SysVinit vs Systemd

I switched from Debian/Ubuntu to Linux Mint because with systemd it did not finish booting on my hardware , Mint were even later in switching, but when they did AMD hardware worked without problems

I wish I understood everything you are saying

After writing my own startup scripts for SysVinit, writing my own units for systemd was too easy. Now I have moved all of my crons to systemd timers, also - both as root and normal users.

pxeboot doesn't have anything to do with systemd. systemd-boot is what gummiboot became when it was merged with systemd

Kay Sievers, if memory serves.

"Responding to events" is the only feature of systemd that I find potentially useful. And also potentially dangerous.

On the one hand it's certainly useful to be able to trigger responses to changes in the environment. However, I have enough experience of Windows mysteriously launching tasks that I didn't ask for, without explanation or even an easy way of diagnosing, that often cause serious issues, and they're so heavily obfuscated by the "convenience" of automation that I'm rendered helpless and at the mercy of Microsoft. Windows is exceptionally good at automating it's own destruction, and with it my time and data.

I would much rather forgo this "convenience" and retain full control of the system.

And that, sadly, is the only thing that's even remotely interesting about systemd. The fact that it has assimilated the entire Linux ecosystem is an absolute travesty.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that Poettering defected to Microsoft. They were made for each other.

nice useless ukulele intro...jfc

More than a thumbs up! This is a five star tutorial! Personally I have no preferred preferences over Systemd, SysVinit, OpenRC. On my Archlinux systems (systemd) if I want to start or enable a printer all one has to do is sudo systemctl enable --now cups. Or stop bluetooth sudo systemctl stop bluetooth.service.

On my ssh Gentoo installs from a host computer I use the OpenRC. Just boot the target machine with a USB thumb drive. Create a password for root. Use ifconfig command for a ssh ip address. Once boot into usb start the OpenRC rc-service sshd start to provide the connection for any host machine to issue commands from a terminal . From installation notes, or from the Gentoo wiki web page installs.

I've done just recently a SysVinit install (LFS) Linux From Scratch which was very time consuming. But the install was successful. Example: -- linux: /etc/init.d # ./sshd status -- or linux: /etc/init.d # telinit 3.

Yes -- Systemd might have some down falls but for the user the commands are simple and easy to remeber. So what am I using as of this moment? Slackware 15. Also a non systemd init system which you have stated in a video that "Slackware 15 is a Linux closest to a Unix system.."

Slackware is an excellent and stable Linux. But I must say that my Archlinux and Gentoo system boxes are very reliable as well. :) Lot's of init system choices, other as well and much to learn.

Systemd is an ill-architectured software. Main reason why I switched to FreeBSD.
(Systemd) Too long commands/words to get a single thing done. Hard to memorize all of that non-sense. What if you are in a system recovery, how are you going to write all of that long statements? Total non-sense. Saving conf fles in binary is another galaxy-wide no-brainer. What if those files got corrupted? You may lose your system. When I see the developer's bio, I see Avahi, pulseaudio, and systemd. None of them are good piece of software. What a waste of time.

In the Wiki table all have 'parallel system startup' capability, except Epoch. Hmm.

Creator of SysD moved to MS? How convenient! MS offers Linux subsystem for 'convenience'. And owns GitHub. MS has its tentacles all over open-source sphere. How come more people not concerned yet?

I can take or leave systemd, except for the systemd-journald non-text-file thing you mentioned (and you can kind of substitute in syslog), and the fact that the systemd developers decide for you that they will ignore your pager settings and truncate the logs at the edge of the terminal instead of wrapping (or respecting your pager settings) when you use their log viewer (journalctl). They definitely have a "screw you, we're writing what we want" attitude.

I'm mostly in the FreeBSD camp, and for me, the fact that SystemD can't easily be ported to FreeBSD is a good thing. I much prefer BSDInit.
Yes, Debian boots faster on my hardware than FreeBSD, about 1 second on my hardware vs 10 seconds for FreeBSD. But that really isn't a big deal. Rebooting isn't something I do very often, and when I do, 9 seconds isn't going to make that much of a difference to the overall downtime impact.

Maybe it is just that I'm a lot more familiar with FreeBSD than other systems, but I find that creating a new service in a few lines of shellscript in FreeBSD is a lot easier than trying to wrestle with SystemD.

Can I be a little out of the context of the video? I enjoyed very much your HAL-9000 and the " Discovery " panel messages as a screensaver. 2001 is my favorite movie ever.

Great video, and your presentations are generally very good. Unfortunately I find the animation on the screen behind you very distracting. It is like those advertisement banner which constantly attract focus. Much better than background music some idiots use in lectures, but still.

I'd like a Debian with OpenRC

Thank you DJ ware it's really educational to know the differences and what they actually are.

Great talk, great insights, a thumbs up 👍

While I miss what I consider the simplicity of sysVinit, I have gotten used to systemd. The real downside as I see it is systemd is just one more nail in the coffin of the original UNIX philosophy, but Linux != UNIX, so that is the way things are.

Excellent video! You did a great job of explaining why many Linux distros moved to systemd. The structure and commands are slightly more complicated than good old sys5init, but clearly necessary. I started reading the Red Hat resource you linked, thank you!

You keep saying that systemd will boot faster than sysvinit but... Sure, sysvinit took longer to boot up back when it was being run on a P-III. How long do you suppose it would take to boot a P-III on systemd? An hour?
The problem with systemd is feature creep and bloat. And it is part of the corporatization of Linux. Frankly, I don't even want to see, "The year of the Linux desktop."
When I first started running Linux I started with Linux Mint 9 or 10. Everything just _worked_. Man, do I miss those days. KDE was nice and easy to customize in whatever way you wanted to. Now? Not so much...

I have worked with multiple init systems and I must say I love systemd. It makes writing of units very straight forward and easy. In contrast to those scripts in rcX.d directories, it's very simple and straight forward. Declare a name, dependencies, tell it what to start, how to start it, how to kill it, define what to do on failure, etc. Everything is on one page of text with minimal scripting. The interface with systemctl and service is very intuitive and simple to use, setting services up for startup or starting them manually is easy, with autocomplete and everything.
I don't understand why people cry about it. Yes, it does come with a lot of features that might not typically be part of the startup, like dns or timers. But you can just not use those features and continue using cron.

SysV can be replaced by Openrc or runit without selling your distro to Redhat. Comparing SysV with Systemd is like comparing a Ford T with a Ford [insert a 2023 model].

Loved this very educational

I Love You!! ❤ in the first 5 minuts you simply taught to me a lot!! ❤

Thank you, this is needed for everyone !

I still don't get how this is superior to the Solaris Service Management Facility (SMF) introduced almost 20 years ago.

systemd-boot makes adding entries to boot a breeze, one of the many perks of using systemd.

Outstanding video with great history and information! I've been using some flavor of Unix since 1983, and I really don't like systemd. SysVinit is what I'm used to, but openrc is pretty good. I like tiny programs that interact rather than "full-featured" systems that try and do everything.

I started watching but had to pause, as I quickly got lost digesting the comment section below (I'm just a noob about to do a test run, dual-booting 2 versions of MXLinux on an old Acer laptop with a new SSD; both Xfce but one with SysV and the other straight-up systemd ((praise Satan!)) to see how they compare). The tech-talk, conflicting views and politics of this comment section was utterly fascinating to me, illuminating. Now I'm gonna watch the video lol...

wow, in-depth OS reviews, thank you sir

Let me see if I understand correctly. Systemd started as a Canonical project, then was reimagined by IBM/RHEL which doesn't respect the community and basic principles of UNIX, has a lot of bloatware-complexity like Windows and now the main developer works for Microsoft? Sounds good

This scheme can only work in countries with a few large firms that the govt heavily subsidizes and posess a high degree of economic nationalism. It also serves to entrench the established economic oligarchy. It wont work in the US because entrepreneurship is so high and is the engine of growth. Expecting a small firm to pay wages an benefits of a large firm.

Can you elaborate about "text' unix phylosophy ? Why its good? Average people dont care how system works.. so no need look under the hood and no need ability to 'read' messages..so no point waist time to create and parse strings right? Huge pipes with many programm outputs hard to debug, especial that they 'break last' so something went wrong with text output and next pipe soft will do not exactly that suppose to.. in this case 'brake' imdiateely on the spot will be usefull.. Well to my taste linux has load of programs which silently brakes and 'non functional' especially gui wrappers over that 'text' like commands.. So no clear error what went wrong no cathers its just there kinda works but not always.. so binary here for desktop sounds more like 'win-win'.

Binary logfiles -> no go, security issues -> check, already had this
And now the rat has left the ship.

...the older i get the more i love and respect slackware... i guess u call that thing "wisdom"? 😆 also bsd style init is easier for hand control things then sys v.

Oh what did oracle do?

Systemd was inspired by Apple's launchd.

wow and blizzard is fkn piece of shit now.

nice to finally find you grandpa. you have some awesome stories and just hearing about old linux, file formats and softwares just makes my heart warm up. keep kicking.

im systemD all day

Systemd Is a black hole in security and stability

You’re bringing me back Thanks DJ :)

Great video !

very informative. I 've run some pre-systemd distros but didn't had much of awareness. systemd felt well organized for (re)starting services/daemons over other systems and it was easier to write units for stuff that didn't come with their own. lately it felt that it "eats" stuff which led me to see the "systemd or not systemd" conversation that happen for some years now. cleared some grey areas on my understanding and you kinda explained to me the reasons i am trying to go away from it. possibly an openrc approach (as i firstly saw that on archlinux i think) is what fits more my use-cases of system.
Thank you, sir.

I could listen to this guy talk for hours just listening to computer engineering history. 😊

Thank you for more clarity