Sure it did. Even now, pulesaudio protocol is used within pipewire and it works just fine.
Perfect is the enemy of good. And while all these tools might not be perfect, they are the best in the Linux world.
Agreed. But he's also an abrasive know-it-all. A modicum of social skills and respect goes a long way towards making others accept your pet projects.
I wasn't talking about the protocol, I was talking about the implementation: PulseAudio is a crashy, unstable POS. I can't count the number of hours this turd made me waste, until PipeWire came along.
Pulseaudio was introduced in 2004. How come it took almost 20y for it to be replaced if it was that bad?
Implementation, being what it is, improved the situation compared to alsa and other things before it. Again, while not perfect it made things better for everyone.
It's funny that this is a thing attributed to poettering as bad since things before were way worse... why not throw Sticks and stones at those people?
I really don't get it.
And all of these things are optional. The fact that distro people and companies select them is because they solve real world problems.
Did you learn nothing from X11 usage? May I remind you that X11 was invented by Xerox in the fucking 80s?!
Bad software attaches itself to OSs like a cancer.
My earliest memories of Linux audio were in Slackware in the mid 90s, reading and re-reading the HOWTO that started off with a bunch of attitude about how real computer users don't need audio, but we can do it anyway "so, if you must hear Biff bark..." and then a bunch of very unhelpful things to try following that never ever worked on any system I ever tried to use them on. Diverse systems that, of course, all played audio through Windows flawlessly.