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Comment by pjmlp

1 day ago

Making it even more so of a religion.

UNIX is only an OS with some good ideas, and also plenty of bad ones.

No reason to stick with it ad eternum as some kind of holy scriptures.

The article is not about UNIX, what's good and bad, but what's better for understanding Linux. And replacing SysVInit with systemd is, objectively, bad for understand the core of Linux. And this is the core of LFS.

Discussing whether UNIX is good or bad seems narrow-minded, as there is no solution to that. It's like discussing whether iOS is better than Android. We can always isolate some specific parts and discuss that, but just slashing the whole concept doesn't help anyone and rarely yields any meaningful results.

  • > And replacing SysVInit with systemd is, objectively, bad for understand the core of Linux.

    I know there are strong opinions on this, but isn’t systemd part of the core of most Linux desktops nowadays?

    • All of my Debian out of the box has systemd. On Gentoo it's OpenRC, which I find easier. But! There are some work-around packages that implement some stubs of systemd things because other packages are designed for systemd only world (one such stub is elogind)

It's "problem" unfortunately is that it happens to be the only major foss os. If there were other foss oses with good support and "better" models I'd gladly try them out. I know I personally would never switch to any non foss os after the user friendliness I have experienced. I would say that's the main reason many stick to it, including game theoretic arguments for commercial players also. Not because people like to stick to ancient models. It's not a ideal system obviously but going back to locked down crap is a no go for me and perhaps many others. BSDs are ok too but the suicidal licensing makes me less inclined.

  • What’s suicidal about the BSD license? BSD code is everywhere

    • Yes and much of it is sealed off and proprietary. The bsd oses got MacOS for all their hard work, a closed off system that they can't read or port back anything from. Someone would say linux or gpl projects also have been fucked over this way. I suppose if your house has been burgled, such a person would argue we must remove all protections rather than add more.

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That's true, but some of the arguably worst ideas are the ones which makes it the most approachable, hackable and understandable.

Hindsight is an interesting thing. Makes mistakes more visible while making Chesterton's Fences invisible.

We shouldn't forget these. These fences are there for the reasons. Yes, fences can be revised, but shall not be ignored.

My point was, that there’s plenty of ancient things we plod along with, even though they’re not perfect. Many have tried to improve upon them but few have stuck.

You are so vague in your attack on Unix approach that it's borderline trolling. What are your problems with it? Modularity and minimalism have been working perfectly and that systemd does not follow them is a bad thing.