Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Anyone switched to eudev yet? -> what was wron with SysVInit?

[Canek Peláez Valdés]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 5:51 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol@×××××.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 6:01 PM, Canek Peláez Valdés <caneko@×××××.com> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> I didn't started the thread, Wolfe did. I just answered his question
>> from my point of view.
>>
>> And, what community is being divided? Fedora,OpenSuse, and Arch use
>> systemd by default. Gentoo derivative Exherbo recommends it as init
>> system. It works great on Gentoo and Debian. I understand it even
>> works in Ubuntu. systemd has done more to unify the Linux ecosystem
>> than a lot of other projects in the last 20 years.
>>
>> And, really, I don't care about OpenBSD. I worked with it for three
>> years; it's a nice toy Unix.
>
> You do realize you just lost any moral high ground you might have had
> over saying things that might or might not offend others? Seriously?
> "toy"?

Hey, it's my opinion. You don't need to agree with me and, again, I
don't pretend to offend anyone. It's jsut what I think. Have you read
the name calling against GNOME and udev/systemd projects, developers
and/or users?  How come you never say anything about those?

> I'm not an OpenBSD user. But I do know it's one of the longest-lived,
> most prominent UNIX-like systems in the ecosystem, and it's the home
> for a huge amount of code that's imported by virtually every other
> notable operating system.

Longest-lived mean nothing. Literally. Minix is older than all the
modern *BSDs and Linux, and its author called it (until recently) a
toy Unix.

> To call it a "toy" tells me you know next to nothing about the history
> (or even present) positions and involvement of the major players of
> the UNIX-like ecosystem over the last twenty years.

I know my Unix history, thank you very much. Do you? You read LWN, don't you?

http://lwn.net/Articles/524606/

I call OpenBSD a toy Unix in the sense of the above article's quote:

"There will be fewer and fewer settings where BSD-based systems will
operate in the way their users want.

That, needless to say, is a recipe for irrelevance and, eventually,
disappearance."

>> But for serious work (server, desktop and
>> mobile) I prefer Linux, and in my case (except for my phone, that uses
>> Android) I run Gentoo+systemd in all my machines. You don't have to
>> agree with that, is my personal preference.
>
> Canek, I have to ask. Have you ever done _anything_ outside of
> academia? Up to Masters, academia is learning about what is.
> Afterward, it's either about teaching or discovering what may be...but
> a Masters only teaches you theory. A Doctorate is a discovery of a
> truth under controlled conditions. The real world is nowhere near that
> clean.

Again, thank you for teaching me about the real world. I worked for
various years between my Bachelor's and Master's degrees, programming
and administering Linux, SCO, BSD and Aix systems. I still administer
several machines in my university. I think I know the real world,
thanks.

> Quite frankly, I've found your emails to have to have a far more pomp,
> ipsie dixit arguments, playbook arguments and appeals to authority
> than hard, technical defense of arguments against your positions in
> debate. Generally, I try to ignore you, and when I respond, it's
> usually because your emails carry with them a tone of authority that
> could easily mislead the uninformed into assuming he'd just read the
> One True Way on some subject--something that's terrible when there are
> real differences and not always clear-cut answers.

Relax Michael; as I said in other emails: who the fuck cares what I
say or who I am? Wolfe made a question, I tried to answer it to the
best of my knowledge. That's it: nobody has to agree with me, nobody
has to do anything about what I write. Not even read it.

By the way,  did you read whay Kevin told me?

"""
> * Finally, and what I think is the most fundamental difference between
> systemd and almost any other init system: The service unit files in
> systemd are *declarative*; you tell the daemon *what* to do, not *how*
> to do it. If the service files are shell scripts (like in
> OpenRC/SysV), everything can spiral out of control really easily. And
> it usually does (again, look at sshd; and that one is actully nicely
> written, there are all kind of monsters out there abusing the power
> that shell gives you).
>

Then you don't have a great deal of experience in init systems.
"""

I understand that in the Gentoo mailing lists (which doens't
necessarily reflect the Gentoo community as a whole), us udev/systemd
users and supporters look like a (very maligned) minority. I
understand a lot of people here doesn't like the direction
udev/systemd is taking Linux. But it's really kinda funny how people
react when we calmly try to express why do we like said direction.

> I try very, very hard to avoid both the use and appearance of use of
> ad hominem arguments and reasoning. I do my damnedest to give the
> benefit of the doubt. However, quite frankly, I've read almost
> everything you've posted to this list over the last year and a half,
> and you've never consistently exhibited an awareness of pragmatic
> concerns for the subject, an understanding of the low levels issues in
> theoretical concerns of the subject, or an ability to stick to
> technical argument in a non-evasive fashion; that you might be wrong
> on a technical point never occurs to you, and when pressed, you engage
> in sophistry. Quite frankly, you act and speak more like a PR
> spokesman than an engineer.

I'm not an engineer. I'm a computer scientist for what is worth.

> It's this behavior that probably led Bruce to make a crack about your
> defense of systemd to an irrational degree. You advocate, but you
> don't respond to criticisms with substance, suggesting your advocacy
> isn't something based on rational motivation.

In yout point of view, sure.

> My purpose in debate isn't to win, it's to understand. I would be
> positively delighted if you would approach debate the with the same
> goal; we might be able to learn from each other.

I have learned from you Michael; you usually have something
intelligent to say, and you usually do with calm and an open mind. I'm
sorry if you don't think the same of me, but as I said in the other
threads, I try to stick to the technical arguments.

Of course sometimes I'm wrong. I just don't understand what it has to
do with anything in this thread in particular: Wolfe asked what
advantages had OpenRC and systemd over SysV, and I said the ones *I*
believe are the most important ones. Nothing else.

Then Kevin started to suggest that I know nothing about init systems,
and I responded in kind. Perhaps I shouldn't have, that I give you,
but if that's the tone that starts to populate the thread, I felt that
it was the right thing to do. Again, perhaps I'm wrong.

I don't pretend to "win" anything, by the way. As I have said many
times, the future of Linux is in the hands of the people writing the
code, not the people screaming at each other about what is right or
wrong. I doesn't matter the discussion here if no one involved writes
a single line of code. I just saw Wolfe's question, and I tried (I
hope I succeeded) to respond it.

Probably I should have dono like you do and ignore Kevin's response.
Perhaps I will do that next time.

Regards.
-- 
Canek Peláez Valdés
Posgrado en Ciencia e Ingeniería de la Computación
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México