On 10/11/2014 08:18 AM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
Is systemd (the project) trying to do too much? Possibly.
Would it be better if this was done in a modular design *done right*?
Probably.
Yet, none of the solutions so far has *really* caught on. daemontools,
runit, s6, init-ng, etc. and even upstart were either never adopted on a
large scale or eventually abandoned in favor of systemd.
They also probably did not have dependency bundling and an $11B
corporation behind them either. :)
As far as I understand Linus Torvalds himself admits that a modular
kernel design is better, yet he choose to make Linux monolithic. On the
other hand Hurd is still not even in a releasable state.
I don't think there's any question that modular is harder. It requires
actual engineering, not systemd-style hacking. Even Windows experimented
with a "microkernel" in the Cutler days, but ultimately seems to have
settled back into bloatware, the path of least resistance.
I also wonder if Linux has scaling issues, and how much corporate
influence this causes and how much longer Linus can fend it off?
Could it be that a modular design for such complex tasks becomes too
difficult to *do it right*?
I don't know, but I think given its history, the burden of proof is on
monolithic, not modular design. A better question may be whether a
distributed volunteer project can do real system architecture? (Where is
CERN when you need them?)
Is systemd going to change the GNU/Linux ecosystem? Definitely.
Will this change be good or bad? Only time will tell, but I'm quite sure
that even if the change will turn out to be bad it will *not* destroy
GNU/Linux, but help it evolve in better ways.
If nothing else it gives us a new low bar, a bogyman to replace Windows,
which is seeing hard times, and now even resorts to copying Linux. :)
Kind regards,
Andrei
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