systemd: Is it wrong?

[Jon Masters]

On Sun, 2011-07-10 at 16:32 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 05:46:18AM -0400, Jon Masters wrote:
> 
> > I disagree. It doesn't suck. It's the way UNIX and Linux have done this
> > for dozens of years, and it's the way countless sysadmins know and love.
> > "Sucks" might be true from the point of view of "hey look at this great
> > thing I just designed", but it's very much not true from the point of
> > view of the sysadmin working on the weekend who's just thinking "gee,
> > what the heck is going on, why won't this just work how it has done for
> > the past twenty years?". In other words "suck" depends on viewpoint.
> 
> The big kernel lock doesn't suck. It's the way SMP UNIX did things for 
> dozens of years, and it's the way countless kernel hackers know and 
> love. "Sucks" might be true from the point of view of "hey look at this 
> great fine-grained locking I just designed", but it's very much not true 
> from the poit of the driver author working on the weekend who's just 
> thinking "gee, what the heck is going on, why won't this just work how 
> it has done for the past twenty years?". In other words "suck" depends 
> on viewpoint.

I get your analogy, and your point. But there's a key difference. In the
kernel community (which is relatively much smaller), there are
established well documented means by which people find out about things
like BKL removal and act upon it. There is LWN, there is LKML, there is
an expectation that those working on the kernel read these things.

There should not be, and there is not, an expectation that Linux users
and admins in the wider world follow distribution mailing lists, wiki
pages, and IRC obsessively. Or read blogs. That isn't how it's done.
It's done through slow, gradual change picked up over time, unless you
want the kind of pain that I believe is coming further down the line.

Jon.