[arch-general] My end-user $0.02 on /etc/rc.conf splitting.

[Karol Babioch]

Hi,

Am 22.07.2012 17:07, schrieb Fons Adriaensen:
> For any serious audio (music production, acoustic research, etc.) the
> first thing to get rid of is PA. It maybe great for the typical desktop
> user but is quite useless and a pita otherwise.

Yeah, PulseAudio is mainly aimed for the desktop. If you have special
needs, you'll probably need special solutions. That's nothing new, is it?

> The reason to go to Arch years ago was very technical. I was building
> a system using 5 PCs to drive a total of 320 audio channels.

You can't blame the major distributions for something like that, can
you. They are aimed for the average desktop of normal people. Something
with 320 audio channels is simply not something they aim for.

> Of course pk and ck have nothing to do with L.P., but they are part off
> the same movement as Poetterix. If I'd want a system like those people
> are dreaming I'd buy a MAC.

No. I want a PC and/or laptop with good multimedia support without being
forced to go for a MAC. I would argue that PulseAudio (among others)
provides just that.

> But I prefer one without a zillion daemons
> trying to outsmart me and making any secure, static system configuration
> near impossible.

Well, unfortunately that is something that seems not to be possible.
With so many components, there is quite a bunch of daemons running.
Obviously you can try to unite them, but that wouldn't be very Unix-like
and it is the main point of criticism against systemd.

> I just don't like the way some people
> are trying to 'improve' Unix or redefine Linux.

I'm not sure there ever was a clear "Unix" and/or "Linux" way of doing
things. Furthermore Unix was never designed to run on today's hardware.
With so many changes during the last few decades, we will always have to
"improve" or "redefine" things a little bit in order to suit our needs.

> I already suggested a very
> descriptive name for their new OS. But we end-users of Linux have a
reasonable
> expectation that by using Linux we use a OS that
> --is Unix-like
> --is under the user's control and not the other way around

I don't see any of these points violated by the rc.conf splitting. To
the contrary: I think it makes it easier an is therefore more Unix-like.

> Wrong, they are going to ram systemd down our throats. Believe you me.

I hope they will ;). Personally I'm already using systemd and absolutely
do like it.

> *There is* something better, namely the
> BSD init system and the SysVinit init system.

They are both old, slow and "stupid".

> Is SysVinit stupid?

By stupid I mean the following: They assume that I, as a user, have to
care about dependencies and things like that.

> By all
> means, produce something better if you feel you're better that the
author(s)
> of SysVinit.

I'm just saying that these systems are quite old and there was a time
they suited the need just fine. But nowadays parallelization is
something that should absolutely be part of an init system. There is a
whole lot more to it, and it is well explained in the blog posts of
Lennart [1]. If you would have read it, you wouldn't try to argue for
SysVinit.

> Do you *really* have to use a different init system? runit and s6 do that.

I *really* need something better than the plain/old SysVinit after
having seen the benefit of systemd. It's fast, it's reliable and it
offers a lot more advantages over SysVinit (once again, take a look at [1]).

> What they won't do is to replace other unrelated programs like *chron,
and for
> a good reason: they are made by Unix people.

Maybe I'm just ignorant, but what is "*chron" supposed to be? I suppose
you mean "cron", but I don't get why systemd would replace that? Just
because systemd has some support for timer events, it isn't replacing cron.

> Maybe there is a reason for that? Like, I don't know, maybe a bunch of
people
> find advantageous to run a unix-like system?

Once again: I'm not sure whether there ever was something like a "Unix"
system. Furthermore I don't get why systemd is not Unix-like. I would
argue that it is a response needed in order to get the maximum out of
our hardware, which differs quite extensively from the one Unix was
originally designed for.

Am 22.07.2012 18:17, schrieb Nicholas MIller:
> I'm also curious how the people who work on initscript believe systemd is
> superior.

Just take a look at [1].

Am 22.07.2012 18:22, schrieb Jorge Almeida:
> That's what worries me, that you sincerelly find it superior. I don't doubt
> your good intentions.

I'm not aware of anyone who has looked into it and doesn't find it
superior. How else would you explain that all the major distributions
are switching over and/or already have? Even before systemd there was
"Upstart", because Canonical "discovered" that the old way of booting is
not up to make most out of today's hardware.

Best regards,
Karol Babioch

[1] http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/systemd.html

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 900 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-general/attachments/20120722/deed0d3b/attachment-0001.asc>