Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

Hi everyone, for a couple of months now, I see on the list some of activities about OpenRC been ported to FreeBSD or OpenRC to Debian and other stuff related to SystemD.

I have some basic questions about all that :


1. The SystemD and Udev projetcs are merged now, so what is the impact on the Gentoo on a short term period ?

2. I saw on some lists that Gnome/Kde and Xfce plan to use some SystemD API, so does it means that we will need to install SystemD aside of OpenRC ?


3. In a long term vision, can OpenRC still exist on a Gentoo box(OpenRC might be able to boot the box then give the control to SystemD/Udev for the rest of the boot process)* or we will need to migrate to SystemD to be able to use Gnome/Kde or Xfce ?


4. Finally, is there any reason why Gnome/Kde/Xfce wants to add deps related to SystemD ? I don't understand why these desktops want to depend on a specific Sysint....

Thanks !

Sylvain aka d2_racing

Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 8:47 AM, Sylvain Alain <d2racing911@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone, for a couple of months now, I see on the list some of
> activities about OpenRC been ported to FreeBSD or OpenRC to Debian and other
> stuff related to SystemD.
>

You and half the world. Most of the issues you raise are much bigger
than Gentoo and are taking the whole linux world by storm.

> I have some basic questions about all that :
>
> 1. The SystemD and Udev projetcs are merged now, so what is the impact on
> the Gentoo on a short term period ?

In the short term nothing, although systemd has half-decent support
now, the default remains openrc and there are no plans to change that.

>
> 2. I saw on some lists that Gnome/Kde and Xfce plan to use some SystemD API,
> so does it means that we will need to install SystemD aside of OpenRC ?
>

Now, no. In the future - nobody really knows for sure, but it seems
likely that at least in some cases not only will you need to install
it, but you'll need to run it also.

I'd heard only Gnome was moving in this direction, but perhaps other
projects are as well. I'd be surprised if Xfce moves in this
direction - they've always been about being minimal.

> 3. In a long term vision, can OpenRC still exist on a Gentoo box(OpenRC
> might be able to boot the box then give the control to SystemD/Udev for the
> rest of the boot process) or we will need to migrate to SystemD to be able
> to use Gnome/Kde or Xfce ?
>

If you do need systemd for gnome/etc then most likely you'll just want
to use it across the board. Trying to run some kind of a hybrid seems
like the worst of both worlds.

> 4. Finally, is there any reason why Gnome/Kde/Xfce wants to add deps related
> to SystemD ? I don't understand why these desktops want to depend on a
> specific Sysint....

You'd have to talk to them, but I believe their goal is to go for more
of a vertically-integrated experience (which fits more with Gnome or
KDE than Xfce, but again the last I'd heard only Gnome was going in
this direction so far). Ubuntu is doing similar things with
Unity/Upstart.

I don't know everything that the integration will support, but I can
imagine they're interested in things like better WiFi and network
roaming support (re-set your network, re-configure your firewall
settings, update the UI, etc), better behavior during
suspend/resume/etc, handling of things like bluetooth, and so on. I
don't run linux on a laptop unless you count my Chromebook so I can't
really vouch for what the current experience is like or what needs
improvement.

I've tried to stick to the facts here, at least as far as I'm aware of
them. I don't think we need another 50-post thread on The Unix
Way(TM) and whether it is a good or bad thing. These developments are
going to be a challenge for distros like Gentoo or Debian that aim to
be general/meta distributions. It used to be that you could swap out
major components and all the APIs/interfaces still worked. In the
future it might be much harder to run Gnome on Gentoo on an OSX
kernel, etc. However, all of this is a bit speculative and it is hard
to say how things will actually turn out.

Rich

Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

Rich Freeman wrote:
> In the future it might be much harder to run Gnome on Gentoo on an OSX
> kernel, etc.

Yes, but if the upstream that is Gnome decides to start depending on
systemd features then that's their decision, and the place to discuss
if it's good or bad (more important, the place to change it!) would
be within the Gnome project.

I guess Gentoo will always continue to offer the best of upstream.

OTOH, if upstream goes and make some change that means a regression
for Gentoo users, then they deserve bug report floods from their users! :)


//Peter

Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se> wrote:
> Yes, but if the upstream that is Gnome decides to start depending on
> systemd features then that's their decision, and the place to discuss
> if it's good or bad (more important, the place to change it!) would
> be within the Gnome project.

More or less, but again my goal was not to start another discussion -
just to inform. Anybody inclined to comment on whether this is good
or bad should go look at the list archives and see if any of the 400
messages in the last month already covered their points.

>
> I guess Gentoo will always continue to offer the best of upstream.

I don't think Gentoo has to limit itself to what upstream supports (I
don't think anybody would look at Prefix and say that this was what
any upstream had in mind). However, the bottom line is that to do
something exotic takes effort, so nothing will happen unless somebody
makes it happen.

>
> OTOH, if upstream goes and make some change that means a regression
> for Gentoo users, then they deserve bug report floods from their users! :)

Perhaps, but don't count on it going anywhere. With Gnome 3 they must
already have pretty thick skin. I suspect upstream would say that if
you want a smooth desktop experience you shouldn't be running Gentoo.
To some degree they probably even have a valid point. Gentoo is about
more than a just-works desktop so I think the best we'll be able to
offer is a "reasonable" experience. If things get really integrated
you might see some Sabayon-like forks favoring particular DEs/etc, and
as long as those forks contribute to our main tree I think that is
good for all of us.

Rich

Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

The KDE team seems to work on that too : http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=134052539215508&w=2

Now I understand why some devs are working hard to make Mdev working with OpenRC.


They want to replace Udev/SystemD with Mdev/OpenRC and solve this situation.

Sylvain aka d2_racing

2012/8/7 Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se> wrote:


> Yes, but if the upstream that is Gnome decides to start depending on

> systemd features then that's their decision, and the place to discuss

> if it's good or bad (more important, the place to change it!) would

> be within the Gnome project.



More or less, but again my goal was not to start another discussion -

just to inform. *Anybody inclined to comment on whether this is good

or bad should go look at the list archives and see if any of the 400

messages in the last month already covered their points.



>

> I guess Gentoo will always continue to offer the best of upstream.



I don't think Gentoo has to limit itself to what upstream supports (I

don't think anybody would look at Prefix and say that this was what

any upstream had in mind). *However, the bottom line is that to do

something exotic takes effort, so nothing will happen unless somebody

makes it happen.



>

> OTOH, if upstream goes and make some change that means a regression

> for Gentoo users, then they deserve bug report floods from their users! :)



Perhaps, but don't count on it going anywhere. *With Gnome 3 they must

already have pretty thick skin. *I suspect upstream would say that if

you want a smooth desktop experience you shouldn't be running Gentoo.

To some degree they probably even have a valid point. *Gentoo is about

more than a just-works desktop so I think the best we'll be able to

offer is a "reasonable" experience. *If things get really integrated

you might see some Sabayon-like forks favoring particular DEs/etc, and

as long as those forks contribute to our main tree I think that is

good for all of us.



Rich





--
Salut
alp
Sylvain

Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

On Tue, 7 Aug 2012 11:33:59 -0400
Sylvain Alain <d2racing911@gmail.com> wrote:

> The KDE team seems to work on that too :
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=134052539215508&w=2

it's actually worth it.
more user-spread FUD or however you like to call it on the topic than
I'm not sure if *devs* are actually working on that. I believe there's

> Now I understand why some devs are working hard to make Mdev working
> with OpenRC.

different, you could as well disable USE=udev and use regular udev.
equivalent to KDE/GNOME/whatever without anything? And if it's no
But you are aware that KDE/GNOME/whatever+mdev would be practically

> They want to replace Udev/SystemD with Mdev/OpenRC and solve this
> situation.
>
> Sylvain aka d2_racing
>
> 2012/8/7 Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>
>
> > On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 10:11 AM, Peter Stuge <peter@stuge.se> wrote:
> > > Yes, but if the upstream that is Gnome decides to start depending
> > > on systemd features then that's their decision, and the place to
> > > discuss if it's good or bad (more important, the place to change
> > > it!) would be within the Gnome project.
> >
> > More or less, but again my goal was not to start another discussion
> > - just to inform. Anybody inclined to comment on whether this is
> > good or bad should go look at the list archives and see if any of
> > the 400 messages in the last month already covered their points.
> >
> > >
> > > I guess Gentoo will always continue to offer the best of upstream.
> >
> > I don't think Gentoo has to limit itself to what upstream supports
> > (I don't think anybody would look at Prefix and say that this was
> > what any upstream had in mind). However, the bottom line is that
> > to do something exotic takes effort, so nothing will happen unless
> > somebody makes it happen.
> >
> > >
> > > OTOH, if upstream goes and make some change that means a
> > > regression for Gentoo users, then they deserve bug report floods
> > > from their users!
> > :)
> >
> > Perhaps, but don't count on it going anywhere. With Gnome 3 they
> > must already have pretty thick skin. I suspect upstream would say
> > that if you want a smooth desktop experience you shouldn't be
> > running Gentoo. To some degree they probably even have a valid
> > point. Gentoo is about more than a just-works desktop so I think
> > the best we'll be able to offer is a "reasonable" experience. If
> > things get really integrated you might see some Sabayon-like forks
> > favoring particular DEs/etc, and as long as those forks contribute
> > to our main tree I think that is good for all of us.
> >
> > Rich
> >
> >
>
>



--
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2012 11:33:59 -0400
> Sylvain Alain <d2racing911@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The KDE team seems to work on that too :
>> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=134052539215508&w=2
>
> it's actually worth it.
> more user-spread FUD or however you like to call it on the topic than
> I'm not sure if *devs* are actually working on that. I believe there's

Perhaps not official Gentoo devs, but users taking development
initiative to solve a problem in userland. I'm not an official Gentoo
dev, either, but I think it'd be a very bad idea to discourage or
ridicule such initiative. Someone putting in that much effort in light
of all the information already available isn't something that should
be taken lightly!

>
>> Now I understand why some devs are working hard to make Mdev working
>> with OpenRC.
>

> different, you could as well disable USE=udev and use regular udev.

> equivalent to KDE/GNOME/whatever without anything? And if it's no

> But you are aware that KDE/GNOME/whatever+mdev would be practically

(My reason for replying...looks like a few chunks of text got lost here.)

[snip]


--
:wq

Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

Hi,

Let's cut the FUD.

On Tue, 2012-08-07 at 08:47 -0400, Sylvain Alain wrote:
> 1. The SystemD and Udev projetcs are merged now, so what is the impact
> on the Gentoo on a short term period ?

Only the build system is merged, they're still separate binaries.

> 2. I saw on some lists that Gnome/Kde and Xfce plan to use some
> SystemD API, so does it means that we will need to install SystemD
> aside of OpenRC ?


The APIs that GNOME is using from systemd are simple, well designed and
well documented D-Bus APIs [1][2][3]. They are implemented by simple
binaries separate from the core systemd. Legacy init systems can just
re-use them as-is.

Also, systemd includes logind, which replaces ConsoleKit with a much
better design.

> 4. Finally, is there any reason why Gnome/Kde/Xfce wants to add deps
related to SystemD ? I don't understand why these desktops want to
depend on a specific Sysint....

Old versions of GNOME (and KDE, XFCE, etc) had to have distro-specific
code for a bunch of things, such as changing the timezone, the system
locale or the hostname. Because these things are in separate places in
every distribution for historical reason. So every desktop had to
re-implement these things for every distribution, making a lot of
duplicated code. The goal is to have a single set of tools using a
common D-Bus API that you only have to implement once per distribution
and that every desktop can use.

> 3. In a long term vision, can OpenRC still exist on a Gentoo
> box(OpenRC might be able to boot the box then give the control to
> SystemD/Udev for the rest of the boot process) or we will need to
> migrate to SystemD to be able to use Gnome/Kde or Xfce ?

I expect that in the not so long term, systemd will become an essential
user-space component of desktop Linux, just like crond, syslog, dbus,
udev or glibc. Sharing that code just makes sense, that allows
distributions to focus on their strength instead of having to maintain a
nightmare of shell scripts. Sure you can do a Android and write your own
crappier version, but that doesn't gain you anything.

Refs:
[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/hostnamed
[2] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/timedated
[3] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/localed
[4] http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/logind

--
Olivier Crête
tester@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer

Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

On Tue, 7 Aug 2012 13:31:32 -0400
Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
> > On Tue, 7 Aug 2012 11:33:59 -0400
> > Sylvain Alain <d2racing911@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> The KDE team seems to work on that too :
> >> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=134052539215508&w=2
> >
> > it's actually worth it.
> > more user-spread FUD or however you like to call it on the topic
> > than I'm not sure if *devs* are actually working on that. I believe
> > there's
>
> Perhaps not official Gentoo devs, but users taking development
> initiative to solve a problem in userland. I'm not an official Gentoo
> dev, either, but I think it'd be a very bad idea to discourage or
> ridicule such initiative. Someone putting in that much effort in light
> of all the information already available isn't something that should
> be taken lightly!

I don't want to offend anyone but let's be honest: people start many
initiatives, and they are not always right, no matter how many effort
is put. I don't want to discourage it but sometimes I dislike
the importunity accompanying it.

Users are free to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm
the rest of users. And I'm afraid that too much enthusiasm over mdev
will actually cause a number of users to end up being disappointed
that one or another magic requiring udev no longer works.

>
> >
> >> Now I understand why some devs are working hard to make Mdev
> >> working with OpenRC.
> >
>
> > different, you could as well disable USE=udev and use regular udev.
>
> > equivalent to KDE/GNOME/whatever without anything? And if it's no
>
> > But you are aware that KDE/GNOME/whatever+mdev would be practically
>
> (My reason for replying...looks like a few chunks of text got lost
> here.)

Sorry for the confusion caused to you and the others. You need to read
it bottom-to-top. I reversed the line order for Sylvain who seems to
prefer reading that way.

--
Best regards,
Michał Górny

Questions about SystemD and OpenRC
 

Michał Górny wrote:
> On Tue, 7 Aug 2012 13:31:32 -0400
> Michael Mol <mikemol@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 12:29 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org>
>> wrote:
>>> On Tue, 7 Aug 2012 11:33:59 -0400
>>> Sylvain Alain <d2racing911@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The KDE team seems to work on that too :
>>>> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=134052539215508&w=2
>>> it's actually worth it.
>>> more user-spread FUD or however you like to call it on the topic
>>> than I'm not sure if *devs* are actually working on that. I believe
>>> there's
>> Perhaps not official Gentoo devs, but users taking development
>> initiative to solve a problem in userland. I'm not an official Gentoo
>> dev, either, but I think it'd be a very bad idea to discourage or
>> ridicule such initiative. Someone putting in that much effort in light
>> of all the information already available isn't something that should
>> be taken lightly!
> I don't want to offend anyone but let's be honest: people start many
> initiatives, and they are not always right, no matter how many effort
> is put. I don't want to discourage it but sometimes I dislike
> the importunity accompanying it.
>
> Users are free to do whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm
> the rest of users. And I'm afraid that too much enthusiasm over mdev
> will actually cause a number of users to end up being disappointed
> that one or another magic requiring udev no longer works.

User perspective follows:

What I don't like about the way Walter, mdev, is being treated is this.
People say that if you don't like the way udev is going, WRITE CODE. If
you are not going to write code, don't complain about udev. Then
Walter, I think I got the name right, comes along and comes up with a
alternative for udev that seems to work well for the people using it.
Then people complain because he is actually stepping up and WRITING
CODE. Well, it seems a person can't win on this.

Some, no names mentioned, need to make up their minds. Either listen
when people don't like the way things are going or let people write code
to have a alternative to whatever people are not liking and don't
complain because people are stepping up and doing something about it,
for example, writing code.

As to mdev not being as feature rich as udev, well, some people don't
need the features udev has and I don't think anyone is saying mdev is
the same as udev. It even says on the wiki that there are some
situations where it should not even be tried because it is known to not
work. Given that, if a person tries to use mdev to replace udev in a
situation where it is known not to work, then they should read more
closely. It's not Walters fault, it's the person in the chair.

Now, since Walter didn't like the way things are going, can he write
code and be left in peace to do so? Maybe have a little bit of support
while he is doing it?

Dale

:-) :-)

--
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!