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Comment by blibble

5 hours ago

yeah, the fix for pulseaudio was to throw it away entirely

for systemd, I don't think I have a single linux system that boots/reboots reliably 100% of the time these days

24 comments

blibble

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xorcist  1 hour ago

There were dozens of other init systems that, like systemd, wasn't a shell script.

What set systemd apart is the collection of tightly integrated utilities such as a dns resolver, sntp client, core dump handler, rpc-like api linking to complex libraries in the hot path and so on and so forth that has been a constant stream of security exploits for over a decade now.

This is a case where the critics were proven to be right. Complexity increases the cognitive burden.

dijit  5 hours ago

The trick is the same: use a popular linux distribution and don't fight the kinks.

The people who had no issues with Pulseaudio; used a mainstream distribution. Those distributions did the heavy lifting of making sure stuff fit together in a cohesive way.

SystemD is very opinionated, so you'd assume it wouldn't have the same results, but it does.. if you use a popular distro then they've done a lot of the hard work that makes systemd function smooth.

I was today years old when I realised this is true for both bits of poetter-ware. Weird.

  • blibble  4 hours ago

    I only use debian

    pulseaudio I had to fight every single day, with my "exotic" setup of one set of speakers and a headset

    with pipewire, I've never had to even touch it

    systemd: yesterday I had a network service on one machine not start up because the IP it was trying to bind to wasn't available yet

    the dependencies for the .service file didn't/can't express the networking semantics correctly

    this isn't some hacked up .service file I made, it's that from an extremely popular package from a very popular distro

    (yeah I know, use a socket activated service......... more tight coupling to the garbage software)

    the day before that I had a service fail to start because the wall clock was shifted by systemd-timesyncd during startup, and then the startup timeout fired because the clock advanced more than the timeout

    then the week before that I had a load of stuff start before the time was synced, because chrony has some weird interactions with time-sync.target

    it's literally a new random problem every other boot because of this non-deterministic startup, which was never a problem with traditional init or /etc/rc

    for what? to save maybe a second of boot time

    if the distro maintainers don't understand the systemd dependency model after a decade then it's unfit for purpose

    • jacquesm  4 hours ago

      I can totally relate to this, it's gotten to the point that I'm just as scared of rebooting my Linux boxes as I was of rebooting my windows machine a couple of decades ago. And quite probably more scared.

      5 replies →

    • 1vuio0pswjnm7  2 hours ago

      "for what? to save a second of boot time"

      Doubtful the motivation was /etc/rc being too slow

      daemontools, runit, s6 solve that problem

    • bee_rider  2 hours ago

      PipeWire is like 10 years newer than PulseAudio. It probably had a chance to learn some lessons!

      IIRC before PulseAudio we had to mess around with ALSA directly (memory hazy, it was a while ago). It could be a bit of a pain.

      2 replies →

    • jorvi  4 hours ago

      > it's literally a new random problem every other boot because of this non-deterministic startup, which was never a problem with traditional init or /etc/rc

      This gave me a good chuckle. Systemd literally was created to solve the awful race conditions and non-determinism in other init systems. And it has done a tremendous job at it. Hence the litany of options to ensure correct order and execution: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/latest/syst...

      And outside of esoteric setups I haven't ever encountered the problems you mentioned with service files.

      6 replies →

    • esseph  38 minutes ago

      Debian is a darling for which I will always love, but it's inability to deal with systemd is one of the prime reasons I left.

      I am not seeing these kind of systemd issues with Fedora / RHEL.

      It just works

  • Brian_K_White  2 hours ago

    "The trick is the same: use a popular linux distribution and don't fight the kinks."

    I believe that you are genuinely being sincere here, thinking this is good advice.

    But this is an absolutely terrible philosophy. This statement is ignorant as well as inconsiderate. (again, I do believbe you don't intend to be inconsiderate consciously, that is just the result.)

    It's ignorant of history and inconsiderate of everyone else but yourself.

    Go back a few years and this same logic says "The trick is, just use Windows and do whatever it wants and don't fight."

    So why in the world are you even using Linux at all in the first place with that attitude? For dishonest reasons (when unpacked to show the double standard).

    Since you are using Linux instead of Windows, then you actually are fine with fighting the tide. You want the particular bits of control you want, and as long as you are lucky enough to get whatever you happen to care about without fighting too much, then you have no sympathy for anyone else who cares aboiut anything else.

    You don't see yourself as fighting any tides because you are benefitting from being able to use a mainstream distro without customizing it. But the only reason you get to enjoy any such thing at all in the first place is because a lot of other people before you fought the tide to bring some mainstream distros into existence, and actually use them for ordinary activities enough despite all the difficulties, to force at least some companies and government agencies to acknowledge them. So now you can say things like "just use a mainstream distro as it comes and don't try to do what you actually want".