[CentOS] Just need to vent

Mon Jan 25 01:46:53 UTC 2016
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>

On Jan 24, 2016, at 6:40 PM, Peter Duffy <peter at pwduffy.org.uk> wrote:
> The thing which always gets me about systemd is not the thing itself,
> but the way it was rolled out. When I first installed Red Hat 7, if a
> window had appeared telling me about systemd and asking me if I wanted
> to use it, or stick with the old init framework, I'd have opted for the
> latter (as I was interested primarily in continuity from the previous
> version.) But I'd have noted the existence of systemd, and would have
> tried it out on a sacrificial box - I might even have got to like it!
> But having it rammed down my throat just put me off it for life (bit
> like a kid being force-fed Brussels sprouts.)

It wasn’t a huge surprise.  systemd was in Fedora since f15, and RHEL7 was branched from f18 (iirc).  systemd was in the RHEL7.0 beta.  The release announcement was filled with information about systemd.[1]  Frankly, I was more surprised about XFS and 64-bit-only than systemd.

I believe that RHEL7 (and CentOS7) both have systemd integrated into them enough that it isn’t as simple as “choose init system” on install.  Whether you like it or not, systemd has its fingers in a lot of stuff, like login services, resource management, stuff like tmpfile creation and management.  I’m not exactly thrilled with some features (like the way systemd —user was implemented, the inflexibility of cgroup configuration per-unit, remote journal forwarding) but overall, since I was prepared, I think its a step in the right direction.  

If there was one thing I’d love, is for there to be a systemd long term support release.  I feel like the systemd in el7.0 was way too early, and it wasn’t until 7.2 that I feel like things are starting to stabilize.  Also, thankfully, systemd —user was *completely torn out* in 7.2. :)

As for Gnome3, I simply don’t use it.  lightdm + cinnamon or MATE for me.


1. https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.0_Release_Notes/pref-Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-7.0_Release_Notes-Introduction.html


—
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>